Second Life's Global Provider Program In Jeopardy
Second Life's Global Provider Program (also known as the Gold Provider Program, not to be confused with the Gold Solution Provider Program) could be effectively dissolved now that companies are no longer operating the virtual world in the initiative's key countries.
Linden Lab initially planned to maintain regional partnerships in Brazil, Korea, and Germany to provide support and localization for Second Life in those non-English markets. While the company's agreement in Germany with Bokowsky and Laymann wasn't clarified, Brazilian partner Kaizen Games quietly backed out of its participation last March (the virtual Mainland.Brasil estate created as part of the program still exists).
Barunson Games, the Second Life partner in Korea, also revealed last week that Linden Lab let its contract expire in October 2008. The Seoul-based company attempted to negotiate an extension for the contract, but gave up after a year without results. Like Mainland.Brasil, the virtual Sera Korea estate continues to exist, though it's unclear who services it.
Prior to the contract's expiration, Linden Lab stopped providing Second Life in Korean and even closed kr.secondlife.com, its Korean language home page for the virtual world, directing visitors to its English-language site instead. "Korea is not one of our immediate priorities for localization," said a company spokesperson, according to a report from Massively.
Second Life struggled to attract a significant amount of users from the country; Linden Lab estimates that it now has as few as 3,000 Second Life users in Korea. Some blame the virtual world's failure in the market to competition with local social networks and the company's lack of localization efforts.
“No matter how well a global service does elsewhere in the world, localization is key to target Korean users,” commented Ahn Jin-hyuk from SK Communications, operator Korean social network/virtual world Cyworld (Cyworld notably closed down its U.S. version early this month after maintaining the virtual world for more than three years.).
