Leaving Second Life After Twenty-Three Years

Twenty-three years in Second Life, with a few interruptions along the way, is a long time. During those years, I gained an enormous amount of experience, created projects, built and developed things, and invested a great deal of creative energy into this virtual world.

Now the time has come for me to close this chapter.

This is not a decision I made suddenly, nor is it the result of any single event. I have simply reached the point where I can no longer identify with the way Second Life currently operates or with the way the platform is managed.

I no longer want to financially support or invest my creative work in a system where community roles function as part of a hierarchical status structure. Within this system, some users seek higher status by monitoring other users and passing on the information they obtain about them. They do this for positions that provide no financial compensation; the reward itself is the status and the feeling of having moved higher than others.

I consider this model fundamentally flawed. A status symbol does not, by itself, make anyone more valuable, more capable, or more professionally qualified than another user. Yet a hierarchy has developed in which position can, in many cases, become more important than actual professional knowledge and achievement.

The security of communication is also a serious concern for me. Private communication between users in Second Life is not end-to-end encrypted, even though sensitive and personal information can naturally be shared in these conversations. Given today’s technological capabilities, I consider this unacceptable from both a privacy and security perspective, and I do not consider private communication on the platform to be secure.

For these reasons, I am discontinuing my business activities in Second Life, returning the land I have rented, and closing down my work there. From this point forward, I will be directing my time, money, and creative energy elsewhere.

That direction has already been taking shape for some time.

I have been working on the foundations of a virtual world running on my own infrastructure, and the system is currently in the testing phase. The necessary infrastructure and software foundations are already in place, so this is no longer a distant idea but an ongoing project.

I am building an independent metaverse whose operation is not determined by the decisions of an external platform operator. It runs on my own infrastructure and is built around principles that I can fully identify with.

The system is not being developed exclusively for my own use. It will be open to others as well, providing an opportunity to enrich the virtual life of an existing community with new content, possibilities, and creative space.

Before I close this chapter, however, I want to thank everyone who has been part of this journey in some way over the past twenty-three years.

I want to thank those with whom friendships developed along the way, those who stood by me, those with whom I created things, talked, laughed, and who simply made my years in Second Life more colorful.

I also want to thank everyone who purchased my products, used them, and took the time to incorporate my work into their own virtual lives. I sincerely hope they enjoyed them and that, in some small way, I was able to contribute to their experiences in Second Life.

I am leaving the platform behind, but I will take with me the experiences and memories of the past twenty-three years, as well as the human connections that truly meant something to me.

Thank you to everyone who was part of these twenty-three years.

The next chapter has already begun.