Linden Lab has instituted a “no gambling” policy for its Second Life virtual environment. People won’t be anymore allowed to gamble and to win real money from their Second Life’s playing casino games such as poker, roulette or slot machines and others. But how has the Second Life’s owner reached to this decision? Does this mean that Second Life won’t be anymore a place of fun and freedom?

Let’s imagine that a man who was surfing the Internet in 2000, for example, then left the Earth for a space trip of about seven years has now just returned home and has started to browse the web again. How will he react to the changes that have occurred while he was far, far away? Most certainly he will need some time for figure out how people have been able to develop with such speed such new ideas!

The technology has been advancing with such speed that even the ones who have witnessed all these changes could be still amazed. For example, Second Life has become a real phenomenon, as it features about 8.5 million members live. Second Life seems to have been developed for offering people a way of escaping their Real, tiresome and boring Life. So the initial purpose of this ultimate way of spending your time was a way of re-inventing yourself: you were able to have fun by playing a game, meeting new people, and you were able as well to do everything that in Real Life you would not have been allowed to do.

However, as time has past, the whole virtual world that the Internet has been offering has move a step towards business. So the Second Life has quickly started to become just another place, another environment where people could gain their money. Offering fun has become a job, and the gambling games, the casinos and all those things have besieged the Second Life’s environment.

This way the time has come for the Second Life’s owner to institute the “no gambling” policy. People won’t be allowed anymore admitted to earn money from such activities as playing poker, the roulettes or other betting games that involve chance or random number generation for determining the winner. Linden Lab’s decision has come adding to IBM’s telling its employee to watch their behavior from Second Life, because this will reflect on the company.

So, are these recent decisions limiting people’s fun and freedom from Second Life? Or is it just the companies’ fear of not being able to control anymore the world that they have been creating for some time?