Rezzable moves on from Second Life

by Tateru Nino Jul 7th 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Business models, Culture, MMO industry, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Rezzable Productions, developers and maintainers of a set of among the most successful public art and entertainment areas in Second Life have announced that after months of planning, they're shutting down their Second Life operations this month and moving their operations to Heritage Key.

Heritage Key brings history to life on Rezzable's own OpenSim-derived installation, and custom viewer. It's all Second Life-derived tech, but that's what Rezzable knows best.

Rezzable's already been making great strides with their Heritage Key project, and they sport some of the best professional Second Life talent among their number (they're also hiring). Rezzable has poured effort into arranging a custom viewer for the Heritage Key experience, as well as extending OpenSim servers with solid content permissions systems.

CEO Jon Himoff looks at the move as a natural progression, "Heritage Key is a very exciting new opportunity and we really want/need to focus on this ... We have tried to find ways to make our investment in time and resources profitable on the SL grid, including participating in the SL Gateway program, but at this point we cannot justify further effort. More than 40 sims and 2 years since first opening the Cannery, we are looking beyond the SL grid and see a bright future."

The installation that made Rezzable famous, Greenies Home, is expected to remain in Second Life for the time being.

Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Tags: business-models, culture, greenies, heritage-key, jon-himoff, mmo-industry, opensim, rezzable-productions, second-life, virtual-worlds

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Loki said on 11:20AM 7-07-2009

Good Luck to them,

Uccello Poultry said on 11:18AM 7-07-2009

A Moldering Monday smoothly melds into a Terrible Tuesday with this news. The Rezzable builds are entertaining, inspiring, and unparalleled. And I've spent a fair bit of my treasure supporting them through purchasing Rezzable content. Needless to say I'm depressed but I also feel angry and abandoned. I was thinking of registering at Heritage Key so I could revisit the fabulous King Tut build but I'm not sure I wish to support the organization at this time.

But I do wish all the Rezzable people that I've met the best of luck. I will miss them the most.

Vint said on 2:05PM 7-07-2009

Thank you for writing about this, Tateru. Of course, we did not follow Massively closely enough - blush - and started updating the HK grid code today, which lead to minor & major inconvenience for those trying to log in. Sorry for that!

Works on this have been finished now, and all should be back to normal for users, even a better experience than before the update. So err.. go check it out! ;)

Iggy O said on 4:19PM 7-07-2009

Linden Labs is to blame for not wooing one of their best content creators. It's about costs in a down economy for Rezzable.

It makes a heck of a lot more sense to build in OpenSim for projects like Tut: more prims, more ability to customize, more ability to back up content locally on servers you own.

In my 2+ years of blogging about SL and teaching with it, I have tried to avoid LL bashing, a popular enough sport to quality for the Olympics.

Yet as I toured the OpenSim build for Heritage Key, I saw the future: centralized grids like LL's will never compete when OS matures (when avatars and their inventories can move from grid to grid).

sinead mcmillan said on 4:47PM 7-07-2009

@Iggy O
so, you're that firm - 2 years + - but still calling them "Linden Labs"? it's said Lab, not Labs. lol

Iggy O said on 10:55AM 7-15-2009

@sinead

Guilty as charged. "Lab." Don't blame me if I fall into the plural on occasion :)

Nadine Neddings said on 10:14PM 7-07-2009

LL's management continues to ignore the individual users, largely. I wonder if they will take note on the departure of such a visible, widely-known content creator such as this? Is it wishful thinking to hope that they would sit up and start taking user feedback seriously?

I don't blame Rezzable; they are looking out for their own interests. The LL management's incorrigible approach to the SL community is where I point the finger of blame.

Thank you for reporting on this, Tateru.

Jay said on 5:59AM 7-08-2009

Let's hope many more big names desert the Lab and move into a more productive space with static and sensible rules and non-gouging price structures.

Good Luck Rezzable.

Evalia Magic said on 8:39PM 7-08-2009

They'll be missed on grid. Sadly I don't have the time or patience to go hook up to separately linked OpenSim grids, and the opensim experience just isn't up to snuff quite yet. Don't blame Rezzable for not wanting to deal with LL anymore, though.