There is a lot you can do or a lot of places you can travel to in-world during this Halloween festive period, with many OpenSim grids running Halloween-related events such as hunts and parties, some grids having Halloween related islands and regions where they are celebrating OpenSim builds and hosting build contests and expos, and still others offering costumes to better your avatar for the Halloween celebrations. Some events will last for days, a month, for hours and some Halloween-themed...

The total land area of the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 1,000 regions this month as ZanGrid shut down and Genesis Metaverse moved its hosting. Total active users numbers continued to rise, however, with about 2,000 new actives. Zangrid, which had 439 regions as of last month, is closing at the end of this month while Genesis Metaverse, which had 1,148 regions last month, went offline for more than a week as it changed hosting from DigiWorldz to its own servers. Its land area went...

Although many creators do not speak up, theft and illegal distribution of their content is hurting their morale and creativity, and may even be driving some out of OpenSim altogether. One creator of mesh avatars, who did not want to be named, saw her products distributed full perms across multiple grids and said she no longer trusts those grids and does not want to come to OpenSim as a result. Many creators are reluctant to speak up or file takedown requests, said Noxluna Nightfire, who has...

Grids are getting an early start on the holidays this year, with a number of winter-themed regions already up and ready to visit, and a full calendar of events planned across the hypergrid. Skiing and Winter Expo in Tangle Grid This year’s Tangle Winter Expo will run from December 1 to January 13, 2018. Visitors will enjoy skating, sledding or skiing. The expo will also feature exhibitions from creators, builders and merchants all around OpenSim. “In the Winter Village there are numerous...

OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of 3,905 standard regions last month, a new record high of 88,225 regions. This was despite the fact that several large grids have stopped publishing land area stats, including InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid. The biggest gainer was OSgrid which added 1,404 regions, GreekLife with 857, Kitely with 228 and Atek with 164 new regions. Active user numbers went up by 275, to 32,384. Growth was depressed somewhat by the closing of ZanGrid,...