Over the past few weeks, we've been working hard to educate you how our Developer Submissions group reviews submissions for decency and intellectual property violations. We've published ThereCare articles, an extensive article in the There Fun Times, and even held in-world talks with the Master of Submissions himself, Sonny Abello.

We've also tried to convey that this process is a key part of what makes There the place it is: It ensures that the content of the world is of a high quality which doesn't offend or infringe on other's intellectual property.

It's also important to know that submissions which violate these guidelines also cost everyone time and, ultimately, money. They cost the submissions group time, since they have to reject the submission, and they cost you time since you need to re-submit, or dispute the item. Submissions, which intentionally try to “sneak in” by being clever about how they violate these guidelines, cost even more time and money.

Since it takes the submissions group more time to process these submissions, this translates into more headcount, which in turn translates into more expenses, which we have to reflect back to you as increased fees.

Up until today, the penalty for a reject submission has been very small: 10% of the submission cost. I'm sorry to say that this number is so low that some developers actually just ignore the guidelines in hopes of something slipping through, figuring it's worth the small price of rejection to get one or two items through. Since we reduced submission fees, this practice has actually gotten a little bit out of hand, and is seriously impacting our ability to process submissions without adding headcount or increasing fees.

We'd really like to avoid that, since it penalizes everyone, so we've decided instead to make it more expensive to have items rejected.

For the first rejection from a "first time" developer, the refund is the same: 90% of the submission fee. 

For items rejected for reasons other than intellectual property or content violations (clothing coverage, for example), the refund will be 75% of the submission fee. In other words, if your item is rejected for this reason, we still collect 25% of the submission fee.

For items rejected for intellectual property violations or inappropriate content, the refund will be only 50% of the submission fee. In other words, if your item is rejected for this reason, we still collect 50% of the submission fee.

These penalties are intentionally high, but as you can see, new developers (who may not know better), still get a pass for their first "transgression". We have discussed this with the MAB and the Developers Group, and everyone has been supportive of this change.

We recognize that it's important to keep people informed about what our standards are, so concurrent with this release we've updated the fee policy on the Developer Program FAQ, and the Submission Guidelines. If you have other suggestions for keeping people informed about our standards, please let us know.

These new penalties go into affect immediately.