OpenSim users, land area both up this month – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] OpenSim’s land area and active users both increased this week, despite the fact that a couple of large grids didn’t report stats. The public metaverse gained the equivalent of 591 standard-sized regions this month, and 1,275 active users for a total of 149,536 regions and 48,376 actives. The total number of registered users went […]
Meet3D founder returns with AI-powered OpenSim grid – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] Snapshot from ThinkSim grid. (Image courtesy Fabio Bastos.) From 2010 to 2015, I ran Meet3D — one of the largest OpenSimulator grids in the world, with 309 regions. Educational institutions, businesses, and communities used it for training simulations, virtual events, and live collaboration. It was one of the most active grids outside Second Life, […]
KuCoin EU Hires AML Chief After Austria MiCA Business Ban
[ad_1] Update (April 29, 17:15 UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from KuCoin EU’s AML officer Carmen Kleinhans and managing director Sabina Liu. KuCoin EU has appointed a new Anti-Money Laundering (AML) chief and expanded its compliance team in Vienna, weeks after Austrian regulators barred the exchange from taking on new business […]
OpenSim builders get new one-prim NPC manager — no scripts, no orphans – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] (Image courtesy Spax Orion.) OpenSim creators Dirty Helga and Spax Orion released a free NPC management station to the community last week, giving world builders a streamlined way to create, preview, and manage non-player characters from a single in-world object, according to a post by Spax Orion on OpenSimWorld. The IMAGE-NPC Machine is a […]
OpenSim April stats down on grid outage – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] While the total number of registered OpenSim users increased by 2,528 this month, both land area and active users were down by 271 regions and 803 actives, respectively. However, Darkheart’s Playground‘s website was down this month and I couldn’t get its numbers — and, last month, that grid reported more than 400 regions and […]
Lessons from The Wrong Biennale – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] Synthetic Dreams Pavilion. (Image courtesy Kimm Starr.) Time really does fly. Six months later, The Wrong Biennale is coming to a close on March 31, 2026. The Wrong Biennale is an international digital art exhibition that takes place both online and in physical galleries and is seen by millions worldwide. The seventh edition, running […]
Rec Room shuts down after decade and 150 million players – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] (Image courtesy Rec Room.) Rec Room, a Seattle-based social virtual world that raised $294 million and briefly reached a $3.5 billion valuation, will shut down on June 1, 2026, the company announced yesterday. Snap Inc. confirmed the same day that it has acquired select assets from the company. “Despite this popularity, we never quite […]
Linden Lab quietly opens adult hub in Second Life – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] Linden Lab opened a new Adult Hub in Second Life in early March 2026, with no official announcement, according to blogger Inara Pey, who first reported on the facility March 7. The only official sign of the Adult Hub is the SecondLife teleport link. Second Life first teased the hub in December 2023, […]
Meta kills its VR metaverse after $84 billion in losses – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] Update Mar. 19: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said on an Instagram AMA that Meta has reversed its decision. The link to the Instagram post is dead, but he also posted an update on Threads, which is still up. “We’ve decided to retain existing Horizon Worlds in VR for the foreseeable future,” he wrote. “I […]
Why I still build with prims in a mesh-driven metaverse – Hypergrid Business
[ad_1] In the late 1990s and early 2010s, virtual worlds were vibrant social spaces where people gathered to build, celebrate, and create communities online. Platforms such as Second Life and several Open Sim-based grids—including InWorldz, Kitely, and OSG. Over time, however, participation in many of these worlds has declined dramatically. For those who built businesses […]