SUNSET BEACH - Anshe Chung Studios recently launched a new line of furniture designed to sell for ten linden dollars per set. While many cost conscious residents may applaud, designers and shoppers on SLexchange voiced serious concerns on that Web site’s forum, and in the process revealed a need that resulted in the “10Lindens” line being withdrawn from the market.

The initial concern with the furniture line was that it was given its own category on the SLexchange marketplace. Alongside such broad categories as "Avatars" and "Weapons" SLexchange created a new category called “Anshe Chung 10Lindens” which struck many designers as favoritism since Chung has been  part owner of the service "for 2 1/2 years," according to founder Apotheus Silverman.

In a series of steps, the furniture line was removed from the site, but based on the activity in the forum, hard feelings created by this turn of events may be harder to delete. A movement by merchants to remove their items from sale on SL Exchange was discussed in one forum thread, and several participants in the thread claimed that they had removed all of their funds, except for 10 linden dollars, from their SL Exchange accounts.

Silverman went on to explain that Chung’s company had “built a viable business in IMVU which helped to significantly improve the quality of available content there and now they are bringing those resources to Second Life to try to do the same thing,” referring to the online avatar chat platform for which Anshe Chung Studios has developed content.

Silverman, in his post to the discussion thread, gave the following explanation of his actions. “After an awful lot of thought and discussion over a period of many weeks (this decision wasn't taken lightly by any means) we came up with this as the best solution with the least disruption for both shoppers and merchants. The "category" you see is really just a link to a custom search so we won't be stuck with an extra category if things change in the future.”

Soon after Silverman’s post, it was discovered that the line of furniture contained full permission poses by Second Life animator Craig Altman. The practice of distributing someone else’s creation as part of an item sold by a merchant is usually done as part of an agreement, and it was surprising to many in the forum that Altman would agree to allow his poses to be distributed with full permissions, which would allow people to remove the poses from the 10Linden creations and use them with other furniture items.

When contacted by SLNN, Altman had "no comment."