Linden Lab decommissions over 23,000 islands in 24 hours [updated]

With the new higher-priced, lower-specification Second Life void simulator packages coming up in the first week of January, we've been expecting a sudden decline in simulator numbers as customers shed their virtual land holdings. From the first of December to midnight on 22 December, we saw a net reduction of only 1,535 which was far from the sorts of numbers we were expecting so late in the month.

The figures for Tuesday, 23 December are far, far different. Linden Lab has decommissioned more than 23,000 simulators in the space of 24 hours. Almost 1,000 per hour. That's a stunning figure — it quite literally took our breath away there for a few moments. That's a net reduction of over one-and-a-half billion square metres in one single day.

We're expecting further reductions by the end of the month, but we're not willing to speculate on the scale of reductions on subsequent days at this stage.

UPDATE: It's been pointed out to us that this may be due to an error in Linden Lab's statistical system. We've done some more investigation and, yes indeed, the published figure is bunk. Digging back to the source feeds the correct net loss up to Christmas Eve seems to be about 1,630.