Steam and Reddit are two hugely popular internet communities that require no introduction, and they share a presence in Linden Lab’s Second Life in the form of a theme park replete with Reddit memes, Team Fortress 2 statues, and so forth. Members of the Steam/Reddit communities got together in Second Life to create the aforementioned theme park, which one user claims to have paid $300 a month to rent virtual space in the game for.
Its creators, Pandazoic, wrote a post on Reddit today to inform the community that the theme park was shut down by Linden Lab, which he claims also banned his account and sim without warning.
“I don't understand why they would ban my account and sim. It was very popular, we were paying money for it and getting Redditors involved in Second Life,” he wrote.
“The game is going on Steam soon so we wanted to promote Second Life and show people the awesome things you can create on the platform,” he added. “I've never violated any ToS that I'm aware of, and never received any warnings ever in the years I've owned my account – I just used it to build things for communities. Many Lindens (employees of Linden Lab) were even hanging out and blogging about our sim a week ago.”
Pandazoic claims that he sent an abuse appeal to Linden Labs but has yet to receive a response from the company. “This sim had cost more than my car payment and we weren't even selling anything on it. Just promoting Second Life to Steam users,” he said.
He shared a few screenshots of the theme park, which you can see here:
Other users echoed their displeasure at Linden Lab, sharing similar experiences with the game.
“I used to be a regular on Second Life a few years back. They permanently banned my account for no apparent reason, and when I contacted them they told me that one of my friends accounts had refunded their linden dollars after spending them in-game,” wrote a user named BakonGuy. “They said that my account was "closely associated with the offending account" and that was reason enough to ban me as-well. This is how they treat their paying customers.”
Some users believe that both he and the property he created were banned from Second Life for violating copyrights, but a look at Second Life’s marketplace quickly reveals that the company has had no problem with users selling Team Fortress 2 mesh avatars, which have been available for many months.
Interestingly enough, a Second Life blog called Second Thoughts reports a slightly different account from what Pandazoic is claiming. This story would not be complete without a second perspective of the situation.
The blog claims that the Steam Theme Park was a sort of launchpad for “notorious” Second Life griefers who made obscene creations such as a depiction of Valve CEO Gabe Newell as “a white jello-like sculpture that sported a dick,” and that its users “ran around naked” in the game.
Amusing though the visual may be, it still doesn’t explain why Linden Lab feels the need to police its community or ban members who may have thousands of dollars invested in their virtual sims over such infractions.
