Twinity's Growing Pains and Possible Solutions, Pt 3: Commercial Membership Backlash

In Part Three of my posts about Twinity's "growing pains", I'd like to talk about the backlash stemming from recent changes to the commercial accounts.

Changes to Commercial Membership

This has got to be the most controversial thing Metaversum has ever done to date, and apparently, it's got many commercial members upset. Basically, what's happened is that it's prevented commercial partners from earning any revenue off sales made from "promotional" globals-- the globals newbies earn from finishing orientation. On top of that, Twinity now takes a cut of any sale.

People are literally fuming with rage about it, feeling that they've been betrayed, exploited, and cheated. Some have gone so far as to threaten drastic measures as a result.

Let me say that when I first heard about the changes, I was shocked. But this is because I was hearing a lot of "bits and pieces" from outraged members, not the whole story. An impression was left of a company greedily stealing globals out of people's accounts, going back on terms of agreement with its partners, or unfairly punishing everyone for the wrongdoing of others. It wasn't until I later got more info about what was going on when I finally understood the reasoning behind the changes.

What the Changes Are All About

Contrary to what some people may feel, the changes weren't done as part of a nefarious scheme to "cheat" commercial members or take "advantage" of them. There's a lot more to these changes than meets the eye, which I'll explain below:

The main reason why commercial members are no longer credited with sales from so-called promotional globals is to prevent members from being able to get real money from globals that Metaversum gives away for free.

It you understand how virtual economies work, it all makes sense. In order for any commercial member to redeem globals for real world cash, Twinity's economy has to have real world value. The only way it can have real world value is for globals to be "backed" by a certain amount of euros or US dollars. In other words, the globals need to have been bought.

Commercial members feel that just because they're going to pay a special subscription rate, they're entitled to keep every global they earn. The problem with that line of thinking is: 1) That's not why they're paying the special rate, to keep every global. 2) Getting to keep every virtual dollar you earn in a virtual economy is not how things works.

Commercial members are in this game in order to be able to cash out all of this virtual money into "real" currency. To be able to cash out globals for real euros or USD, the globals need to have been bought with actual euros or US dollars to begin with. Promo globals aren't-- they're given away for free. Therefore, to get sales credit for these globals is the same as being handed free euros/ US dollars by Twinity.

This is why Metaversum stopped crediting commercial accounts with promo globals. These globals not only have no real world value, commercial members would be financially gaining from a free courtesy Twinity give newbies-- and at its expense, since the newbies didn't pay Metaversum for them.

Okay, that's all well and good, but then why the 15% cut as well? One reason may be as a means of  making commercial partners increase their prices in order to encourage players to buy more globals, which would boost revenue for Twinity *and* commercial members themselves. This initially comes across as pure greed, but it's not, really. Globals are the bread and butter of Twinity; if everything were to remain dirt cheap, no one would buy them and Metaversum would be out of a revenue stream.

An additional reason for the 15% cut may be to compensate for some of the free globals that commercial members acquired before the orientation scheme of paying newbies to explore Twinity. Remember, even before Twinity gave out "promo globals", it was giving out free globals to newbies, initially some 1200 gb (if I remember correctly), then later 450 gb. Longtime commercial members who partnered up with Twinity got to amass all these globals, even though they had no real right to. That's the irony of those feeling "cheated" by the 15% cut. They are not being cheated at all, because without even knowing it, they acquired many more globals than they were really entitled to.

What Could Have Done Better

Although I understand the logic behind the recent changes to commercial memberships, I think there are better ways Metaversum could've handled "fixing" its economy to avoid the type of backlash and misunderstanding it's getting now. It should've explained in plain English why it was no longer crediting commercial accounts with newbie purchases. Simply doing that without any real in-depth explanation is bound to create misunderstanding, especially when some of them don't seem to be familliar with the virtual economy as a concept.

I also think it should've introduced the 15% "cut" as being just a sales tax, which is really what it is. Introducing it as a "cut" or "charge" comes across as Twinity unfairly taking a piece of everyone's profits for no reason, which is not the case.

Thoughts? Comments?

This concludes the last part of my "Growing Pains" series. Any comments, thoughts, feedback, etc are of course welcome. You may post them in the section below or even start a discussion at the twinity-forums.proboards forum.

Thanks!