DGD officially shuts down..

http://www.freewebs.com/maelstrom79/DGDRecoveryAssessement.htm

The final closure wrap up report.

It's been a long and profitable run for those with me since IPO, we're up 25% on 9 months with a liquidation value of 1.25 from an ipo offering of 1.00. A fairly proud return on activity. Imagine if we'd gotten out at market value.

Crisis in the Private Estate sector.

Unless you're highly specialized or your sim has a special purpose, if you own your own sim for the purpose of rental there have been some major changes the past several months which have likely had significant negative impact on your business.

The amount of USD being spent in the SL economy is declining, meaning less demand for private sector estates as most folks really have a strong preference for main land unless a strong theme or high quality is maintained with a private estate. General sales of land which directly competes with Linden Lab has no hope at all. With Linden Lab persistently providing new land for newcomers to SL, the private estate market cannot be maintained without constant diligence by sim owners to induce real traffic and attract spending.

The Gambling ban destroyed a large source of revenue for many private estates. The banking ban made an already rough financing market for new private estates practically non-existent so that the few good institutions went out with the bad. With the real world economy in the main user areas, notably North America, in a spiral.. the extra spending coming from most folk's wallet for entertainment will be in severe decline if they can even afford the internet access to get on Second Life at all.

This has generated a nightmare for what was once a reasonably fair market. I expect very few non-specialized private estates to survive if any. After all, who can compete with the megalith of the content provider Linden to whom Tier for private sims is also directly paid.

Such is the power of a monopoly; that inefficiency in the markets results and the intentions of many productive individuals destroyed.

I even have a lingering worry about the survival of Second LIfe in its present format.