While fulfilling my CSR duties over the last few weeks, I’ve had several customers express distrust over the fact that I was referring them to help articles hosted on an external website. I’ve also had several customers complain about the fact that our redelivery terminal takes them to an external website. All of these customers expressed their belief that, essentially, “what happens in SL should stay in SL” — that everything pertaining to their SL experience should somehow be contained within the viewer or virtual world itself.
While I can definitely appreciate the desire to keep one’s information private, the ideal stated above is unreasonable — and frankly, utterly impossible to achieve. My hope is that this article will demonstrate why that is, and banish some of the distrust and fear that certain customers seem to feel. Because of the many (many, many) coding limitations imposed by SL, external databases, servers, and websites are necessary to achieve the modern SL experience. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you interact with them almost every single time you log into SL.
Where are they? Well… everywhere!
Databases:
Servers:
Websites:
Every time you interact with one of these examples — even if you’re just browsing the latest in SL fashion on your RL lunch break — you’re interacting with Second Life content that is hosted outside of Second Life. There are no rules against creating and posting this type of content. There are no rules stating that “what happens in SL must be confined to SL,” and it is not a violation of LL’s TOS to use external servers, databases, or websites.
Over here at K.R. Engineering, we only use external servers, databases, and websites in order to support the customer experience. This is necessary — we literally could not make your games any other way. We have a detailed Privacy Policy available on this website for you to review, but the TL;DR version is:
So, why do we rely on external servers, databases, and websites? In short:
Whew, that’s it! Hopefully this page gives you a better understanding of why external support is needed for activities inside SL, and offers some assurance that we don’t have any dark and dastardly designs on the tiny bit of personal information we may be able to glean about you. Even when dealing with our rudest customers, I have never personally felt the urge to track them to their house in the middle of Provence and show up with a sign that says, “I know what you did on SL.” The idea is absurd.
Thank you all, and happy gaming!
]]>Today I’d like to share a blog post based on a notecard that I circulated in 2019. In the year I’ve spent working as a CSR for K.R. Engineering, I’ve found myself dealing with a lot of pirated tables. Residents come to me because their table locked up during an update, and it turns out that they purchased it on Marketplace thinking that they were getting a legitimate pre-owned table. It breaks my heart when I have to explain to these residents that they’ve fallen victim to a scam, and that there’s nothing I can do to make it right. They feel duped, they’ve lost their money, and now they can’t even play their game. It sucks.
Pre-owned tables on Marketplace can seem like a great deal. However, most “used” tables are in fact pirated, and there’s often no way to tell legitimate tables from pirated ones. Whenever we suspect that a table is pirated, or if a table is so old that we cannot trace its original purchase back to us, we cannot support or replace it. Because of this, I would urge you to consider your options carefully, and to buy a brand new game license from us if you can. We can track your purchases. We offer free support, updates, and redeliveries for life. You can always reach us. In my opinion, spending a little more to ensure that you can get help is worth it.
I’ll break the most essential info down into a few bullet points.
So, what is my advice to you? Obviously, the best way to avoid getting scammed is to purchase your games directly from us. You’ll pay more, but you are getting lifetime support and updates included in that price. We’ve been here since almost the start of SL, and we’ll be here until the end.
If you do want to buy a used table on Marketplace, I hope you will review this information and make an informed purchase. If someone is selling a second-hand table, ask them if you can come see the table in SL. (Their reaction will let you know if they’re a real person, or just an account selling botted wares.) Ask them where they got the table. Ask them when they got the table. Ask them if they purchased it on an alt. If it’s a 1.9x generation table, be especially wary. Look at the name of the table if you’re buying in person — if it has extra numbers after the vX.XX (for example, if the table is labeled v2.34 17), that means it was copied seventeen times in a pirate’s inventory.
If you have questions about a Marketplace listing, feel free to contact us! I’ll gladly tell you if it’s a legitimate listing from our company, or if I feel like it’s a scam. I’d rather take the time to answer your questions and look into the matter with you than have to tell you that you lost money buying a now useless table.
I hope this info was useful, and happy gaming!
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