We haven’t done either of these in a while! But since I presented OpenSim statistics at the OSCC conference last December, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at what’s been happening in the OpenSim community this year.
2025 has been a year of dramatic ups and downs for OpenSim. We’ve seen the platform’s largest grid face its most severe crisis in years, seen the metaverse reach nearly a million locations, celebrated major technological advancements, and mourned the loss of one of the most important voices in our community.
OSgrid’s database crisis
The biggest crisis of the year came in February when OSgrid announced it would delete its entire database.
“Any avatar that does not have a backup of its OSgrid assets within five weeks from now will irreversibly lose its entire inventory,” said Foxx Bode, OSgrid secretary. Hypergrid business thereabouts.
Administrators said the 18-year-old database was bloated and corrupted. “Sixty percent of them will never be used, which degrades the performance of our cutting-edge hardware.”
But things got worse. According to a March announcement, in early March Grid discovered that all IAR files were corrupted, forcing an immediate and indefinite shutdown. The previously announced March 21 reset schedule went out the window as the grid entered what administrators called a “long-term and meticulous” reorganization without a specific reopening date.
The emergency closure triggered an immediate migration across OpenSim. Wolf Territories Grid reported more than 100 new areas in the days following the announcement, with some smaller grids temporarily blocking incoming transmissions to prevent system overload.
“People have strong opinions and think the metaverse is kind of a competition, but we really appreciate the help for our users,” Bode said. At the same time, small grids are warned not to accommodate more users than their infrastructure can handle.
Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner used the crisis to highlight the importance of a proper backup policy. “The entire system needs to be backed up daily to restore it to its last stable state,” he said. Hypergrid business. “If you don’t do this and rely solely on data replication, you will have uncorrupted copies of your files to restore when corruption occurs.”
OSgrid came back online in April after about a month of downtime. Grid celebrated its 18th anniversary with a week-long beach party in July and held its annual fundraiser and auction in September.
Nearly a million anomalies
September brought one of the strangest statistical stories in OpenSim history. According to OSgrid President Dan Banner, OSgrid users decided to map the entire continent, creating approximately 800,000 regions in the process.
“They were trying to map North America.” Banner said. Hypergrid business.
This brings OpenSim’s total land area to nearly one million standard areas, at least on paper. For statistical purposes, the numbers have been adjusted to exclude projects on this continent. Because including this would make the bar chart completely unreadable.
Major community events
The OpenSim World Expo was held on the Wolf Territories Grid in March. Hosted by Cooper Swizzle, Koshari Mahana, Kimm Starr and Rosa Alekseev, the fair featured 72 bays for exhibitors and 17 themed entertainment stages.
OpenSimFest 2025 took place in October and featured events across multiple grids, including Wolf Territories, DigiWorldz, OSgrid, Kitely, Tenth Dimension and Bridgemere, according to organizer Lisa Laxton. The festival featured the introduction of 0HubRadio.com’s new Hypergrid broadcast system and concluded with the Burning Women event.
The 13th annual OpenSimulator Community Conference took place in early December and featured more than 30 panels and presentations. I presented on OpenSim statistics and moderated a panel on AI in OpenSim.
All presentations can be viewed in the OSCC 2025 Presentations Playlist on the Avacon YouTube channel.
A new TV channel has been launched
This was announced just four days ago. But they also posted a video about this 4 months ago, which I missed.
NeverTV is a virtual TV network launched by Neverworld Grid. The project aims to create a complete broadcast network with regularly scheduled programming, all filmed around the world with a live studio audience.
According to an announcement from OpenSimWorld, NeverTV is looking for show hosts, camera operators, directors, news anchors, editors and program directors. They offer regularly scheduled programs to selected residents.
Survey results
In October, I conducted a grid survey prior to my OSCC presentation. Results showed Littlefield and Utopia Skye received the highest overall scores from residents, with Wolf Territories also scoring surprisingly well despite being the most active grid with the largest user base.
Between them, respondents visited more than 50 different grids and named 27 different grids their primary home. Kitely had the most survey respondents, followed by Littlefield and Utopia Skye.
If you look at the numbers
January started off strong with all OpenSim statistics up compared to mid-December 2024. The area of the public OpenSim grid increased by 170 times the standard area equivalent, active users increased by more than 700, and the grid reported more than 4,100 new registrations.
Then I took a break for a few months. Life. thing. But I’m back!
Anyway, by the end of the year I had tracked a total of 2,589 grids, including 246 active grids in December. Wolf Territories remained the most active grid year-round in terms of monthly unique visitors.
Remembering Mal Burns
But 2025 also brings tremendous loss to our communities. Mal Burns passed away last summer.
Mal was the founder and host of Inworld Review, a weekly news and discussion program documenting the virtual world for over a decade. What started as “Metaverse Weekend Review,” which he co-hosted with his partner Tara, became Inworld Review, the premier talk show about OpenSim and virtual worlds.
I had the privilege of joining Mal and Tara and other guests from 2013 to early 2017. Every week we cover the OpenSim community: Grid launches, technology developments, community events, and the people who make it all happen. Mal had an encyclopedic knowledge of the virtual world and an unwavering drive to document everything that happened in the metaverse.
His last performance was on June 22 and you can watch it here.
Mal was known for his curiosity, dedication to his community, and passion for exploring new virtual worlds. He gave voice to what was happening across OpenSim, interviewing grid owners, developers, content creators, and residents. Through Metaworld Broadcasting, which he ran with Tara Yeats, he provided production services for virtual world events and created a valuable archive of OpenSim history.
But perhaps the greatest praise came in October, when Mal’s close colleagues announced that Inworld Review would continue. The show premiered its first post-horse episode on October 26 and held a panel at OSCC to discuss “the decisions and creative choices to continue the program.”
You can subscribe to the new Inworld Review channel here.
There have been several tributes to Mal Burns this year, including the Inworld Review itself, the Neverworld Grid tribute in July, and the Hypergrid Safari gathering in October.
James Atlloud’s channel also has other videos about this event.
It is fitting that Mal’s work continues. For more than a decade, he has been the voice of our community, helping us understand where we have been and where we are going. He was a true pioneer. A man who saw the potential of virtual worlds early on and dedicated himself to sharing that vision with anyone who would listen.
The OpenSim community is smaller without him. But the archives he created, the communities he served, and the conversations he fostered will continue to shape this metaverse for years to come.
Rest in peace, Mal. Hypergrid won’t be the same without you.
