A Necessary Note
This article is a presentation of evidence that was originally meant to be sent to Linden Lab’s legal department to be dealt with internally. However with a long term investigation of this nature and depth of networking involved it was perhaps inevitable that word would get out eventually, and that finally happened at the end of of 2023. Due to the seriousness of what was uncovered even rumor of it being known was enough for Linden Lab or those acting on behalf of the company to send out legal threats to individuals they incorrectly assumed were responsible for this investigation. These legal threats were based on the exaggerated claims of a Second Life user trying to take Linden Lab’s sights off of himself; more on this later. As a result however, those at Linden Lab who are allegedly responsible for many of the acts uncovered here have been taking efforts to cover up evidence of a Linden Lab executive’s alleged involvement in sexual ageplay within Second Life, as well as an alleged problematic workplace environment within Linden Lab’s Product Operations department.
Unfortunately, due to the observed response and information available, it seems that Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf do not intend to properly address this situation, and that some of those who may have control over handling this situation are the very same people who have allegedly committed the acts presented in this article. Due to these reasons this presentation of evidence of allegations is being made known to the public in hope of drawing the attention of those with the authority to take the necessary actions to handle this situation properly. While this means Linden Lab or those acting on behalf of the company may pursue legal action against the aforementioned individuals under false allegations, it was decided that this needs to come out regardless of the cost. The livelihoods of too many people depend on Second Life to not at least try to do something about these issues which have impacted, and will continue to impact Second Life as a whole.
It should also be clarify that many wonderful people work at Linden Lab, and the company as a whole should be praised for its innovation and continued efforts in creating and maintaining one of the most popular and longest running virtual worlds, but strong evidence suggests there is a very real problem in a specific department of the company which has been causing a domino effect of very concerning issues both for Second Life as a virtual world, and Linden Lab as a company.
Furthermore, it should be noted that while this article will make references to gay male sexuality when its context is relevant, we are in no way prejudiced against LGBTQ+ individuals or relationships and are fully comfortable with adult and legal gay male on male sexual expression between consenting adults. We condemn any attempt to vilify anyone based solely on their sexuality. It should also be clarified that any reference to the sexuality of individuals mentioned in this document is only done so for individuals who are already open about it and have made this information available to the public through their own actions.
Now, on to the original investigation.
Historical Overview
Way back in 2007 a German television program put Second Life in a negative spotlight by announcing it had discovered users were creating virtual depictions of adults engaged in sexual activities with children, an act commonly referred to as sexual ageplay. Nick Shader, a reporter for the investigative television program said he had been “shocked to see” invites to virtual child pornography displays being sold for a mere 500 Linden dollars, which converted to around $3 USD at the time. He said the same group of users within Second Life subsequently put him in touch with traders in real life child pornography.
This prompted Linden Lab to make the following statement on the matter:
“On Thursday May 3, we were contacted by German television network, ARD, which had captured images of two avatars, one that resembled an adult male and another that resembled a child, engaged in depicted sexual conduct. Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life.”
“We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life.
If Linden Lab learns that someone is engaging in, advertising or promoting locations or activities involving the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors, their account will be terminated, and we will fully cooperate with all appropriate authorities.”
Linden Lab also further clarified their policy with the following:
“Under our Community Standards policy, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors are not allowed within Second Life. When detected, individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be subject to sanctions, which may include termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land or access to land.”
This incident made widely known that real life child predators and those with an interest in seeing virtual depictions of children being sexually abused could be found within Linden Lab’s Second Life, and while Linden Lab’s firm public stance on the matter did a lot to alleviate the worries of users as a whole, the fact of the matter is the situation has not improved. On the contrary, with the closure of the teen grid and its thorough vetting process to ensure only minors are allowed, followed by the complete failure and subsequent elimination of the age verification program, those who seek to engage in sexual ageplay have never had an easier time not only creating virtual depictions of sexual acts with minors, but engaging with actual real life minors on the platform.
The Current Situation
In present day Second Life it is not difficult to find locations catering to individuals seeking to engage in virtual sex acts with avatars resembling children. All one has to do is use Second Life’s built-in search function with the terms including, but not limited to “family friendly”, “family safe”, “giggles”, “teen grid”, “tween grid”, “bear boys”, “kid grid” and “adoption”, for such locations show up in the results. The terms “family friendly” and “family safe” in-particular have become notoriously associated with sexual ageplay. Among the results are so-called family safe and family friendly nude beaches; locations which are blatantly filled with completely nude, prepubescent child avatars that can be found cuddling, dancing and otherwise socializing with completely nude adult avatars. It must be emphasized that both the children and adults have visible genital attachments that are usually realistically detailed and fully functional. While nudity itself is not inherently sexual, why anyone would create or visit locations specifically themed for adults and children to be nude together is highly questionable to say the least.
Less suspect however are the other locations catering towards child avatars that one might find using search. We learned that Next Gen Adoption Agency and similarly named adoption themed locations feature prominently as places where users network with one another and find family themed roleplay opportunities where sexual ageplay can arise. It must be clarified that not everyone in Second Life using a child avatar or who otherwise participates in family roleplay is looking to engage in virtual pedophilia, and indeed many individuals at such locations genuinely have no interest in such activities. However the fact that those who do have an interest in sexual ageplay commonly use these locations as the first step to meet with other like-minded users, and the fact that these same individuals can encounter real life minors at such locations still puts them high on the list of concerning places.
A good example of this was when during our very first investigation into this problem we visited an innocent looking virtual playground where everything seemed fine at first glance, but once a closer look was taken it was revealed that many avatars representing prepubescent children had genital attachments that are sold specifically for engaging in sexual activity. Additionally, through the use of a third party client program (called a viewer) which allows the user to see HUDs (scripted user interface objects) other users have attached, it was discovered that users who are seeking to engage in sexual ageplay commonly use special HUDs which alert them to the presence of other users in the area who are open to sexual advances, thereby eliminating much of the guess work and risk involved in propositioning a stranger.
More specifically the HUD used is a breeding roleplay HUD called Mama Allpa, which greatly facilitates finding other users open for sexual activities without first having to contact them. How it works is users can specify their gender, and if the HUD detects a compatible partner nearby it will light up. Users can then click a button to display exactly who around them is open to sexual advances. The user can then initiate conversation and if their chosen partner is interested, they can use the HUD’s built-in explicit sexual animations to engage in the act, or more commonly, head off to a private location. Note that this HUD is quite common in the adult roleplay scene and neither it, nor its creator should take any blame for sexual ageplayers making use of it for prohibited activities. Nevertheless, it still appears to have become a common method for sexual ageplayers to secretly identify themselves to one another. This explanation is only necessary to give context to the following images.
As can be seen in the collage above several avatars representing underage girls have the Mama-Allpa breeding HUD and control HUDs specifically made to enable explicit sexual interactions with various parts of the body. While such activities with any representation of a child is disturbing, what surprised us the most here is even the toddler avatar has an erotic dance HUD, breeding HUD, and attachments for facilitating anal intercourse. These are merely a small selection from dozens of such images, and of all the child avatars surveyed it was more common to see ones wearing such attachments than ones without.
Another area of concern is that users can find an alarming amount of suggestive content being sold specifically for use with child avatars on Second Life’s virtual marketplace. There are several shops either selling, or that have ads featuring clothing that is entirely inappropriate for children to wear. Examples include corsets and garter belts made for a child’s body, diaper themed lacy lingerie, g-strings for prepubescent boys, and a plethora of unnecessarily tiny underwear and swimwear with a concerningly detailed, form fitting bulge of a child’s penis. After browsing the marketplace for a while it became apparent that there is a distinct focus on emphasizing and exaggerating the genitals of male children in particular. It must be emphasized that these items are completely incompatible with adult bodies and specifically only work with child avatars. It is also interesting to note that some of the blatantly sexual items made specifically for child avatars are only visible when the filter to allow for Adult content to show in search results is enabled, even though mixing child avatars with anything remotely sexual or otherwise Adult rated is strictly forbidden by Second Life’s Community Standards. The fact that this kind of content is so easy to stumble upon with even the most innocent searches both in-world and on the virtual marketplace makes it very clear that the sexualization of children has become normalized in Second Life.
Why this continues to be an issue.
There are a multitude of reasons why virtual representations of sexually explicit content involving children continues to be a problem in Second Life. Perhaps the most obvious is that with the near unlimited freedom offered, moderating the thousands of users active at any given time is an issue of logistics, so a few things are bound to slip through the cracks. However, the most compelling reason we found was allegedly the lack of accountability in Linden Lab’s management. Due to the sheer amount of evidence uncovered, and the amount of exposure Linden Lab’s Product Operations department personnel have allegedly had to Second Life’s sexual ageplay community, the question of “why is sexual ageplay still such a problem in Second Life?” cannot be answered without shining a light on the various relationships and decisions the Vice President of that department, Eric Nix (usually referred to as Patch Linden and will henceforth be referred to as such), has allegedly made involving this community in relation to the company he works for and represents. Exploring these relationships will forever change the discussion of ageplay in Second Life, and be the primary focus for the rest of this article.
While looking into some of the questionable content featured above we noticed that many child avatars involved in sexual ageplay use the same base avatar components for their appearance. More specifically many of them use a body called the Tweenster Mesh Body sold by a shop called Meshmerized. The owner of this shop and creator of the mesh body is an avatar named Kenzie Uwu, who through the use of publicly viewable information we were able to discover is an alternate identity Hiro Lefevre, who is known to be Linden Lab Product Operations team member Jester Mole. The body is scripted by Hendrik Bunny, who through his own public admission on social media, is a widely known alternate account of Casper Warden, AKA Casper Linden, another member of Linden Lab Product Operations; we will re-visit Casper later on. Upon arriving at the main in-world shop located in the Isle of Tharen region nothing seems too out of the ordinary. However, much like the child avatars above things start becoming problematic once a closer look is taken.
The Tweenster shop, which proudly cites itself as an official brand of Next Gen Adoption Agency and the Kid Grid, is nestled in a corner of the region with two other shops catering to child avatars. One of these shops is called XeoLots, which is owned by an avatar named Xelm Snowpaw and his partner, Rhyph Somme.
Online status indicators like these are a common feature found within most shops in Second Life.
Xelm as it turns out is rather infamous in the online furry community for being into “cub play” which is a form of roleplay that is, to put it bluntly, sex with and exploitation of minors in the form of furry artwork and roleplay. Individuals participating in cub play are well known to use depictions of fictional, non-human underage characters as a means of skirting the line for what counts for creation and possession of child pornography. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cub play scene is also well known to be rife with real life pedophiles. Whether or not Xelm falls into this category we cannot say and do not make and claims, but looking into this online persona of his reveals a long history of participation in the aforementioned activities across various mediums. Further information about Xelm found via a simple online search revealed art entries from the art blogging site Inkbunny, where while his account is listed as deactivated, plenty of explicit art depicting his underage character being raped by adults can still be found linking to his hashtag once logged in as a registered user. Each of the images lists him as either a contributor, of having commissioned others to create, and can also be found on an adult artwork site known as e621 once logged in there as well.
The rightmost image, titled “Omega rapes Xelm” has accompanying text below it which emphasizes that it is a pre-teen being violently raped, making Xelm’s interests difficult to question. The bottom text further emphasizes that this art was indeed commissioned by Xelm for him and others with pedophilic interests to masturbate to, which, in our opinion, leaves no room for interpretation. Taking into account what we learned about what goes on behind the scenes at locations for child avatars in Second Life earlier in this article, paired with Xelm’s heavy emphasis on his underage character being taken advantaged of, it gives anyone paying attention an idea of why the roleplay system he sells may contain “couple” animations where a child and adult shower and use the bathroom together, and paints a disturbing picture regarding the possible nature of his child avatar roleplay activities within Second Life.
A snapshot of one of Xelm’s posts on a website called Plurk.
This may seem like a tangent to unnecessarily single out one of Second Life’s many alleged sexual ageplayers, but the reason for this is because Xelm doesn’t seem to make an effort to hide his connection to this community and uses this same online persona all across the internet, including for his Discord account. It is this very same Discord account he uses in the official Second Life Discord channel where it was revealed that Xelm Snowpaw is in fact Squeaky Mole (his SL developer account name). According to information provided by Linden Lab courtesy of an SLB16B “Meet the Lindens” session and other public media, Xelm / Squeaky was hired into Linden Lab by Patch Linden, and is currently Linden Lab’s QA lead for their Product Operations division’s art department, under Patch Linden himself.
For a company with such a firm public stance against sexual ageplay and the sexualization of minors we have to wonder why a person with a direct connection to pedophilic artwork would be hired by Linden Lab, much less for a lead role. More problematic is that when a closer look was taken into Xelm / Squeaky, his real life name and social media reveals that he is the also the real life husband of Patch Linden, the Vice President of Product Operations at Linden Lab. While this discovery was not difficult to find, Xelm’s real life name will not be disclosed here since unlike his husband, Patch, it is not part of his public identity for the company and we believe it would be inappropriate to include in this document.
According to available information, the two of them met in Second Life and in 2018 Xelm left his home country, where even drawings of sexualized minors can result in prison time, and moved to the US to marry Patch. By marrying a US citizen Xelm gained citizenship and with it the protection from the laws of his home country. It is incredibly difficult to believe that Patch Linden would not be aware of his real life husband’s online persona or its connection to the sexualization of minors, especially since it is both the means through which the two of them met, and the fact it is the public facing persona Xelm uses for his Linden Lab approved Discord account for the job he was given by Patch Linden in his department.
Furthermore, as a Vice President at Linden Lab, Patch Linden must be aware that his husband’s home country introduced legislation (Bulletin of Acts and Decrees 470) which deemed “virtual child pornography” as illegal. An attempt to test the law came in 2007, when the public prosecutor opened investigations into Second Life due to the number of users using the platform to engage in virtual sexual acts with children or virtual avatars depicting children. Although there is no law in Xelm’s home country that legislates against underage depictions of sexual acts for computer generated images, the public prosecutor deemed it may still warrant investigation on the basis that these virtual actions may incite real life child abuse. Considering the previously mentioned elimination of Second Life’s age verification system and closure of the teen grid since then, leaving only the main Second Life grid for real life minors to use, the chances of those with pedophilic interests interacting with minors on the platform has skyrocketed.
Unsurprisingly Xelm’s in-world partner and the co-owner of his shop, Rhyph Somme, turned out to be a known alternate account of Patch Linden. Rhyph Somme is also the owner of the Isle of Tharen region itself and its associated private group for those he allows to make their virtual home there. Taking a quick look at both of their in-world profiles and Rhyph’s group title makes his connection as Xelm’s husband rather obvious.
Public profiles confirm the connection.
It needs to be emphasized that under the Rhyph Somme account, Patch Linden maintains absolute authority over the entire Isle of Tharen region. Anyone who is allowed to settle there must be invited into his private land management group in order to build or place objects in the region. Once again though the recurring theme here is things start becoming problematic when a closer look is taken. Located in the South West corner of the region directly across from the shops catering to child avatars is a private home owned by the Rhyph Somme account.
The furniture inside this house is filled with a full range of animations for explicit sexual interaction between avatars (image below). Considering that the Rhyph Somme account is a child avatar, and that the house is located right next to shops for child avatars, including that of the one of the most popular child bodies in Second Life, not only is this is highly concerning, but such furniture in his residence appears to be a violation of Second Life’s policy regarding sexual content in proximity to child avatars. Of further note it is important to clarify that furniture in Second Life is usually sold in multiple versions depending on the buyer’s intended use for it, coming with either completely PG animations, or animations catering towards a specific sexual preference. So it is worth mentioning that the furniture objects in Rhyph Somme’s home are versions made for gay male on male sexual interactions, which aligns with Patch Linden’s real life sexual orientation. This appears to be an indication that the placement of these adult furniture items within his virtual home was intentional.
More pressing however was the interior of structures adjacent to Patch Linden’s home. Starting with a locker room building visible on the left in the image above we discovered art of nude preteen boys blatantly displayed on the walls (lower rightmost image). This quite directly violates Linden Lab’s ageplay policy, specifically, “The graphic depiction of children in a sexual or lewd manner”, and it is right on the proverbial doorstep of Linden Lab’s Vice President of Product Operations’s virtual home in his private region.
Above this building was a large structure in the sky, commonly referred to as as skybox. It is here we found a sci-fi themed school-like area with several large classrooms separated by a grassy courtyard in the middle. There were space ships docked on the rooftops and inside the classrooms were rows of desks and large posters displaying art created by famed science fiction artist Simon Stalhenhag. However while remotely exploring this building with the camera a nude child avatar teleported in and sat down on a pose stand to make adjustments to their avatar. It was also in this moment that every single picture adorning the walls of the class rooms changed into explicit artwork of underage boys masturbating in a classroom setting. Every single one of these images belonged to Patch Linden’s personal group, and upon inspection of these images we noticed a texture changer script which appeared to function by scanning the area for avatars belonging to Patch Linden’s group for the region created under his Rhyph Somme account. From what was observed, we assume that when the script detects a whitelisted avatar, the images switch from the sci-fi pictures to the explicit pedophile artwork for their viewing. It was by pure chance that one of the sexual ageplayers Patch Linden hosts in his region happened to appear when our investigator was looking around the skybox, otherwise we may have never known what was truly hidden there.
The above images are cropped stills captured from one of multiple videos documenting the violations in this region, which can be made available to law enforcement if need be.
Taking a further look around the Isle of Tharen we saw pornographic images depicting male on male sex acts decorating the interiors of buildings, a shop selling dildos and butt plugs with animations for avatars to suck on them, at least two sex clubs, and another building with bright neon signs out front advertising itself as a sex dungeon, with the kind of things you’d expect to find on the inside. Upon inspecting various objects it was discovered that the Isle of Tharen is absolutely filled with hand-placed objects that are made for the purpose of sexual interactions. You can hardly throw a stone in the region without hitting something that was made for a sex; this may also include XeoLots accessories that contain some dubious couples animations. Here is just some of what was found, paired with a bird’s eye view of the region. The red X’s mark the locations we found where avatars can engage in adult activities.
It must be kept in mind that this is a region child safe.
Elsewhere in Second Life adult content wouldn’t be a problem on its own and we would not even bat an eye upon finding even the most perverse fetish items for consenting adults, but you must remember that all of this is adjacent to, or within visible distance of three shops made specifically for child avatars, as well as both within visible distance of, and within homes where child avatars virtually reside. Since it bears repeating at this point, Linden Lab’s official policy on the matter is, quote, “We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life. If Linden Lab learns that someone is engaging in, advertising or promoting locations or activities involving the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors, their account will be terminated, and we will fully cooperate with all appropriate authorities.”, “Under our Community Standards policy, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors are not allowed within Second Life. When detected, individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be subject to sanctions, which may include termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land or access to land.”, and “the placement of avatars appearing to represent minors in proximity to “sex beds” or other sexualized graphics, objects, or scripts would violate our Community Standards”, yet this policy is clearly being violated within Isle of Tharen.
Mixing various sex clubs, furniture made for explicit sexual interactions, and shops exclusively selling adult content in the same region as the home base for some of Second Life’s most prominent child avatar related brands is a dangerous combination. How this can even be allowed to happen in a private region owned by a Linden Lab Vice President begs many questions. Even if shoppers for either category have no interest in one another, they can quite easily wander into each other’s respective areas and create an accidental Terms of Service violation. From our time in Isle of Tharen this was observed happening quite a bit to the point where we came to realize that visitors routinely used this drastic content overlap as a means of feigning innocence while initiating propositions for adult roleplay in the region. Our investigator was propositioned for sexual activities by both adult and child avatars alike while exploring Isle of Tharen on several occasions, and just like pictures at the beginning of this article child avatars with sexual attachments was common. We even saw an entirely nude self proclaimed youth avatar, complete with genitals, dancing on a pole in the previously mentioned sex dungeon.
Enabling visibility of hidden objects shows the red outline of a penis attachment on a self titled “Youngster”.
Isle of Tharen also has a rules section called a covenant where Patch Linden has explained how users in this region must comply with the Second Life Terms of Service but age verification is not allowed. This is dangerous and confusing since, combined with the nature of the content in the region, it appears to establish the concept of a place where real children cannot exist but fake children played by adults are encouraged with no way of separating the two. The fact that all of the above can be found in a region owned by a Linden Lab executive who started Second Life as a user in 2004, has worked for the company since 2007, and now serves as the Vice President of Product Operations, is completely inexcusable. Adding to that, according to our source this region which hosts sexual ageplayers and explicit artwork of sexualized preteens is allegedly being paid for by Linden Lab itself. It would cost just as much to make a dedicated, 100% PG child avatar safe region, but instead we get what is presented above.
Next Gen Adoption Agency and Kid Grid
In Isle of Tharen there is an information kiosk for an organization called Kid Grid / Next Gen Adoption Agency, brand initials NGI. It directs visitors to a series of websites and locations in Second Life dedicated to family roleplay where they can find others interested in roleplaying a family dynamic with siblings and parents. The regions related to this have taken on a strange identity as they have adopted the “Teen Grid” name which was formerly dedicated to real life teens in Second Life’s history, but is now only for adults roleplaying children and teens. Earlier in this article Tweenster’s store entries described themselves as being Next Gen Adoption Agency official products so it was no surprise when NGI turned out to be filled with even more Linden Lab Product Operations staff. Below is a sampling of the products NGI sells in their in-world mall:
The images above were taken at of NGI / Kid Grid’s shopping mall. Many of the problematic Second Life Marketplace products from the beginning of this article are present here as well. NGI appears to be directly funded by Linden Lab from what can be assumed is Product Operations as advertised on their site, and this same site also shows Patch Linden attending NGI events as a special guest and contributor. NGI in-world functions list Zac Uwu, who was discovered to be Dion Mole of Linden Lab Product Operations, as the former owner and current Operations Advisor and IT Consultant. His profile also lists his in-world partner as Jungkook Uwu, an alternate identity of Chronos Mole of Linden Lab Product Operations.
Based on information we could find in the publicly available Linden Lab database, we discovered Patch Linden also owns the following regions, Zoie, Phoenix Ascending, Feral Mouse, and a series of regions called “Xeorealms”. According to our source, funding is allegedly provided by Patch in part to the regions known as Bear Boys Mall at Aspen, UwU Family Region, Kid Grid, Tween Grid, Teen Grid, NGI, and various others dedicated to ageplay. While we were not able to confirm this claim, or investigate all of these locations ourselves, we were were able to confirm by looking up many of these locations that several have been host to events for child avatars.
This does not look like any reason to be concerned by itself, but it starts becoming problematic once we learned that of the events which have taken place in these regions are countless virtual summer camps and sleepover events for child avatars hosted by Xelm Snowpaw, who you may recall earlier is Patch Linden’s real life spouse with a long history of involvement in pedophilic artwork.
It is also of particular note that each of these regions are also advertised as “family friendly” ageplay regions with strict whitelists. As mentioned earlier the terms “family safe”, and “family friendly” are notorious red flag code words for sexual ageplay. Locations which host actual G-rated content for child avatars are exclusively located in G-rated regions and use different search terms. Most importantly, unlike regions associated with Patch and his husband that we were able to investigate, true child safe G-rated regions do not contain a plethora of content for sexual interactions. This is both to ensure G-rated locations are safe for real life minors, and because there are groups of truly innocent child avatar roleplayers in Second Life who are starkly aware of the sexual ageplayer problem, and they make a very conscious effort to ensure there is no overlap into their communities.
Below is a running tally of all confirmed Linden Lab Product Operations staff found to be participating in the regions above via ageplay events. It it important to clarify here that in accordance with the Second Life Terms of Service and Community Standards for anyone on Second Life, users must agree that, “Sharing personal information about other users, either directly or indirectly, without their consent — including, but not limited to, gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual orientation, alternate account names (including account statuses, such as whether it is on hold, suspended, or active), and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their user profile — is not allowed.” However since this only applies to Second Life users on platforms which Linden Lab controls, it is not applicable to the disclosure of information in this article, and is in no way binding or relevant to its author. Furthermore we believe the disclosure of this information is absolutely necessary for this investigation due to their alleged direct connection to Patch Linden, Linden Lab, and the inappropriate work environment in Product Operations. In addition, we condemn anyone who would harass these individuals within Second Life or otherwise.
Rhyph Somme Snowpaw Numbers (Rhyph Somme) AKA Eric Nix / Patch Linden
Xelm Snowpaw Numbers (Xelm Snowpaw) AKA Squeaky Mole
Kenzie Numbers AKA Kenzie Uwu / Jester Mole
Jungkook Uwu AKA Chronos Mole
Zac Uwu AKA Dion Mole
Alex Bailey Numbers AKA AlexBailey Uwu / Binky Mole
Alotta Mole (under their own work account name)
Hendrik Bunnybutt Numbers (Hendrix Bunny) AKA Casper Warden / Casper Linden
The Numbers Family and The UwU Family Region
Something that pops up consistently are users with the surname “Numbers” in relation to the openly gay male ageplay community directly linked to Patch Linden. Accounts which include the last name “Uwu” in context to this community have a very high chance of having been “Numbers” previously, so it makes sense that the UwU Family region is one of the many ageplay regions linked to Patch. This region has a communal family roleplay house where many of these “Numbers” and “UwU Family” avatars are seen virtually cohabiting. It must be stressed that most all the members of this ageplay roleplay family are also Linden Lab Product Operations personnel.
The proximity and familiarity they seem to have with each other is hard to ignore and makes it appear that Product Operations cannot properly police ageplay since allegedly a good portion of them are simply too involved with it themselves. It is important to keep in mind that running Second Life is a business and Moles are contractors who are paid at an hourly rate directly by Patch on behalf of Linden Lab. It is fine to get along well with your co-workers and be comfortable with each other, but for there to be such a disproportionate number of gay men who play child avatars in Product Operations, individuals who are deeply intertwined in Second Life’s ageplay community and each other’s virtual businesses, and who are part of Patch Linden’s roleplay family and home where they all virtually live together on their non-work accounts comes off as something else entirely. One could easily assume Patch Linden has been letting his personal life overflow into his work life quite a bit.
Linden Lab Product Operations Special Guest Loki Eliot
The aforementioned events for child avatars are sometimes promoted by Linden Lab on Second Life’s social media, which according to a Second Life developer who spoke with us, Patch Linden largely controls. This same control of Second Life’s social media has led to the uncomfortable situation of Linden Lab repeatedly endorsing and pushing the content of a user by the name of Loki Eliot many times over the years.
Loki Eliot presents themselves as a child avatar within Second Life, and Linden Lab’s promotion of Loki and his content doesn’t appear to be inherently problematic. A cursory search of this user also reveals he is a semi-regular attendee to the child avatar events hosted by Patch and his husband, Xelm, and both his store and virtual residence also reside in regions Patch owns such as Phoenix Rising and Isle of Tharen. Even knowing what we know know about some of those regions Loki still didn’t look like any cause for concern, and neither did the content he sells within Second Life. This may cause those reading to roll their eyes at this point and ask, “so he likes being a kid in Second Life, so what?”, and rightly so.
The problem with Loki Eliot lies with him being extremely well known for the rest of his work having a singular focus on victimizing children. First there is his involvement with the production company THR Pro, helmed by independent filmmaker Pete Jacelone. It is with this company Loki has written and illustrated for several short horror films, each one exclusively focused on children being victims. Pete Jacelone’s production blogs show real child actors being used for his movies and the descriptions of them fit easily within the ‘niche fetish film’ category.
Loki’s film work and contributions, while certainly dark, are only the the beginning of the problem. The more one learns about Loki Eliot the more obvious and disturbing his fixation on victimizing children, specifically young boys, becomes. On the art sites Pixiv and the now familiar Inkbunny Loki continues his Norse mythology themed screen names going by Odinboy666 and Odinbunny666 respectively. It is on these sites where it was discovered that he was cover art illustrator for the films he was involved in, listing himself as the artist. It is also on these sites where we can see his true nature, where over many years Loki has created pages upon pages of explicitly detailed art exclusively featuring underage boys masturbating, being molested, raped, eaten, and otherwise being violently murdered in various situations.
A small selection Loki’s work.
As you can see in the heavily censored images above Loki’s art is quite explicit and leaves nothing to the imagination. In case anyone needed it spelled out for them Loki himself says he specializes in “childhood adventure peril & vore art”. He also adds that the gruesome images above are actually his tame work, and even more explicit art is available to those who pay him on various Patreon type sites. By now anyone reading this should have a good understanding of Loki’s pattern. Every single place he shows up his focus is the same and pushes the limitations for what the platform allows, including Second Life.
Second Life users featured in public media promoted by Linden Lab, especially blog posts, are, from what we have been told, thoroughly vetted and scrutinized by the staff, from what they are allowed to say, to their personal backgrounds. It would make sense for this to be standard practice since when elevating a user to public spotlight they become a repesentation of the product as a whole, so it is extremely unlikely that Patch Linden would not be aware of Loki Eliot’s focus on victimizing children. Yet this suggests that due to his authoritative position within the company as Vice President of Product Operations, a position where one would think it is part of his job to know this type of thing, he has allegedly not only decided to promote this individual, but has continued to repeatedly do so for over a decade.
Casper Warden’s Caspervend and Casper Linden
In September 2022 Patch Linden made an announcement that Linden Lab had aquired Caspertech. This announcement took everyone, including staff at Linden Lab we were told, by surprise. For those unaware, CasperTech is a shop which was created by an avatar named Casper Warden. Among the items this shop sells is a delivery system in Second Life called CasperVend, which allows other shops to set up automated product re-delivery, create gift cards, and other useful services.
According to a one of Second Life’s developers we spoke with nobody saw this coming, nor was it talked about until the sale was finalized. This same developer also said this piece of information:
This same developer said Linden Lab does not need CasperVend since they can easily make a better integrated in-house solution for less money. This developer’s opinion aside, Casper Warden’s ascension into Linden Lab through Patch Linden seems to align with a long running trend. Earlier in this article it was demonstrated that Casper Warden is a member of Patch Linden’s ageplay roleplay family under the name Hendrik Bunnybutt Numbers (Hendrik Bunny) AKA Casper Numbers, as well as the business partner of the Linden Lab Product Operations department member Jester Mole (AKA Kenzie Uwu / Hiro Lefevre), and the Tweenster brand they made together.
Furthermore, when talking to various child avatars during the course of this ageplay investigation Casper’s name popped up. More specifically his well known alternate account Hendrikb (now named Hendrik Bunny) appears to be a child roleplayer notorious for approaching other underage boy avatars with sexual advances. Apparently a place called Sota Atoll was a location he could be spotted frequently associating with other child avatars of the male variety; we’re also told Patch Linden frequently showed up to this location as well. When interviewing various users with experience in this community one of them said Casper had shared an unrequested explicit image of himself, which was verified to be a genuine Second Life asset through examination of its UUID, and to have been uploaded by Casper himself. This image can be made available to Linden Lab and law enforcement should action need to be taken. This is highly concerning and appears to further confirm Patch Linden’s consistent pattern of bringing people into the company who both meet his personal preference for gay men and are in his virtual family.
Linden Lab Product Operations
During this long running investigation attempts were made to network with several Linden Lab developers. While many were hesitant to say much at first due to fear of repercussions, once they learned what had already been uncovered a few opened up concerning Eric Nix’s / Patch Linden’s management style at Linden Lab. Most have refused to have their names put behind their words, but a few of them are ready to step forward and speak out should the need arise. Before continuing it is important that this be established:
In 2020 the Speak Out Act was signed into law which curtailed Nondisclosure Agreements in relation to illegal conduct with a specific focus on sex crimes such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation against those who speak out about such activities. This law is in full effect here. With that stated the interviews below are anonymous but be assured they are 100% legal under this law as they relate not to projects undertaken by Linden Lab developers but instead relate to misconduct by Linden Lab management in Product Operations against their own staff with a heavy emphasis on sexual misconduct and harassment. Whether or not these are crimes is up to law enforcement but their words cannot be silenced any more thanks to said law. Each one of these developers verified their employment via pay stubs or other means.
A portion of verification that is safe to display to the public.
So to begin, a good portion of those working in Linden Lab’s Product Operations department, according to these developers, appears to run on a contract basis where Eric Nix / Patch Linden, under the auspices of Linden Lab, pays these people directly for work where they must compete for hourly wages with a limited pool of tasks available. The relationship these people have with Patch is exceptionally lopsided and he takes full advantage of this. There are accusations of rampant sexual harassment, sexual banter, and nepotism by the Vice President, and this is encouraged by his subordinates. The department has a, quote, “gay male dominated” sexual atmosphere and an aura of toxic masculinity where men and especially women feel threatened and belittled by the Vice President and his husband who is the QA lead there. Linden Lab Product Operations masqueredes as a progressive LGBTQ+ friendly workplace but the Vice President’s words and actions make that seem less so according to the developers there.
Several developers have described Product Operations management as chaos prone and QA as barely existing, with Squeaky Mole’s role as QA lead largely a facade since the focus is not so much on quality assurance, but to instead serve as a filter for Patch Linden’s personal tastes in men and non-work related desires, determining exactly what type of person fills the space in he and his husband’s department. Squeaky also serves to create work for his husband and his friends before all others in the company, even if this results in outright sabotage of projects within Linden Lab. It was described that Squeaky Mole and his close underlings regularly demonstrated such an absurd lack of knowledge and experience that content would go through months and even years of development only to be released far below the bar of what would be considered acceptable in other companies developing similar projects. Artificial gauntlets were made by leads and management to either induce failure and get developers to quit, be fired, or create a situation in which their work can be re-assigned as rewards to chosen members of Patch and Squeaky’s extended virtual family who dominate the department. This has been reported to happen time and time again by everyone interviewed.
The words below are directly from the Second Life developers who were willing to speak with us, and are presented anonymously as per their request. Note that in order to comply with state and federal laws, especially regarding trade secrets, some specifics have been redacted.
Did you at any time feel uncomfortable about the amount of sexual content exhibited in Linden Lab communications under Eric Nix (Patch)?
Were you or others in any way encouraged to be sexual or share in sexual banter with Linden Lab employees?
Did you consider speaking to Human Resources regarding the hyper-sexual atmosphere of the department during your time with Linden Lab?
Was there ever a time where a Linden Lab employee stepped out of line with what you thought was ethically responsible? This includes state laws, the Linden Lab Code of Conduct, and the Second Life Terms of Service.
Given the chance to work for Linden Lab again would you recommend it to others? If not what would have to change culturally for you to reconsider?
Is there anything else particularly concerning that you have noticed during your time working there?
One of the developers above left an additional note concerning the QA department:
Another Mole spoke to us in-depth for quite some time, here are some snippets of that conversation:
The impression I am getting of Product Operations is quite bad, but would you mind sharing anything else you can think of?
Here are a few other interesting allegations we were able to learn during our interviews, presented in no particular order:
Communication between departments is very poor, and Product Operations is actively hostile towards other departments to the significant detriment of projects.
Various projects coming out of Product Operations have been severely botched due to Eric Nix’s management decisions. We were given the NUX starter avatars and the PBR graphics enhancement as recent examples.
We were told that Sejong Linden used to take real life minors from the Teen Grid to the Main Grid to have virtual sex with them.
There are allegedly regions suspiciously marked not to be investigated for Abuse Reports by a high ranking Linden. It was suggested this is why “family friendly” nude beaches and similar sexual ageplay locations have remain untouched for years despite reports.
We were informed that Patch Linden allegedly has a long history of abusing his authority for personal vendettas against fellow developers and normal users alike. This includes doxxing individuals and going through personal chat logs in an attempt to find dirt on them.
Chronos Mole has allegedly threatened to blackmail and expose private information of co-workers.
When prohibited imagery is reported only the in-world objects are removed since properly deleting the actual assets would be too much work. The same lack of effort applies to content which has been DMCA’d. This means the Second Life servers are allegedly still filled with years worth of prohibited imagery and infringing content that should have been deleted. We were able to personally confirm this to be at least partially true by successfully using texture UUIDs of reported content that had been “removed”.
Many of Linden Lab’s reviews on the website Glassdoor confirm the disorganized nature of the company, as well as its disturbingly relaxed stance towards sexual harassment and poor treatment of women. Sometimes all in the same review.
We were told Marketing is under Product Operations.
Former Linden Lab Security Manager Kavya Pearlman’s Allegations
Back in 2019 an industry cybersecurity professional working for Linden Lab named Kavya Pearlman brought up issues internally concerning child pornography, pedophilia, sexual ageplay, and severely compromised personal user information to the attention of Linden Lab’s higher ups. According to her testimony, as a result of her findings senior employees at Linden Lab led a campaign of retaliation against her in an attempt to paint her as an inept employee, and she was ultimately fired. She sued Linden Lab for damages and below are excerpts from her case.
Kavya Pearlman is well known and highly respected in the cybersecurity field. She has won numerous awards, is a key member of the Global Coalition for Digital Safety at the World Economic Forum (WEF), is an advisor for numerous global governments and big tech corporations, and is the leading voice in cybersecurity for emerging technologies such as VR. To say she is an accomplished and trusted individual in her field is a vast understatement, so for senior employees at Linden Lab to attempt to paint her as inept is extremely suspicious and should ring alarm bells. It would appear Linden Lab’s own former Information Security Director may have been fired for discovering how deeply rooted sexual ageplay is within Second Life and possibly a portion of Linden Lab itself, among other concerning issues. For now, she is tied up in legal court battles with Linden Lab.
A Concerning Future
For all of the freedom Second Life has become known for one area it has famously been lacking in has been its graphics. Second Life’s dated graphics are often cited as one of its glaring down sides and the reason for users to either lose interest, or not take an interest in the first place. However this will soon be changing since Linden Lab recently released a significant upgrade to Second Life’s graphics with a brand new lighting and rendering engine known as PBR, short for Physically Based Rendering. What this means for Second Life is that objects, avatars, and the world itself will be able to be rendered in a way which far more accurately mimics reality, and will bring Second Life up to par with games released in the past few years. This will finally allow Second Life to not only break free of its reputation for having bad graphics, but potentially set the standard for just how graphically advanced a virtual world can be.
This as a whole should be taken as very good news for Second Life. However there is one area of concern which directly relates to the main topic of this writeup, and that is the fact that this also means child avatars too will be that much more life-like. To most people this is not any cause for concern, but as we have seen repeatedly demonstrated so far there is a portion of Second Life where more life-like avatars quickly starts becoming an extremely concerning problem.
Note that these images were not taken with Second Life’s latest rendering engine.
As can be see in the image above many users are already creating statues and NPCs (Non Player Characters) which use textures sourced from photos of actual real life human beings, including children, in order to create a more convincingly realistic virtual representation. So far only a few skins for user controlled child avatars use this same technique, but with advancing graphics technologies, and evolving standards for what is expected to be on the market being pressed more and more towards ultimate realism, it is only a matter of time before completely photorealistic child avatars with skins sourced from photographs of real life children become common place. With the existing prevelence of sexual ageplay in Second Life as bad as it is now, the line between what is considered actual child pornography will become very blurred and could potentially become a disasterous situation for Linden Lab’s Second Life if the sexual ageplay problem within the company is not addressed. We imagine this would be especially concerning for Linden Lab’s investors such as J.P. Morgan, who last year had to pay a sum of $75 million in a settlement with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and most assuredly would not want any further association with the sexualization of children.
In Conclusion, a Statement of Allegations
To wrap up, here is a series of allegations demonstrated by this report:
Linden Lab’s Attempted Cover Up.
In November of 2023 the events that were preluded to at the beginning of this article took place. While we unfortunately do not have the full details of what unfolded, what we can say for sure is that rumor of an investigation into Linden Lab’s sexual ageplay problem, and subsequently, Eric Nix / Patch Linden, were starting to get around the rumor mill. These rumors would make their way to a Second Life resident known as Chaser Zaks. From what we have been able to learn Chaser had allegedly been probing Linden Lab internet security infrastructure and discovered exposed API keys for companies like Motown Records, and instead of reporting this vulnerability he chose to brag about it. Chaser had also somehow learned about some of what had been uncovered regarding Eric Nix’s activities and the problematic workplace environment in his department, and began to talk and inflate rumors about these topics. We have learned this all took place over Discord, an inherently insecure chat program where the account Chaser Zaks uses was easily linked to his Second Life account. Unsurprisingly Chaser Zaks was quickly sent a Cease and Desist letter from Linden Lab.
Fearing Linden Lab would ban him from Second Life, we are told Chaser Zaks allegedly felt he needed to give Linden Lab something big in order to gain enough favor not to have, quote, “his home” taken away. Due to this interest in self preservation Chaser Zaks told Alexa Linden all he could think of to save himself and divert Linden Lab’s attention to other individuals. These other individuals were allegedly known to have drawn the anger of Eric Nix / Patch Linden in the past, and it is believed Chaser may have thought if Linden Lab were to focus on these individuals instead of himself, his Second Life account may be spared. Among the exaggerated rumors Chaser Zaks told was that one of the individuals he mentioned to Linden Lab was “a ringleader” and others being “soldiers” in a conspiratorial defamation campaign against Patch Linden. There also appeared to be a focus on a mysterious November 20th release date, which we have heard Linden Lab referred to internally as “The Great Thanksgiving Smear Campaign”.
We were also able to learn that an old draft of this article may have been uploaded to an unsecured Google drive with the intent of linking this information to Linden Lab privately, which we theorize may have been a possible but unconfirmed source of the presumably unintentional leak, which is also unconfirmed. Whatever the full truth behind these events is we do not know for certain, but we do know that the rumors spread by Chaser Zaks mentioned above caused Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf to send additional Cease and Desist letters to several more individuals they believe are behind, or have knowledge of who may be behind this investigation. According to information we have heard, Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf may pursue legal action against some or all of these individuals under false allegations upon the release of any document, article, or piece of media similar to this one; something which entirely beyond their control. It must be emphasized that Linden Lab is acting based on exaggerated rumors spread by Chaser Zaks, who is individually famous in multiple online communities for being a self proclaimed real life zoophile and avid supporter of cub play, among other extreme viewpoints and opinions. It is because of Linden Lab’s response to pursue legal action against these individuals, and the attempted removal and alteration of evidence by Linden Lab or those involved in the allegations presented in this article that we have been spurred to release this presentation of evidence of allegations to a broader audience instead of presented in private as originally intended.
Unfortunately due to Linden Lab learning that such an investigation may exist, and perhaps even having an old draft, those at Linden Lab involved in the allegations presented in this document immediately began working to cover up some of what has been presented above, as well as changing the names of avatars involved in order to distance themselves from their deeds. We have attempted to keep track of some of these attempts, and below we can see the most recent user profiles for Rhyph Somme and Xelm Snowpaw before their names were changed.
However, soon after Linden Lab heard the rumors being spread, Xelm Snowpaw’s name was changed to Scout Frostypaws, and Patch Linden had the name of his Rhyph Somme account changed to Stitch Frostypaws and blanked his profile. Note how despite the name changes the avatar UUID keys remain the same. Scout Frostypaws (Xelm) is also now partnered to an avatar named Blaze Frostypaws, who was formerly named Chrystian Somme and is suspected to be Patch Linden. Not shown, but Kenzie Uwu had their name changed to Jack Frostypaws.
This information update has been included since the alteration and removal of evidence by Linden Lab or the individuals mentioned may be a violation of state and federal law in the event of a proper investigation, and for the sake of refuting claims that information presented here has been manufactured or falsified. All evidence presented in this article is genuine and unaltered with the exception of the removal of personal and private information, and the resizing and cropping of images for the purpose of better presentation. None of the mentioned alterations in any way change the nature of what has been presented. Evidence presented in this document can be verified as genuine to law enforcement by requesting Second Life region backups prior to November 2023, Linden Lab Discord logs and images, thorough investigation of the individuals mentioned, and by looking it up on the mentioned websites, many of which were backed up on The Internet Archive prior to Linden Lab being made aware of the situation.
Article Link
Archive
This article is a presentation of evidence that was originally meant to be sent to Linden Lab’s legal department to be dealt with internally. However with a long term investigation of this nature and depth of networking involved it was perhaps inevitable that word would get out eventually, and that finally happened at the end of of 2023. Due to the seriousness of what was uncovered even rumor of it being known was enough for Linden Lab or those acting on behalf of the company to send out legal threats to individuals they incorrectly assumed were responsible for this investigation. These legal threats were based on the exaggerated claims of a Second Life user trying to take Linden Lab’s sights off of himself; more on this later. As a result however, those at Linden Lab who are allegedly responsible for many of the acts uncovered here have been taking efforts to cover up evidence of a Linden Lab executive’s alleged involvement in sexual ageplay within Second Life, as well as an alleged problematic workplace environment within Linden Lab’s Product Operations department.
Unfortunately, due to the observed response and information available, it seems that Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf do not intend to properly address this situation, and that some of those who may have control over handling this situation are the very same people who have allegedly committed the acts presented in this article. Due to these reasons this presentation of evidence of allegations is being made known to the public in hope of drawing the attention of those with the authority to take the necessary actions to handle this situation properly. While this means Linden Lab or those acting on behalf of the company may pursue legal action against the aforementioned individuals under false allegations, it was decided that this needs to come out regardless of the cost. The livelihoods of too many people depend on Second Life to not at least try to do something about these issues which have impacted, and will continue to impact Second Life as a whole.
It should also be clarify that many wonderful people work at Linden Lab, and the company as a whole should be praised for its innovation and continued efforts in creating and maintaining one of the most popular and longest running virtual worlds, but strong evidence suggests there is a very real problem in a specific department of the company which has been causing a domino effect of very concerning issues both for Second Life as a virtual world, and Linden Lab as a company.
Furthermore, it should be noted that while this article will make references to gay male sexuality when its context is relevant, we are in no way prejudiced against LGBTQ+ individuals or relationships and are fully comfortable with adult and legal gay male on male sexual expression between consenting adults. We condemn any attempt to vilify anyone based solely on their sexuality. It should also be clarified that any reference to the sexuality of individuals mentioned in this document is only done so for individuals who are already open about it and have made this information available to the public through their own actions.
Now, on to the original investigation.
Historical Overview
Way back in 2007 a German television program put Second Life in a negative spotlight by announcing it had discovered users were creating virtual depictions of adults engaged in sexual activities with children, an act commonly referred to as sexual ageplay. Nick Shader, a reporter for the investigative television program said he had been “shocked to see” invites to virtual child pornography displays being sold for a mere 500 Linden dollars, which converted to around $3 USD at the time. He said the same group of users within Second Life subsequently put him in touch with traders in real life child pornography.
This prompted Linden Lab to make the following statement on the matter:
“On Thursday May 3, we were contacted by German television network, ARD, which had captured images of two avatars, one that resembled an adult male and another that resembled a child, engaged in depicted sexual conduct. Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life.”
“We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life.
If Linden Lab learns that someone is engaging in, advertising or promoting locations or activities involving the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors, their account will be terminated, and we will fully cooperate with all appropriate authorities.”
Linden Lab also further clarified their policy with the following:
“Under our Community Standards policy, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors are not allowed within Second Life. When detected, individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be subject to sanctions, which may include termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land or access to land.”
This incident made widely known that real life child predators and those with an interest in seeing virtual depictions of children being sexually abused could be found within Linden Lab’s Second Life, and while Linden Lab’s firm public stance on the matter did a lot to alleviate the worries of users as a whole, the fact of the matter is the situation has not improved. On the contrary, with the closure of the teen grid and its thorough vetting process to ensure only minors are allowed, followed by the complete failure and subsequent elimination of the age verification program, those who seek to engage in sexual ageplay have never had an easier time not only creating virtual depictions of sexual acts with minors, but engaging with actual real life minors on the platform.
The Current Situation
In present day Second Life it is not difficult to find locations catering to individuals seeking to engage in virtual sex acts with avatars resembling children. All one has to do is use Second Life’s built-in search function with the terms including, but not limited to “family friendly”, “family safe”, “giggles”, “teen grid”, “tween grid”, “bear boys”, “kid grid” and “adoption”, for such locations show up in the results. The terms “family friendly” and “family safe” in-particular have become notoriously associated with sexual ageplay. Among the results are so-called family safe and family friendly nude beaches; locations which are blatantly filled with completely nude, prepubescent child avatars that can be found cuddling, dancing and otherwise socializing with completely nude adult avatars. It must be emphasized that both the children and adults have visible genital attachments that are usually realistically detailed and fully functional. While nudity itself is not inherently sexual, why anyone would create or visit locations specifically themed for adults and children to be nude together is highly questionable to say the least.
Less suspect however are the other locations catering towards child avatars that one might find using search. We learned that Next Gen Adoption Agency and similarly named adoption themed locations feature prominently as places where users network with one another and find family themed roleplay opportunities where sexual ageplay can arise. It must be clarified that not everyone in Second Life using a child avatar or who otherwise participates in family roleplay is looking to engage in virtual pedophilia, and indeed many individuals at such locations genuinely have no interest in such activities. However the fact that those who do have an interest in sexual ageplay commonly use these locations as the first step to meet with other like-minded users, and the fact that these same individuals can encounter real life minors at such locations still puts them high on the list of concerning places.
A good example of this was when during our very first investigation into this problem we visited an innocent looking virtual playground where everything seemed fine at first glance, but once a closer look was taken it was revealed that many avatars representing prepubescent children had genital attachments that are sold specifically for engaging in sexual activity. Additionally, through the use of a third party client program (called a viewer) which allows the user to see HUDs (scripted user interface objects) other users have attached, it was discovered that users who are seeking to engage in sexual ageplay commonly use special HUDs which alert them to the presence of other users in the area who are open to sexual advances, thereby eliminating much of the guess work and risk involved in propositioning a stranger.
More specifically the HUD used is a breeding roleplay HUD called Mama Allpa, which greatly facilitates finding other users open for sexual activities without first having to contact them. How it works is users can specify their gender, and if the HUD detects a compatible partner nearby it will light up. Users can then click a button to display exactly who around them is open to sexual advances. The user can then initiate conversation and if their chosen partner is interested, they can use the HUD’s built-in explicit sexual animations to engage in the act, or more commonly, head off to a private location. Note that this HUD is quite common in the adult roleplay scene and neither it, nor its creator should take any blame for sexual ageplayers making use of it for prohibited activities. Nevertheless, it still appears to have become a common method for sexual ageplayers to secretly identify themselves to one another. This explanation is only necessary to give context to the following images.
As can be seen in the collage above several avatars representing underage girls have the Mama-Allpa breeding HUD and control HUDs specifically made to enable explicit sexual interactions with various parts of the body. While such activities with any representation of a child is disturbing, what surprised us the most here is even the toddler avatar has an erotic dance HUD, breeding HUD, and attachments for facilitating anal intercourse. These are merely a small selection from dozens of such images, and of all the child avatars surveyed it was more common to see ones wearing such attachments than ones without.
Another area of concern is that users can find an alarming amount of suggestive content being sold specifically for use with child avatars on Second Life’s virtual marketplace. There are several shops either selling, or that have ads featuring clothing that is entirely inappropriate for children to wear. Examples include corsets and garter belts made for a child’s body, diaper themed lacy lingerie, g-strings for prepubescent boys, and a plethora of unnecessarily tiny underwear and swimwear with a concerningly detailed, form fitting bulge of a child’s penis. After browsing the marketplace for a while it became apparent that there is a distinct focus on emphasizing and exaggerating the genitals of male children in particular. It must be emphasized that these items are completely incompatible with adult bodies and specifically only work with child avatars. It is also interesting to note that some of the blatantly sexual items made specifically for child avatars are only visible when the filter to allow for Adult content to show in search results is enabled, even though mixing child avatars with anything remotely sexual or otherwise Adult rated is strictly forbidden by Second Life’s Community Standards. The fact that this kind of content is so easy to stumble upon with even the most innocent searches both in-world and on the virtual marketplace makes it very clear that the sexualization of children has become normalized in Second Life.
Why this continues to be an issue.
There are a multitude of reasons why virtual representations of sexually explicit content involving children continues to be a problem in Second Life. Perhaps the most obvious is that with the near unlimited freedom offered, moderating the thousands of users active at any given time is an issue of logistics, so a few things are bound to slip through the cracks. However, the most compelling reason we found was allegedly the lack of accountability in Linden Lab’s management. Due to the sheer amount of evidence uncovered, and the amount of exposure Linden Lab’s Product Operations department personnel have allegedly had to Second Life’s sexual ageplay community, the question of “why is sexual ageplay still such a problem in Second Life?” cannot be answered without shining a light on the various relationships and decisions the Vice President of that department, Eric Nix (usually referred to as Patch Linden and will henceforth be referred to as such), has allegedly made involving this community in relation to the company he works for and represents. Exploring these relationships will forever change the discussion of ageplay in Second Life, and be the primary focus for the rest of this article.
While looking into some of the questionable content featured above we noticed that many child avatars involved in sexual ageplay use the same base avatar components for their appearance. More specifically many of them use a body called the Tweenster Mesh Body sold by a shop called Meshmerized. The owner of this shop and creator of the mesh body is an avatar named Kenzie Uwu, who through the use of publicly viewable information we were able to discover is an alternate identity Hiro Lefevre, who is known to be Linden Lab Product Operations team member Jester Mole. The body is scripted by Hendrik Bunny, who through his own public admission on social media, is a widely known alternate account of Casper Warden, AKA Casper Linden, another member of Linden Lab Product Operations; we will re-visit Casper later on. Upon arriving at the main in-world shop located in the Isle of Tharen region nothing seems too out of the ordinary. However, much like the child avatars above things start becoming problematic once a closer look is taken.
The Tweenster shop, which proudly cites itself as an official brand of Next Gen Adoption Agency and the Kid Grid, is nestled in a corner of the region with two other shops catering to child avatars. One of these shops is called XeoLots, which is owned by an avatar named Xelm Snowpaw and his partner, Rhyph Somme.
Online status indicators like these are a common feature found within most shops in Second Life.
Xelm as it turns out is rather infamous in the online furry community for being into “cub play” which is a form of roleplay that is, to put it bluntly, sex with and exploitation of minors in the form of furry artwork and roleplay. Individuals participating in cub play are well known to use depictions of fictional, non-human underage characters as a means of skirting the line for what counts for creation and possession of child pornography. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cub play scene is also well known to be rife with real life pedophiles. Whether or not Xelm falls into this category we cannot say and do not make and claims, but looking into this online persona of his reveals a long history of participation in the aforementioned activities across various mediums. Further information about Xelm found via a simple online search revealed art entries from the art blogging site Inkbunny, where while his account is listed as deactivated, plenty of explicit art depicting his underage character being raped by adults can still be found linking to his hashtag once logged in as a registered user. Each of the images lists him as either a contributor, of having commissioned others to create, and can also be found on an adult artwork site known as e621 once logged in there as well.
The rightmost image, titled “Omega rapes Xelm” has accompanying text below it which emphasizes that it is a pre-teen being violently raped, making Xelm’s interests difficult to question. The bottom text further emphasizes that this art was indeed commissioned by Xelm for him and others with pedophilic interests to masturbate to, which, in our opinion, leaves no room for interpretation. Taking into account what we learned about what goes on behind the scenes at locations for child avatars in Second Life earlier in this article, paired with Xelm’s heavy emphasis on his underage character being taken advantaged of, it gives anyone paying attention an idea of why the roleplay system he sells may contain “couple” animations where a child and adult shower and use the bathroom together, and paints a disturbing picture regarding the possible nature of his child avatar roleplay activities within Second Life.
A snapshot of one of Xelm’s posts on a website called Plurk.
This may seem like a tangent to unnecessarily single out one of Second Life’s many alleged sexual ageplayers, but the reason for this is because Xelm doesn’t seem to make an effort to hide his connection to this community and uses this same online persona all across the internet, including for his Discord account. It is this very same Discord account he uses in the official Second Life Discord channel where it was revealed that Xelm Snowpaw is in fact Squeaky Mole (his SL developer account name). According to information provided by Linden Lab courtesy of an SLB16B “Meet the Lindens” session and other public media, Xelm / Squeaky was hired into Linden Lab by Patch Linden, and is currently Linden Lab’s QA lead for their Product Operations division’s art department, under Patch Linden himself.
For a company with such a firm public stance against sexual ageplay and the sexualization of minors we have to wonder why a person with a direct connection to pedophilic artwork would be hired by Linden Lab, much less for a lead role. More problematic is that when a closer look was taken into Xelm / Squeaky, his real life name and social media reveals that he is the also the real life husband of Patch Linden, the Vice President of Product Operations at Linden Lab. While this discovery was not difficult to find, Xelm’s real life name will not be disclosed here since unlike his husband, Patch, it is not part of his public identity for the company and we believe it would be inappropriate to include in this document.
According to available information, the two of them met in Second Life and in 2018 Xelm left his home country, where even drawings of sexualized minors can result in prison time, and moved to the US to marry Patch. By marrying a US citizen Xelm gained citizenship and with it the protection from the laws of his home country. It is incredibly difficult to believe that Patch Linden would not be aware of his real life husband’s online persona or its connection to the sexualization of minors, especially since it is both the means through which the two of them met, and the fact it is the public facing persona Xelm uses for his Linden Lab approved Discord account for the job he was given by Patch Linden in his department.
Furthermore, as a Vice President at Linden Lab, Patch Linden must be aware that his husband’s home country introduced legislation (Bulletin of Acts and Decrees 470) which deemed “virtual child pornography” as illegal. An attempt to test the law came in 2007, when the public prosecutor opened investigations into Second Life due to the number of users using the platform to engage in virtual sexual acts with children or virtual avatars depicting children. Although there is no law in Xelm’s home country that legislates against underage depictions of sexual acts for computer generated images, the public prosecutor deemed it may still warrant investigation on the basis that these virtual actions may incite real life child abuse. Considering the previously mentioned elimination of Second Life’s age verification system and closure of the teen grid since then, leaving only the main Second Life grid for real life minors to use, the chances of those with pedophilic interests interacting with minors on the platform has skyrocketed.
Unsurprisingly Xelm’s in-world partner and the co-owner of his shop, Rhyph Somme, turned out to be a known alternate account of Patch Linden. Rhyph Somme is also the owner of the Isle of Tharen region itself and its associated private group for those he allows to make their virtual home there. Taking a quick look at both of their in-world profiles and Rhyph’s group title makes his connection as Xelm’s husband rather obvious.
Public profiles confirm the connection.
It needs to be emphasized that under the Rhyph Somme account, Patch Linden maintains absolute authority over the entire Isle of Tharen region. Anyone who is allowed to settle there must be invited into his private land management group in order to build or place objects in the region. Once again though the recurring theme here is things start becoming problematic when a closer look is taken. Located in the South West corner of the region directly across from the shops catering to child avatars is a private home owned by the Rhyph Somme account.
The furniture inside this house is filled with a full range of animations for explicit sexual interaction between avatars (image below). Considering that the Rhyph Somme account is a child avatar, and that the house is located right next to shops for child avatars, including that of the one of the most popular child bodies in Second Life, not only is this is highly concerning, but such furniture in his residence appears to be a violation of Second Life’s policy regarding sexual content in proximity to child avatars. Of further note it is important to clarify that furniture in Second Life is usually sold in multiple versions depending on the buyer’s intended use for it, coming with either completely PG animations, or animations catering towards a specific sexual preference. So it is worth mentioning that the furniture objects in Rhyph Somme’s home are versions made for gay male on male sexual interactions, which aligns with Patch Linden’s real life sexual orientation. This appears to be an indication that the placement of these adult furniture items within his virtual home was intentional.
More pressing however was the interior of structures adjacent to Patch Linden’s home. Starting with a locker room building visible on the left in the image above we discovered art of nude preteen boys blatantly displayed on the walls (lower rightmost image). This quite directly violates Linden Lab’s ageplay policy, specifically, “The graphic depiction of children in a sexual or lewd manner”, and it is right on the proverbial doorstep of Linden Lab’s Vice President of Product Operations’s virtual home in his private region.
Above this building was a large structure in the sky, commonly referred to as as skybox. It is here we found a sci-fi themed school-like area with several large classrooms separated by a grassy courtyard in the middle. There were space ships docked on the rooftops and inside the classrooms were rows of desks and large posters displaying art created by famed science fiction artist Simon Stalhenhag. However while remotely exploring this building with the camera a nude child avatar teleported in and sat down on a pose stand to make adjustments to their avatar. It was also in this moment that every single picture adorning the walls of the class rooms changed into explicit artwork of underage boys masturbating in a classroom setting. Every single one of these images belonged to Patch Linden’s personal group, and upon inspection of these images we noticed a texture changer script which appeared to function by scanning the area for avatars belonging to Patch Linden’s group for the region created under his Rhyph Somme account. From what was observed, we assume that when the script detects a whitelisted avatar, the images switch from the sci-fi pictures to the explicit pedophile artwork for their viewing. It was by pure chance that one of the sexual ageplayers Patch Linden hosts in his region happened to appear when our investigator was looking around the skybox, otherwise we may have never known what was truly hidden there.
The above images are cropped stills captured from one of multiple videos documenting the violations in this region, which can be made available to law enforcement if need be.
Taking a further look around the Isle of Tharen we saw pornographic images depicting male on male sex acts decorating the interiors of buildings, a shop selling dildos and butt plugs with animations for avatars to suck on them, at least two sex clubs, and another building with bright neon signs out front advertising itself as a sex dungeon, with the kind of things you’d expect to find on the inside. Upon inspecting various objects it was discovered that the Isle of Tharen is absolutely filled with hand-placed objects that are made for the purpose of sexual interactions. You can hardly throw a stone in the region without hitting something that was made for a sex; this may also include XeoLots accessories that contain some dubious couples animations. Here is just some of what was found, paired with a bird’s eye view of the region. The red X’s mark the locations we found where avatars can engage in adult activities.
It must be kept in mind that this is a region child safe.
Elsewhere in Second Life adult content wouldn’t be a problem on its own and we would not even bat an eye upon finding even the most perverse fetish items for consenting adults, but you must remember that all of this is adjacent to, or within visible distance of three shops made specifically for child avatars, as well as both within visible distance of, and within homes where child avatars virtually reside. Since it bears repeating at this point, Linden Lab’s official policy on the matter is, quote, “We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life. If Linden Lab learns that someone is engaging in, advertising or promoting locations or activities involving the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors, their account will be terminated, and we will fully cooperate with all appropriate authorities.”, “Under our Community Standards policy, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors are not allowed within Second Life. When detected, individuals and groups promoting or providing such content and activities will be subject to sanctions, which may include termination of accounts, closure of groups, removal of content, and loss of land or access to land.”, and “the placement of avatars appearing to represent minors in proximity to “sex beds” or other sexualized graphics, objects, or scripts would violate our Community Standards”, yet this policy is clearly being violated within Isle of Tharen.
Mixing various sex clubs, furniture made for explicit sexual interactions, and shops exclusively selling adult content in the same region as the home base for some of Second Life’s most prominent child avatar related brands is a dangerous combination. How this can even be allowed to happen in a private region owned by a Linden Lab Vice President begs many questions. Even if shoppers for either category have no interest in one another, they can quite easily wander into each other’s respective areas and create an accidental Terms of Service violation. From our time in Isle of Tharen this was observed happening quite a bit to the point where we came to realize that visitors routinely used this drastic content overlap as a means of feigning innocence while initiating propositions for adult roleplay in the region. Our investigator was propositioned for sexual activities by both adult and child avatars alike while exploring Isle of Tharen on several occasions, and just like pictures at the beginning of this article child avatars with sexual attachments was common. We even saw an entirely nude self proclaimed youth avatar, complete with genitals, dancing on a pole in the previously mentioned sex dungeon.
Enabling visibility of hidden objects shows the red outline of a penis attachment on a self titled “Youngster”.
Isle of Tharen also has a rules section called a covenant where Patch Linden has explained how users in this region must comply with the Second Life Terms of Service but age verification is not allowed. This is dangerous and confusing since, combined with the nature of the content in the region, it appears to establish the concept of a place where real children cannot exist but fake children played by adults are encouraged with no way of separating the two. The fact that all of the above can be found in a region owned by a Linden Lab executive who started Second Life as a user in 2004, has worked for the company since 2007, and now serves as the Vice President of Product Operations, is completely inexcusable. Adding to that, according to our source this region which hosts sexual ageplayers and explicit artwork of sexualized preteens is allegedly being paid for by Linden Lab itself. It would cost just as much to make a dedicated, 100% PG child avatar safe region, but instead we get what is presented above.
Next Gen Adoption Agency and Kid Grid
In Isle of Tharen there is an information kiosk for an organization called Kid Grid / Next Gen Adoption Agency, brand initials NGI. It directs visitors to a series of websites and locations in Second Life dedicated to family roleplay where they can find others interested in roleplaying a family dynamic with siblings and parents. The regions related to this have taken on a strange identity as they have adopted the “Teen Grid” name which was formerly dedicated to real life teens in Second Life’s history, but is now only for adults roleplaying children and teens. Earlier in this article Tweenster’s store entries described themselves as being Next Gen Adoption Agency official products so it was no surprise when NGI turned out to be filled with even more Linden Lab Product Operations staff. Below is a sampling of the products NGI sells in their in-world mall:
The images above were taken at of NGI / Kid Grid’s shopping mall. Many of the problematic Second Life Marketplace products from the beginning of this article are present here as well. NGI appears to be directly funded by Linden Lab from what can be assumed is Product Operations as advertised on their site, and this same site also shows Patch Linden attending NGI events as a special guest and contributor. NGI in-world functions list Zac Uwu, who was discovered to be Dion Mole of Linden Lab Product Operations, as the former owner and current Operations Advisor and IT Consultant. His profile also lists his in-world partner as Jungkook Uwu, an alternate identity of Chronos Mole of Linden Lab Product Operations.
Based on information we could find in the publicly available Linden Lab database, we discovered Patch Linden also owns the following regions, Zoie, Phoenix Ascending, Feral Mouse, and a series of regions called “Xeorealms”. According to our source, funding is allegedly provided by Patch in part to the regions known as Bear Boys Mall at Aspen, UwU Family Region, Kid Grid, Tween Grid, Teen Grid, NGI, and various others dedicated to ageplay. While we were not able to confirm this claim, or investigate all of these locations ourselves, we were were able to confirm by looking up many of these locations that several have been host to events for child avatars.
This does not look like any reason to be concerned by itself, but it starts becoming problematic once we learned that of the events which have taken place in these regions are countless virtual summer camps and sleepover events for child avatars hosted by Xelm Snowpaw, who you may recall earlier is Patch Linden’s real life spouse with a long history of involvement in pedophilic artwork.
It is also of particular note that each of these regions are also advertised as “family friendly” ageplay regions with strict whitelists. As mentioned earlier the terms “family safe”, and “family friendly” are notorious red flag code words for sexual ageplay. Locations which host actual G-rated content for child avatars are exclusively located in G-rated regions and use different search terms. Most importantly, unlike regions associated with Patch and his husband that we were able to investigate, true child safe G-rated regions do not contain a plethora of content for sexual interactions. This is both to ensure G-rated locations are safe for real life minors, and because there are groups of truly innocent child avatar roleplayers in Second Life who are starkly aware of the sexual ageplayer problem, and they make a very conscious effort to ensure there is no overlap into their communities.
Below is a running tally of all confirmed Linden Lab Product Operations staff found to be participating in the regions above via ageplay events. It it important to clarify here that in accordance with the Second Life Terms of Service and Community Standards for anyone on Second Life, users must agree that, “Sharing personal information about other users, either directly or indirectly, without their consent — including, but not limited to, gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual orientation, alternate account names (including account statuses, such as whether it is on hold, suspended, or active), and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their user profile — is not allowed.” However since this only applies to Second Life users on platforms which Linden Lab controls, it is not applicable to the disclosure of information in this article, and is in no way binding or relevant to its author. Furthermore we believe the disclosure of this information is absolutely necessary for this investigation due to their alleged direct connection to Patch Linden, Linden Lab, and the inappropriate work environment in Product Operations. In addition, we condemn anyone who would harass these individuals within Second Life or otherwise.
Rhyph Somme Snowpaw Numbers (Rhyph Somme) AKA Eric Nix / Patch Linden
Xelm Snowpaw Numbers (Xelm Snowpaw) AKA Squeaky Mole
Kenzie Numbers AKA Kenzie Uwu / Jester Mole
Jungkook Uwu AKA Chronos Mole
Zac Uwu AKA Dion Mole
Alex Bailey Numbers AKA AlexBailey Uwu / Binky Mole
Alotta Mole (under their own work account name)
Hendrik Bunnybutt Numbers (Hendrix Bunny) AKA Casper Warden / Casper Linden
The Numbers Family and The UwU Family Region
Something that pops up consistently are users with the surname “Numbers” in relation to the openly gay male ageplay community directly linked to Patch Linden. Accounts which include the last name “Uwu” in context to this community have a very high chance of having been “Numbers” previously, so it makes sense that the UwU Family region is one of the many ageplay regions linked to Patch. This region has a communal family roleplay house where many of these “Numbers” and “UwU Family” avatars are seen virtually cohabiting. It must be stressed that most all the members of this ageplay roleplay family are also Linden Lab Product Operations personnel.
The proximity and familiarity they seem to have with each other is hard to ignore and makes it appear that Product Operations cannot properly police ageplay since allegedly a good portion of them are simply too involved with it themselves. It is important to keep in mind that running Second Life is a business and Moles are contractors who are paid at an hourly rate directly by Patch on behalf of Linden Lab. It is fine to get along well with your co-workers and be comfortable with each other, but for there to be such a disproportionate number of gay men who play child avatars in Product Operations, individuals who are deeply intertwined in Second Life’s ageplay community and each other’s virtual businesses, and who are part of Patch Linden’s roleplay family and home where they all virtually live together on their non-work accounts comes off as something else entirely. One could easily assume Patch Linden has been letting his personal life overflow into his work life quite a bit.
Linden Lab Product Operations Special Guest Loki Eliot
The aforementioned events for child avatars are sometimes promoted by Linden Lab on Second Life’s social media, which according to a Second Life developer who spoke with us, Patch Linden largely controls. This same control of Second Life’s social media has led to the uncomfortable situation of Linden Lab repeatedly endorsing and pushing the content of a user by the name of Loki Eliot many times over the years.
Loki Eliot presents themselves as a child avatar within Second Life, and Linden Lab’s promotion of Loki and his content doesn’t appear to be inherently problematic. A cursory search of this user also reveals he is a semi-regular attendee to the child avatar events hosted by Patch and his husband, Xelm, and both his store and virtual residence also reside in regions Patch owns such as Phoenix Rising and Isle of Tharen. Even knowing what we know know about some of those regions Loki still didn’t look like any cause for concern, and neither did the content he sells within Second Life. This may cause those reading to roll their eyes at this point and ask, “so he likes being a kid in Second Life, so what?”, and rightly so.
The problem with Loki Eliot lies with him being extremely well known for the rest of his work having a singular focus on victimizing children. First there is his involvement with the production company THR Pro, helmed by independent filmmaker Pete Jacelone. It is with this company Loki has written and illustrated for several short horror films, each one exclusively focused on children being victims. Pete Jacelone’s production blogs show real child actors being used for his movies and the descriptions of them fit easily within the ‘niche fetish film’ category.
Loki’s film work and contributions, while certainly dark, are only the the beginning of the problem. The more one learns about Loki Eliot the more obvious and disturbing his fixation on victimizing children, specifically young boys, becomes. On the art sites Pixiv and the now familiar Inkbunny Loki continues his Norse mythology themed screen names going by Odinboy666 and Odinbunny666 respectively. It is on these sites where it was discovered that he was cover art illustrator for the films he was involved in, listing himself as the artist. It is also on these sites where we can see his true nature, where over many years Loki has created pages upon pages of explicitly detailed art exclusively featuring underage boys masturbating, being molested, raped, eaten, and otherwise being violently murdered in various situations.
A small selection Loki’s work.
As you can see in the heavily censored images above Loki’s art is quite explicit and leaves nothing to the imagination. In case anyone needed it spelled out for them Loki himself says he specializes in “childhood adventure peril & vore art”. He also adds that the gruesome images above are actually his tame work, and even more explicit art is available to those who pay him on various Patreon type sites. By now anyone reading this should have a good understanding of Loki’s pattern. Every single place he shows up his focus is the same and pushes the limitations for what the platform allows, including Second Life.
Second Life users featured in public media promoted by Linden Lab, especially blog posts, are, from what we have been told, thoroughly vetted and scrutinized by the staff, from what they are allowed to say, to their personal backgrounds. It would make sense for this to be standard practice since when elevating a user to public spotlight they become a repesentation of the product as a whole, so it is extremely unlikely that Patch Linden would not be aware of Loki Eliot’s focus on victimizing children. Yet this suggests that due to his authoritative position within the company as Vice President of Product Operations, a position where one would think it is part of his job to know this type of thing, he has allegedly not only decided to promote this individual, but has continued to repeatedly do so for over a decade.
Casper Warden’s Caspervend and Casper Linden
In September 2022 Patch Linden made an announcement that Linden Lab had aquired Caspertech. This announcement took everyone, including staff at Linden Lab we were told, by surprise. For those unaware, CasperTech is a shop which was created by an avatar named Casper Warden. Among the items this shop sells is a delivery system in Second Life called CasperVend, which allows other shops to set up automated product re-delivery, create gift cards, and other useful services.
According to a one of Second Life’s developers we spoke with nobody saw this coming, nor was it talked about until the sale was finalized. This same developer also said this piece of information:
This same developer said Linden Lab does not need CasperVend since they can easily make a better integrated in-house solution for less money. This developer’s opinion aside, Casper Warden’s ascension into Linden Lab through Patch Linden seems to align with a long running trend. Earlier in this article it was demonstrated that Casper Warden is a member of Patch Linden’s ageplay roleplay family under the name Hendrik Bunnybutt Numbers (Hendrik Bunny) AKA Casper Numbers, as well as the business partner of the Linden Lab Product Operations department member Jester Mole (AKA Kenzie Uwu / Hiro Lefevre), and the Tweenster brand they made together.
Furthermore, when talking to various child avatars during the course of this ageplay investigation Casper’s name popped up. More specifically his well known alternate account Hendrikb (now named Hendrik Bunny) appears to be a child roleplayer notorious for approaching other underage boy avatars with sexual advances. Apparently a place called Sota Atoll was a location he could be spotted frequently associating with other child avatars of the male variety; we’re also told Patch Linden frequently showed up to this location as well. When interviewing various users with experience in this community one of them said Casper had shared an unrequested explicit image of himself, which was verified to be a genuine Second Life asset through examination of its UUID, and to have been uploaded by Casper himself. This image can be made available to Linden Lab and law enforcement should action need to be taken. This is highly concerning and appears to further confirm Patch Linden’s consistent pattern of bringing people into the company who both meet his personal preference for gay men and are in his virtual family.
Linden Lab Product Operations
During this long running investigation attempts were made to network with several Linden Lab developers. While many were hesitant to say much at first due to fear of repercussions, once they learned what had already been uncovered a few opened up concerning Eric Nix’s / Patch Linden’s management style at Linden Lab. Most have refused to have their names put behind their words, but a few of them are ready to step forward and speak out should the need arise. Before continuing it is important that this be established:
In 2020 the Speak Out Act was signed into law which curtailed Nondisclosure Agreements in relation to illegal conduct with a specific focus on sex crimes such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation against those who speak out about such activities. This law is in full effect here. With that stated the interviews below are anonymous but be assured they are 100% legal under this law as they relate not to projects undertaken by Linden Lab developers but instead relate to misconduct by Linden Lab management in Product Operations against their own staff with a heavy emphasis on sexual misconduct and harassment. Whether or not these are crimes is up to law enforcement but their words cannot be silenced any more thanks to said law. Each one of these developers verified their employment via pay stubs or other means.
A portion of verification that is safe to display to the public.
So to begin, a good portion of those working in Linden Lab’s Product Operations department, according to these developers, appears to run on a contract basis where Eric Nix / Patch Linden, under the auspices of Linden Lab, pays these people directly for work where they must compete for hourly wages with a limited pool of tasks available. The relationship these people have with Patch is exceptionally lopsided and he takes full advantage of this. There are accusations of rampant sexual harassment, sexual banter, and nepotism by the Vice President, and this is encouraged by his subordinates. The department has a, quote, “gay male dominated” sexual atmosphere and an aura of toxic masculinity where men and especially women feel threatened and belittled by the Vice President and his husband who is the QA lead there. Linden Lab Product Operations masqueredes as a progressive LGBTQ+ friendly workplace but the Vice President’s words and actions make that seem less so according to the developers there.
Several developers have described Product Operations management as chaos prone and QA as barely existing, with Squeaky Mole’s role as QA lead largely a facade since the focus is not so much on quality assurance, but to instead serve as a filter for Patch Linden’s personal tastes in men and non-work related desires, determining exactly what type of person fills the space in he and his husband’s department. Squeaky also serves to create work for his husband and his friends before all others in the company, even if this results in outright sabotage of projects within Linden Lab. It was described that Squeaky Mole and his close underlings regularly demonstrated such an absurd lack of knowledge and experience that content would go through months and even years of development only to be released far below the bar of what would be considered acceptable in other companies developing similar projects. Artificial gauntlets were made by leads and management to either induce failure and get developers to quit, be fired, or create a situation in which their work can be re-assigned as rewards to chosen members of Patch and Squeaky’s extended virtual family who dominate the department. This has been reported to happen time and time again by everyone interviewed.
The words below are directly from the Second Life developers who were willing to speak with us, and are presented anonymously as per their request. Note that in order to comply with state and federal laws, especially regarding trade secrets, some specifics have been redacted.
Did you at any time feel uncomfortable about the amount of sexual content exhibited in Linden Lab communications under Eric Nix (Patch)?
Were you or others in any way encouraged to be sexual or share in sexual banter with Linden Lab employees?
Did you consider speaking to Human Resources regarding the hyper-sexual atmosphere of the department during your time with Linden Lab?
Was there ever a time where a Linden Lab employee stepped out of line with what you thought was ethically responsible? This includes state laws, the Linden Lab Code of Conduct, and the Second Life Terms of Service.
Given the chance to work for Linden Lab again would you recommend it to others? If not what would have to change culturally for you to reconsider?
Is there anything else particularly concerning that you have noticed during your time working there?
One of the developers above left an additional note concerning the QA department:
Another Mole spoke to us in-depth for quite some time, here are some snippets of that conversation:
The impression I am getting of Product Operations is quite bad, but would you mind sharing anything else you can think of?
Here are a few other interesting allegations we were able to learn during our interviews, presented in no particular order:
Communication between departments is very poor, and Product Operations is actively hostile towards other departments to the significant detriment of projects.
Various projects coming out of Product Operations have been severely botched due to Eric Nix’s management decisions. We were given the NUX starter avatars and the PBR graphics enhancement as recent examples.
We were told that Sejong Linden used to take real life minors from the Teen Grid to the Main Grid to have virtual sex with them.
There are allegedly regions suspiciously marked not to be investigated for Abuse Reports by a high ranking Linden. It was suggested this is why “family friendly” nude beaches and similar sexual ageplay locations have remain untouched for years despite reports.
We were informed that Patch Linden allegedly has a long history of abusing his authority for personal vendettas against fellow developers and normal users alike. This includes doxxing individuals and going through personal chat logs in an attempt to find dirt on them.
Chronos Mole has allegedly threatened to blackmail and expose private information of co-workers.
When prohibited imagery is reported only the in-world objects are removed since properly deleting the actual assets would be too much work. The same lack of effort applies to content which has been DMCA’d. This means the Second Life servers are allegedly still filled with years worth of prohibited imagery and infringing content that should have been deleted. We were able to personally confirm this to be at least partially true by successfully using texture UUIDs of reported content that had been “removed”.
Many of Linden Lab’s reviews on the website Glassdoor confirm the disorganized nature of the company, as well as its disturbingly relaxed stance towards sexual harassment and poor treatment of women. Sometimes all in the same review.
We were told Marketing is under Product Operations.
Former Linden Lab Security Manager Kavya Pearlman’s Allegations
Back in 2019 an industry cybersecurity professional working for Linden Lab named Kavya Pearlman brought up issues internally concerning child pornography, pedophilia, sexual ageplay, and severely compromised personal user information to the attention of Linden Lab’s higher ups. According to her testimony, as a result of her findings senior employees at Linden Lab led a campaign of retaliation against her in an attempt to paint her as an inept employee, and she was ultimately fired. She sued Linden Lab for damages and below are excerpts from her case.
Kavya Pearlman is well known and highly respected in the cybersecurity field. She has won numerous awards, is a key member of the Global Coalition for Digital Safety at the World Economic Forum (WEF), is an advisor for numerous global governments and big tech corporations, and is the leading voice in cybersecurity for emerging technologies such as VR. To say she is an accomplished and trusted individual in her field is a vast understatement, so for senior employees at Linden Lab to attempt to paint her as inept is extremely suspicious and should ring alarm bells. It would appear Linden Lab’s own former Information Security Director may have been fired for discovering how deeply rooted sexual ageplay is within Second Life and possibly a portion of Linden Lab itself, among other concerning issues. For now, she is tied up in legal court battles with Linden Lab.
A Concerning Future
For all of the freedom Second Life has become known for one area it has famously been lacking in has been its graphics. Second Life’s dated graphics are often cited as one of its glaring down sides and the reason for users to either lose interest, or not take an interest in the first place. However this will soon be changing since Linden Lab recently released a significant upgrade to Second Life’s graphics with a brand new lighting and rendering engine known as PBR, short for Physically Based Rendering. What this means for Second Life is that objects, avatars, and the world itself will be able to be rendered in a way which far more accurately mimics reality, and will bring Second Life up to par with games released in the past few years. This will finally allow Second Life to not only break free of its reputation for having bad graphics, but potentially set the standard for just how graphically advanced a virtual world can be.
This as a whole should be taken as very good news for Second Life. However there is one area of concern which directly relates to the main topic of this writeup, and that is the fact that this also means child avatars too will be that much more life-like. To most people this is not any cause for concern, but as we have seen repeatedly demonstrated so far there is a portion of Second Life where more life-like avatars quickly starts becoming an extremely concerning problem.
Note that these images were not taken with Second Life’s latest rendering engine.
As can be see in the image above many users are already creating statues and NPCs (Non Player Characters) which use textures sourced from photos of actual real life human beings, including children, in order to create a more convincingly realistic virtual representation. So far only a few skins for user controlled child avatars use this same technique, but with advancing graphics technologies, and evolving standards for what is expected to be on the market being pressed more and more towards ultimate realism, it is only a matter of time before completely photorealistic child avatars with skins sourced from photographs of real life children become common place. With the existing prevelence of sexual ageplay in Second Life as bad as it is now, the line between what is considered actual child pornography will become very blurred and could potentially become a disasterous situation for Linden Lab’s Second Life if the sexual ageplay problem within the company is not addressed. We imagine this would be especially concerning for Linden Lab’s investors such as J.P. Morgan, who last year had to pay a sum of $75 million in a settlement with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and most assuredly would not want any further association with the sexualization of children.
In Conclusion, a Statement of Allegations
To wrap up, here is a series of allegations demonstrated by this report:
- As a Vice President at Linden Lab, Patch Linden has allegedly been directly linked to gay male centric sexual ageplay within Second Life as a possible financial supporter, creator of safe havens for sexual ageplay using company resources, and evidence strongly suggests he may be a direct participant as well. Patch Linden has allegedly knowingly allowed sexual ageplayers to make their virtual homes in his own regions. These regions also host a multitude of Terms of Service violations directly related to sexual ageplay and the sexualization of children, specifically little boys, in blatant violation of the terms of service and community standards for the company he represents.
- Patch Linden married the Second Life resident Xelm Snowpaw, who is part of Patch Linden’s roleplay family and is notoriously well known for ageplay, the sexualization of prepubescent characters, and creating or having had others create pedophilic cub play artwork. Patch Linden hired this individual, known internally as Squeaky Mole, into Linden Lab and promoted him to an influential head position within his own Product Operations department. This decision has allegedly been severely detrimental to projects at Linden Lab and has repeatedly resulted in delayed projects, sub-par quality work output, and unwarranted firings of multiple well qualified personnel based on personal grudges Squeaky and/or Patch may have had against them.
- Patch Linden facilitated Linden Lab’s questionable purchase of CasperTech from Casper Warden, who under his Hendrikb / Hendrix Bunny account, allegedly has a long history of pursuing sexual ageplay with users playing little boy avatars, as well as sending these users real life photos of his genitals. Casper Warden is also a member of Patch Linden’s gay male focused ageplay family, and was hired into Linden Lab Product Operations as Casper Linden.
- Patch Linden has allegedly promoted controversial user Loki Eliot, who is well known for ageplay and having a singular focus on producing works exclusively featuring children, primarily underage boys, being molested, violently raped, eaten, and murdered.
- Patch Linden hired multiple other ageplayers who are also part of his personal roleplay family into Product Operations, allegedly creating a clear conflict of interests with how those in his department are treated, as well as work distribution. This has allegedly severely compromised his entire department’s output due to the amount of nepotism and influence his inner circle has within Product Operations, as well as exposed Second Life, Linden Lab, and Tilia as brands, as well as investors such as J.P. Morgan to a lot of damage. This has also allegedly compromised Product Operation’s mission of operating parts of Second Life as a safe place for teenaged children, and may possibily open up Linden Lab to pressure from law enforcement and that various governments in the future.
- As as direct result of Patch Linden’s managment, a portion of Linden Lab has allegedly become an unsafe work environment where toxic gay male hyper-masculinity, sexual harassment, bullying, hazing, and nepotism are found, and employees can allegedly be fired if they do not accept the sexual harassment, or if they merely disagree with his spouse. Patch Linden has also allegedly attempted to normalize certain young gay males in his department to his alternate identity and lifestyle as a virtual ageplayer on Second Life with promises of permanent jobs and financial incentives if they fit in and accept his oversharing.
- Under Patch Linden’s stewardship the Second Life ratings system has collapsed. With the closure of the Teen Grid and subsequent elimination of the age verification system, there are no longer any meaningful safeguards to prevent real life children from engaging with adult content.
- Under Patch Linden’s stewardship a highly esteemed cybersecurity expert was fired and allegedly had a campaign of retaliation led against her in an attempt to paint her as an inept employee because she raised concerns on multiple occasions about sexual ageplay within Second Life and how the safety real life minors were possibly at risk, among other highly concerning issues.
Linden Lab’s Attempted Cover Up.
In November of 2023 the events that were preluded to at the beginning of this article took place. While we unfortunately do not have the full details of what unfolded, what we can say for sure is that rumor of an investigation into Linden Lab’s sexual ageplay problem, and subsequently, Eric Nix / Patch Linden, were starting to get around the rumor mill. These rumors would make their way to a Second Life resident known as Chaser Zaks. From what we have been able to learn Chaser had allegedly been probing Linden Lab internet security infrastructure and discovered exposed API keys for companies like Motown Records, and instead of reporting this vulnerability he chose to brag about it. Chaser had also somehow learned about some of what had been uncovered regarding Eric Nix’s activities and the problematic workplace environment in his department, and began to talk and inflate rumors about these topics. We have learned this all took place over Discord, an inherently insecure chat program where the account Chaser Zaks uses was easily linked to his Second Life account. Unsurprisingly Chaser Zaks was quickly sent a Cease and Desist letter from Linden Lab.
Fearing Linden Lab would ban him from Second Life, we are told Chaser Zaks allegedly felt he needed to give Linden Lab something big in order to gain enough favor not to have, quote, “his home” taken away. Due to this interest in self preservation Chaser Zaks told Alexa Linden all he could think of to save himself and divert Linden Lab’s attention to other individuals. These other individuals were allegedly known to have drawn the anger of Eric Nix / Patch Linden in the past, and it is believed Chaser may have thought if Linden Lab were to focus on these individuals instead of himself, his Second Life account may be spared. Among the exaggerated rumors Chaser Zaks told was that one of the individuals he mentioned to Linden Lab was “a ringleader” and others being “soldiers” in a conspiratorial defamation campaign against Patch Linden. There also appeared to be a focus on a mysterious November 20th release date, which we have heard Linden Lab referred to internally as “The Great Thanksgiving Smear Campaign”.
We were also able to learn that an old draft of this article may have been uploaded to an unsecured Google drive with the intent of linking this information to Linden Lab privately, which we theorize may have been a possible but unconfirmed source of the presumably unintentional leak, which is also unconfirmed. Whatever the full truth behind these events is we do not know for certain, but we do know that the rumors spread by Chaser Zaks mentioned above caused Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf to send additional Cease and Desist letters to several more individuals they believe are behind, or have knowledge of who may be behind this investigation. According to information we have heard, Linden Lab or those acting on their behalf may pursue legal action against some or all of these individuals under false allegations upon the release of any document, article, or piece of media similar to this one; something which entirely beyond their control. It must be emphasized that Linden Lab is acting based on exaggerated rumors spread by Chaser Zaks, who is individually famous in multiple online communities for being a self proclaimed real life zoophile and avid supporter of cub play, among other extreme viewpoints and opinions. It is because of Linden Lab’s response to pursue legal action against these individuals, and the attempted removal and alteration of evidence by Linden Lab or those involved in the allegations presented in this article that we have been spurred to release this presentation of evidence of allegations to a broader audience instead of presented in private as originally intended.
Unfortunately due to Linden Lab learning that such an investigation may exist, and perhaps even having an old draft, those at Linden Lab involved in the allegations presented in this document immediately began working to cover up some of what has been presented above, as well as changing the names of avatars involved in order to distance themselves from their deeds. We have attempted to keep track of some of these attempts, and below we can see the most recent user profiles for Rhyph Somme and Xelm Snowpaw before their names were changed.
However, soon after Linden Lab heard the rumors being spread, Xelm Snowpaw’s name was changed to Scout Frostypaws, and Patch Linden had the name of his Rhyph Somme account changed to Stitch Frostypaws and blanked his profile. Note how despite the name changes the avatar UUID keys remain the same. Scout Frostypaws (Xelm) is also now partnered to an avatar named Blaze Frostypaws, who was formerly named Chrystian Somme and is suspected to be Patch Linden. Not shown, but Kenzie Uwu had their name changed to Jack Frostypaws.
This information update has been included since the alteration and removal of evidence by Linden Lab or the individuals mentioned may be a violation of state and federal law in the event of a proper investigation, and for the sake of refuting claims that information presented here has been manufactured or falsified. All evidence presented in this article is genuine and unaltered with the exception of the removal of personal and private information, and the resizing and cropping of images for the purpose of better presentation. None of the mentioned alterations in any way change the nature of what has been presented. Evidence presented in this document can be verified as genuine to law enforcement by requesting Second Life region backups prior to November 2023, Linden Lab Discord logs and images, thorough investigation of the individuals mentioned, and by looking it up on the mentioned websites, many of which were backed up on The Internet Archive prior to Linden Lab being made aware of the situation.
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