Allow Game Passes to be free

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to give gamepasses out to select players for free. The minimum price for game passes is currently :robux_light:1, yet we can’t actually set it to 0 (free). We don’t actually make anything off of the lowest, and it would be nice if the minimum limit could be flat out removed.

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If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I could be more flexible with how I’d want my gamepasses to be set up. Removing this limit would allow for me to give players gamepasses for free, especially considering gamepasses are persistent and easy to work with.

If I need to give a friend/tester access to a GamePass, all I’d need to do is lower it to 0 temporarily, then raise it back up once they’ve purchased it. I wouldn’t have to donate them a couple of robux if they’re unable to afford it through my group.

Another use case, even if not as conventional, is I usually do temporary sales in my game, as they’re a great way to boost income greatly for a short period of time, and the players seem to love it. Just like Roblox sales, I’ll discount most gamepasses, then bring a few limited-edition gamepasses on for a limited amount of time. I’d love to be able to have a free ‘exotic’, which everyone would be able to get if they tune into the sale enough. This currently isn’t possible, and I can only prompt it in-game, which doesn’t feel as special as gamepasses feel more persistent, isn’t tied to data stores, and can show up in a user’s inventory.

A feature request exists for being able to donate gamepasses, I’m requesting that they can be made free, as the limit feels unnecessary, unless if there’s some technical limit imposed here.

26 Likes
#2

It seems like most of your problem has nothing to do with allowing a game pass price of 0 R$, but rather you want a way to grant the game pass to certain users for no cost. This is a different problem / request and I think you should edit your title / lead-up into the feature request accordingly so it’s clear what is actually the problem, or post it as two separate issues.

A game pass price of 0 R$ makes no sense because at that point you can just have the corresponding ability be granted in-game via a button or so. It makes more sense to request a system to grant a user game passes.

32 Likes
#3

I’m 100% in support of this, the limit it pretty stupid if you want to give, say alts gamepasses in your game.

5 Likes
#4

You can always add gamepasses to players ingame programatically.
The only downside to this would be that the user wouldn’t own the gamepass.

i.e.
if user:OwnsGamepassAsync(...) or table.find(whitelist, user.UserId)

1 Like
#5

Unless you want to add it via Pastebin and JSON (it’s a mess), then that wouldn’t be extremely easy, because you would have to update the game, then restart the servers (the entire game), or just join a new server, which can be impossible without an extension if you have a big game.

1 Like
#6

I thank you for the response. It does sound a bit weird as to why I’m asking for the limit to be removed, especially considering they’re made to be paid items, but here’s my thought process -

The reason I made this request is because I love the persistence of Game Passes, and I immediately understood that people would think it’d make more sense if I just made the perks free in-game.

The same argument could be made for badges as well in my opinion, as simply giving fake ‘badges’ to the player, and storing it through data stores, doesn’t feel as persistent & unique as real badges. Real badges are displayed on the experience’s page, they show up in a user’s inventory and profile, and they seem more valuable, at least before they were made free each day.

I find the Game Pass APIs very easy to work with, as even in the event of a catastrophic failure with my game’s data stores, users will still own their gamepasses. They also show up in the experience’s page, and feel more unique.

I combined them as while you risk regular players grabbing them for free if you aren’t fast enough, this could be an easier workaround for a use case such as giving them to a tester for free, and could fulfill some very interesting use cases. Plus, when we’re able to make it :robux_light:1, which we don’t actually make anything off of, hence defeating the purpose of it being paid at that price, it would make sense if we were able to make them free, or well it does to me at least.

While I’d love for the option to grant a user a gamepass as well, it would satisfy my use cases much more if I could make them free, then the user could take it for free on both the experience game page, and in-game, especially during these ‘sales’ I like to do.

Hopefully that clears it up, sorry for the rant lol.

3 Likes
#7

The post mentions developer use cases first and player-oriented use cases second. For the developer-focusing use cases, this is actually a poor solution. For example, I don’t want to go the route of “okay the game pass is free now, testers please buy it real quick and then I’ll change it back”. This is a poor workflow for the problem it is intended to solve. I don’t want to have to rely on my testers and myself being online at the same time and then doing this series of steps just so they can get it for testing. I should just be able to grant the item to testers/players or set it so that they can buy it at zero cost (just the people I elect).

Free game passes seem to make a bit of sense for player-facing use cases, but this is not anywhere near the best solution for the developer use cases mentioned.

2 Likes
#9

You can interact with Roblox datastores via Http

1 Like