Gambling banned in Second Life

All bets are off in Second Life gambling ban

by Surfdaddy Orca

Want to play a little poker, bet a pool to win a sweepstakes, or try a little slots or blackjack? Well, you’d better fly to Las Vegas or find the nearest Native American casino—because you’ll no longer be able to gamble at the SS Galaxy, Queen of the Sagittarian Sea, or any of the other hundreds of gambling establishments that used to blanket the landscape of Second Life (SL).

Linden Lab banned gambling officially on July 26, 2007.

Try to search for “casino” and you’ll get “Not Found.”

As reported by Reuters, the FBI visited casinos in SL at the invitation of Linden Lab in April. Three months later dozens of Second Life casinos were suddenly—without warning—shut down. The casinos were estimated to be pulling in profits of tens of millions of Linden dollars ($L) per month or more.

If you can find any of the remaining casinos that still have blackjack tables, slot machines, and roulette tables, you’ll find them encased in virtual carbonite. Where there was once the hustle and bustle of avatars placing bets and playing with lady luck, only an eerie silence remains.

Linden Lab said in a blog post that it was instituting the ban “because there are a variety of conflicting gambling regulations around the world,” but gave no other explanation.

The ban includes casino games such as blackjack, Pai Gow, poker, roulette and slot machines, Linden Lab spokeswoman Robin Harper said in a Second Life website posting announcing the new policy.

Because local laws regarding gambling vary depending on where Second Life’s nearly 8.5 million members live, Linden Lab “decided to take a broader approach by prohibiting all games” that meet its criteria, Harper wrote.

There is still some confusion over games involving pools of money such as “sploders,” which are common at club venues. Sploders pay out randomly to avatars who pay into a pool of Linden dollars. SL game makers are scrambling to modify other games that involve such pools so that they will work on a “pay-for-play” basis and will pay out based on skill rather than chance.

In spite of rumors to the contrary, the SL World Stock Exchange (WSE) did not completely shut down. The market trading volume on July 25th was L$413,928.45. The WSE was closed on July 26th, and then soared to L$12,492,217.47 on July 27th.

Second Street Partners, a major SL company with L$3,400,000.00 in capitalization issued the following statement:

“Just a note to advise our investors that Second Street Partners is, and always has been, 100% free of gambling related investments. We assumed from the beginning that a ban on illegal gambling within Second Life was inevitable and refused to go after the easy money.”

As reported by Ziggy Figaro, resident Anthonymark Alcott (of the UK) spent $L1,000,000.00 to develop a sim with virtual gambling equipment. He had planned to buy one sim per month and “lease it out for residential and commercial business.” Ziggy reports that Anthonymark has put this on hold.

Anthonymark is quite cynical, as would be expected: “This will be the start of the end for Second Life, just as the U.S. government wants.” Whether this is representative of the attitude of other residents remains to be seen. The total number of avatars logged in over the weekend, based on random sampling of the Login page, does not appear to show a significant drop over last weekend.

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