Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Every few months I load up Second Life, patch it, and walk around using their regular free account. It takes me a few moments to re-learn the basic movement controls, and once I do I basically zip around the areas I last logged out near, wait for them to download and fill in, and then walk around seeing what the owners did. During my last trip through I noticed that nearly every open room had an automated gambling table or device of some kind in it, whether it was something that looked like a slot machine or a blackjack game.

It turns out I’m not the only one that has noticed gambling in Second Life. Linden Labs, the creator of the game, has remarked that they’ve invited the FBI multiple times to take a look around and raise whatever issue they want, and that Federal agents did look around a gambling center in the game at least once. Why would they care? Because you buy Second Life currency using real currency, and you can withdraw Second Life currency as real currency. To me this fits an apparent legal standard of wagering something of value, but the FBI hasn’t done anything about it yet.

Via Kotaku. Image from a resort.