Everybody remembers Anshe Chung right? She is the first person to make a million off of Second Life, or so it was reported. Well now she has received a round of VC funding from Gladwyne Partners, who also invested in the Electric Sheep Company, creators of sims for the NBA, MLB, AOL, Reuters, NBC, the Virtual Laguna Beach & Virtual Hills, The L Word, Bantam Dell, Ben & Jerry’s and even some travel and real estate firms.

Anshe Chung Studios maintains offices in the real world where it employs more than 60 people full time, I believe in China where most of their employees are from, and they also use virtual reality freelancers world wide. They host thousands of residents on more than 40 square kilometers of gated communities, and according to Anshe Chung Studios, they have developed more virtual property than any other Metaverse development company.

Sources at Gladwyne tell 3pointD the investment closed today, but wouldn’t reveal the amount. Gladwyne should be quite happy to have found another play in the virtual world sector; they’ve been looking very closely at the space since hopping into the Sheep pen. From the sound of things, they’re continuing the due diligence they’ve been doing throughout the space for the last year or two, so look for more, although it remains to be seen how soon. And congratulations to Anshe (or rather, to the husband-and-wife team behind the avatar), who has built an unparalleled “native” virtual-world brand over the last four years or so. Such companies should be under pressure from bigger, more established production houses, but none seem to have made significant in-roads. Anshe also has the advantage of having outsourced much of her studio’s work to employees in her native China, which may have made a difference to Gladwyne. Source: Anshe Chung Draws Venture Capital Investment

Will ACS end up being the Wal-Mart of Second Life? Driving out smaller businesses and later raises prices as they have been accused of doing? If you look at all the stink she raised recently when she dropped the prices on everything to 10 lindens, I think she may be headed in that direction. Rumors of shady deals on investments on WSE, and converting the land she is renting, etc, as noted by Nobody Fugazi here certainly don’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy about ACS. Even Benjamin Duranske of Virtuallyblind.com has been looking into the legal aspects of it.

Other links covering some of their business practices below:

10Lindens ACS - Anybody pro? Yesterday Anshe Chung’s company flooded SLexchange with cheap furniture: 10 L$ / item and - because of her ’silent’ partnership with SLexchange - got her own category do to so right under ‘vehicules’. Well, it didn’t take long for a protest to arise on the SLexchange forums, understandable too as Anshe is planning to launch ‘a full range catalog of decent SL content’ at this price. For full time SL entrepreneurs that are into the content creating business, this is bad news: imagine a skin selling at 10L$.

Vehicles (2473), Weapons (2566), Anshe Chung 10Lindens People complaining about her getting her own category to flood slexchange with the cheap stuff. Heck, check out this deal on a Sex Bed</a. for only 10 lindens. I believe I paid a few thousand lindens for mine.

STOP 10Lindens They are even selling t-shirts to get the everything for 10 lindens stopped.

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