Linden Lab CFO departs
by Tateru Nino 
Mar 27th 2009 at 2:30PM
Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab's CFO (Chief Financial Officer) has parted ways with the successful virtual-environment developer, though the circumstances under which this parting has taken place are not abundantly clear. All the signs have been there for some weeks, and we've been trying to get final confirmation (which has arrived at last).
John Zdanowski's stint as CFO has seen the largest period of growth in Linden Lab and Second Life so far, with Linden Lab execs reporting record profits during the last quarter of 2008. By all accounts of the Lab's financial performance Zdanowski's departure would seem to be due to no failure on his part. Indeed he seems to have served the Lab admirably during his time there.
We've had a bit of a storied relationship with Zdanowski (known in-world as Zee Linden) here at Massively.
Usually erudite, informative, thoughtful, considerate and respectful in person and in-world, his posts on the official Second Life blog were anything but. In fact, we've come to the conclusion that either he didn't actually write those himself, or they've been so heavily worked over by someone else as to boil the goodness out of them.
As yet there is no word from the Lab on who will be replacing Zdanowski in this challenging and delicate position.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ciaran Laval said on 4:11PM 3-27-2009
"All the signs have been there for some weeks, and we've been trying to get final confirmation"
What do you mean by that? I emailed him about a month ago with a tongue in cheek request to provide financial stimulus and lower tier, he told me that was someone else's decision to make, which struck me as odd at the time and maybe this explains it.
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Tateru Nino said on 10:42PM 3-27-2009
That's exactly the thing. There's been a Zee-shaped hole in things for some time, and other quirky behavior to go with it. After a while it just became increasingly clear.
Jay said on 6:05PM 3-27-2009
Cya Zee, good luck in your next position :)
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Dylan Rickenbacker said on 7:41AM 3-28-2009
I'll take the hilarious collage you've made for this article as an occasion to thank you for your great, diligent reporting on SL, Tateru. Standing ovation! :-)
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Mr. Digital said on 3:55PM 3-28-2009
Under his careful guidance, Second Life grew from a total of two regular users, to five. Congratulations.
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Prokofy Neva said on 5:38PM 3-28-2009
An obvious way you can tell that Zee Linden's parting with the Lab wasn't a happy one is that he was instantly deleted from the Search People list (you can see dredge him up from Search/All).
Lindens who don't part on bad terms, even if fired, who are considered still to be of value, get to keep their accounts, and indeed, those accounts are turned to their real names (Robin Harper, Cory Ondrejka).
Other Lindens who leave but aren't somehow in some clash with top management linger in the list for awhile until somebody finally thinks to remove them.
I wonder what this was really about.
Zee is remember for three things:
o island price hikes in 2006
o sudden VAT charge
o openspace price hikes in 2008
In other words, he appears to have been responsible for the largest popular rebellions of residents.
Zee had an interesting take on SL and a lot of useful knowledge to impart about it, but at the end of the day, he seemed to have a cut-throat way of making money, which was suddenly jacking up prices very high, to much anger.
But I bet that's not why he parted company with the Lab. I'm also wondering if this fabulous profitability being talked about is contingent only on these harsh price jack-ups periodically.
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