Welcome to the Helios Casino & Lounge. Linden Lab created a roleplay casino experience in Second Life where residents can play the games with free daily tokens. When the tokens run out, residents can buy more with Linden dollars. But wait a minute, I thought casinos were banned in Second Life? Well, they still are. The Helios Casino is a fake casino where you can spend real money to buy tokens and play games to win coins that you can’t cash out or convert back into Linden dollars or real money.
So what’s the point of all of this? The point is for Linden Lab to make money. That’s it. You won’t even have fun playing these games cos there are no risk and rewards. As someone who enjoys buying lottery tickets, gacha machines, playing games at real-life arcades to win stuff, gambling virtually does appeal to me. When I read the announcement on twitter, I was interested, until I realized you can’t actually win any money. If you enjoy casino games, you can already play them online elsewhere, you don’t need to do it in Second Life.
Does Linden Lab know that this preys on those with gambling addictions? Yes, they do. There is a sign about responsible gaming with information for the National Problem Gambling Helpline Network. Why would you create a fake casino where people can lose real money, and then post a sign for an addiction hotline?
Buying the coins to play aka “Chip Packages” aren’t cheap either! 800 coins start at $L799 and the most expensive is 30,000 coins for L$9999 (or about $37 USD).
I played this machine to see how fast I could burn through the free 500 coins they gave me and it took MINUTES. It’s very fast to burn through them, win some back or lose it all. Note that winning doesn’t even matter in this casino, cos you can’t give the coins away, you can’t redeem it for anything, you can just play more games, lose more coins, rinse and repeat.
I’m not impressed with this casino experience at all. If this was operated like a real online casino where I could lose some money and win some money, it would be more exciting to me. I have a lottery app on my phone with games just like this, and I can set a spending limit or burn all of my money if I want to. I don’t see why pretending to play casino games and winning coins that you can’t redeem for anything would appeal to anybody.
Does this fake casino appeal to you? Let me know in the comments!
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I think it’s literally the dumbest (and greediest) idea that LL has thrown at us since I joined in 2008.
I AFK here sometimes cause I like the ambience. But buying their coins in exchange of lindens is probably the dumbest idea xD