We have written before about Linden Lab banning camping bots in Second Life. In fact we thought this problems was already being addressed with changes to the Second Life search and popular places ranking system.

But the problem seems to continue and Massively’s Tateru Nino recently interviewed a camping bot operator.

The annonymous botter claims that he has received no warnings and camping continues in Second Life. Above that he claims most make $200-$300+ a week using 70 bots and some bot management software.

The Potential to Make More and Common Deterrents of Camping Bots:

An average payout for camping chairs is L$3 per 10 minutes. That means in an hour you would make L$18 and in a day L$432. Multiply that by 70 bots and 7 days and you get L$211,680. Divide by 300 lindens and this is $705.6 US Dollars a week.

Of course more sophisticated camping chairs exist that require interaction and detect and eject bots. Some have daily limits or other restrictions. If you factor that in along with operating costs of computers and internet service etc etc the weekly take could be much lower but this is certainly worthwhile for anyone in third world countries or who has been recently laid off.

It really seems that Linden Lab will have to adjust the search and popularity rankings further and crackdown on the camping site operators to make a real difference.