Italian employees of computing giant IBM are to stage a demonstration protesting proposed pay cuts in the multiplayer online reality game Second Life.

According to Italian union RSU, talks with IBM regarding a forthcoming pay cut of 1,000 have broken down. It has therefore invited union members and Second Life enthusiasts from across the globe to protest in front of IBM’s virtual campus in the online world on the 25^th September.

IBM has made much of its interest in Second Life, and in online virtual worlds in general. Last year, the company pledged to invest $10 million in research into online worlds, and appointed a director of emerging 3-D Internet and virtual business. The company said that it wanted to become a leader in ‘v-business’, the 3 dimensional equivalent of ‘e-business’.

On a recent visit to IBM’s research facility in Hursley, Information Age spoke to developers investigating the integration of virtual worlds. Their aim is to allow users to maintain a single avatar across multiple ‘worlds’.

Some organisations, including Coca Cola, have tried to use Second Life as a medium for advertising and marketing. But many have found that the number of users has not grown as quickly as predicted, and their virtual real-estate is often deserted.

There have also been scalability issues with Second Life – the software currently in production is only a prototype – and some users have taken the infinite possibilities of the online worlds to deface corporate or political branding material.

Further reading

Information Age comment - Speculation about IBM’s layoff plans underscores the fact that IT services costs must fall further.