Sunday, March 9, 2008

BBB Gives Unsatisfactory Rating to IMVU

EDITOR - Sinsual

BBB Reliability Report for IMVU

Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record
with the BBB due to unanswered complaints. The company has resolved some of the complaints presented by the BBB, however, the company did not respond to other complaints.

When considering complaint information, please take into account the company's size and volume of transactions, and understand that the nature of complaints and a firm's responses to them are often more important than the number of complaints.

The BBB processed a total of 17 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period.Of the total of 17 complaints closed in 36 months, 14 were closed in the last year.

View full details at: http://tinyurl.com/25clgv

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Wao, you have really gone deep to be digging this out.. *Claps* The tiny link has to be copy-paste in order to work, is it possible to make it a hot-link?

The conclusion for a reasonable compensation might differ in the eye of the beholder. Does BBB consider disabeling properties, even with virtual credit compensation, is against property law and the TOS users have signed when they joined?; March 9, 2008 at 6:25 AM
Hugh Squier said...: Should complain to the FBI online fraud division when your property is held for ransom , that is a form of Extortion. I wonder how many have?
To hold my Avi as Ransom for money. I am certain that is extortion.
Paypal suggested that.
Genetichunk.; September 2, 2008 at 11:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Nobody should ever spend any money on this game, at anytime for any reason , somebody can make false abuse reports, and LL will take all you ever invested land,, creations, homes,etc, and they do not respond, to customers Questions, they don't even have to have a reason,, to ip ban your accounts, you can lose thousands of dollars, customer relations in SL are so bad, Please read the TOS agreement, before you spend anytime or money.; January 14, 2009 at 6:40 AM

IMVU's Development Philosophy

Our development philosophy

* User driven micropayment economy - We're creating a marketplace for digital goods that (as one of our customers put it) is "for the people, by the people." We have worked hard to prevent the IMVU experience from ever being overtaken by our opinions, preferring to leave it up to our customers to decide what they want to create and do with IMVU.

* Open platform - We know that good ideas come from all over, not just from our office. So we're committed to creating every opportunity to open up our platform to new kinds of creativity. Let us know if you've got a good idea.

* Eat our own dogfood - We've set up our business so that if our developers don't succeed, we don't succeed. We like it that way, because it prevents any distinction between our developers' interests and
our own. Developers use the exact same tools we do to create content for IMVU, and can sell in our economy just as well as we can.

Excerpt from Will Harvey's "Case Study of IMVU"

The following is an excerpt from Will Harvey’s “Case Study of IMVU”, his keynote address at the SDForum Conference in 2006. Listen to the full metaverse session audio tape below.

“The next step was to embrace developers — the most passionate, addicted and vocal users of the product.

So IMVU incorporated them into their business model in a first-class way, Harvey said. “We decided that we would only be successful as a company if we were successful through our developers.”

The lessons from IMVU’s “developer stage” were that developers would tolerate “bad tools” if they were powerful, that they would come up with ideas that the company never would, and they created a liquid secondary market for IMVU credits.

But developers alone were not enough. IMVU needed users to buy the developers’ products.

“We came up with the idea of derived products,” Harvey said. Basically, this let people create skins and other
decorations for original developers’ products.

Everyone makes money in each transaction, and it helps bring original developers in, Harvey said, since they get residuals when someone modifies and re-sells one of their products.”

Playing Catch-Up: Will Harvey

In 1998, Harvey founded a company, called There. "The idea behind There was to create a virtual world for online socializing," said Harvey. "When you think about meeting people in real life, doing things together is a big part of that interaction. When you meet a girl, you might ask her on a date somewhere. If you're with your buddies, maybe you'll go to a ball game. And so I created There to give people a place to go and do things with their friends." Harvey left There in early 2003 due to the company's drastic change in direction. "They started focusing on creating simulation software for military situations as a defense contractor," said Harvey. "That was a decision that was supported by our investors, but my personal interest is in creating entertaining experiences."

Harvey went back to his original vision, more or less, by starting IMVU (imvu.com), which remains his latest adventure. IMVU has been in beta since April, and allows users to chat in real-time with customizable 3D avatars. "The product allows you to get a free avatar, and to move the 3D instant messenger to chat and hang out with your friends for free forever," he said. "And the way that we make money is that you can buy virtual clothes and virtual scenes, or backgrounds, to customize your avatar to the way that you like." Content in IMVU, including 3D objects, are made by third party developers using a system of simple tools created by Harvey and his team.

Harvey sounds genuinely excited when discussing the game's economy. "When that user-created item is sold in the game's catalogue, the proceeds are split three ways, between the user, the third party, and IMVU. So each person gets a piece of those proceeds. And each person can even set the price of the object, so basically, the user is able to set his markup over the wholesale price that the original developer set. And the wholesale price that the original developer has set is a markup over what we call the 'electron cost.' So each person can be a businessman and can essentially run his own business."

[Frank Cifaldi is a Las Vegas-based freelance author whose credits include work for Nintendo Official Magazine UK, Wired, and his own Lost Levels website.]

Judge Says Virtual Property Disputes Are Real

Court Ruling

Yesterday all across the “blogdom” were post involving a Pennsylvania court ruling involving Linden Lab, particularly Philip Rosedale, in early legal maneuvers.

Tim Faulkner’s, of Valleywag, opening sentence was “Second Life may face a new threat, the need to apply and enforce real law in its virtual world.” While “The Second Life Herald” titled their post, “Unconscionable!” Court Blasts Linden Terms of Service, Holds that Philip can be target in Bragg Lawsuit. and “Virtually Blind” as lawyers do simply titled their post Bragg v. Linden Update: Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss and Compel Arbitration Denied, with CNet News Blog’s title being ‘Second Life’ publisher must go to court in property case. All the blogs pretty much had the same thing to say… there is of course the excepting that Valleywag, who seems to have a ~~grudge~~ ~~hatred~~ dislike for Second Life , seems to be big time jumping the gun on what the court may eventually rule.

I took the time to check out the 46 page legal order, where the Honorable Eduardo C Robreno states:

“Plaintiff, March Bragg, Esq., claims an ownership interest in such virtual property. Bragg contends that Defendants, the operators of the virtual world,(Second Life) unlawfully confiscated his virtual property and denied him access to their virtual world.”

Now this is where the order got may attention when the judge stated: (still on page one by the way)

Ultimately at issue in this case are the novel questions of what rights and obligations grow out of the relationship between the owner and creator of a virtual world and its resident-customers. While the property and the world where it is found are “virtual,” the dispute is real.

Basically this order says that yes Philip Linden will remain named in this law suit, (although Benjamin Duranske, an intellectual property attorney, believes it is pretty easy to establish personal jurisdiction and there are still ways Rosedale can escape from the case) and the TOS (Terms Of Service) provision calling for all disagreements with Linden Lab to be forced to go to arbitration was not valid. In fact the judge called the TOS “unconscionable” because they give Linden Lab unilateral and unlimited ban rights.

According to Duranske, “There are a lot of issues raised by this Order, among them: the impact on the other provisions of the TOS, the possibility for special rights for participants in virtual spaces, and whether this will encourage other law suits.”

“Cyberspace” what is it? What should it be?

“Cyberspace” is not inside your computer, nor the computer of people you are interacting with. Is it really inside a server somewhere in between? Or is that server simply a device which allows us to enter into “Cyberspace” as would be some space ship which would allow our us to reach distant solar system?

“Cyberspace” is a truly a place, some say it is not exactly real (which can be neither proved nor disproved) that is really a destination. As much a destination as an alternative dimension, or another planet in outer space. This place is an earnest and serious place where millions of us enter and leave it everyday.

Some give “Cyberspace” considerable thought, write about it, negotiate over international implications, or regulate it. regulate it… regulate it… regulate it… regulate it… regulate it… regulate it…

Should “Cyberspace” be regulated by any government body? Would they also regulate inhabitants of some
distant planet revolving around some distant star? Maybe the question should be … Would we put up with government’s from some inhabited planet to regulate Earth?

How much right do we as a community of humans really have trying to ~~control~~ ~~regulate~~ force our ideas onto any alternate universe, dimension, country, or state?

June 1st, 2007 •

Weirdharold •

Avatars, Blogs, Legal, News, Second Life, TOS, VR, Virtual Life, Virtual Realms •

Sunday, March 9, 2008

BBB Gives Unsatisfactory Rating to IMVU

3 comments:

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IMVU's Development Philosophy

Excerpt from Will Harvey's "Case Study of IMVU"

Will Harvey Speaks On Developing IMVU

Metaverse Session #5: Will Harvey

Playing Catch-Up: Will Harvey

Judge Says Virtual Property Disputes Are Real

Court Ruling

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