UPDATED: The Quad sims, aka Ginny, Starley, Elika, Canimal.

UPDATED: They're baaaaaack. With this enigmatic phrase: "it was something we simply had to do." Again, IMHO, it wasn't. Except for new content, the businesses run themselves for the most part. Need to take a break, fine, but there's no need to shut down the entire sim for a short break. And frankly RL businesses couldn't get away with shutting down without some good reason stated publicly.


Original Post:

The quad sims are closed, no reason given, no hints on how long, nothing except for a "respect our decision" Well I can respect their decision to do so while still being of the mindset to say.....It's a dumb decision.

Yes, that's right, it's dumb, and not necessary at all.

Suppose I was a designer, and I needed to take a break for some RL reason, why with automated payments for sims and the like I wouldn't have to shut down at all. Just say, hey, going on vacation no customer service for two weeks. I wouldn't even have to do that if I did one thing that designers in SL do not do enough of:

Delegate.

Who needs to shut down if one has trusted managers/assistants that can handle customer requests. In particular, doesn't Dazzle have "design associates" now?

As an example, I could give my bosses at Linden Lifestyles, one of whom is still on hiatus.(Come back, Sabrina!) During their hiatus, did they shut down their sims? Nope, Did they shut down their businesses? Nope. I could log into SL and be in a fully in business Chez Petite in Calla, in two shakes of a lambs tail.

And if the shutdown is for a branding/image/store rebuild, then why shut down totally at all. Invite your customers to kibbitz and perhaps lend advice during the build ie. "No Ginny, don't drop the Dazzle branding, yes I know how you want to change the image built you've built up brand equity and people are still going to call your store Dazzle anyway."

And one final thing, when you shut down, you're giving free money to your competitors. Remember Ginny's hiatus when she shut down Dazzle? Remember all those new designers that showed up and got blogged? It would have been harder for those people to break into the SL fashion market if Ginny had still been putting out hordes of stuffage. Her absence created opportunity.

Now, I doubt that all four of the Quad sim folks are having RL issues at the same time. Odds are they're going to do some kind of joint "Ginny, Starley, Elika, Cani 2.0" thing, god forbid. IMHO personal opinion it was a bad idea to move those four busy (and often laggy) sims right next to each other anyway It could be possible that one is having RL issues an dthe others are closed in solidarity. That would be nice for a few hours or a day, but perhaps not very business savvy for days on end.