I know this thread is over 5 years old - and although I hate "bumping" threads - the age of this thread, along with the amount of support it has received, only proves how we need to continue pushing for this feature.
This feature is one that I've been waiting for, and expecting, since you were initially allowed to create games under groups. I wasn't on the DevForum at the time, so I would've had no clue about Seranok's initial offer to transferring game ownership to groups through here. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because as far as I can see there was only a whopping 15 games that were requested for transfer through that offer thread after around 7 months of being open [only counting replies to the thread directly]. To scale, the ROBLOX Forums were discontinued nearly
TWO YEARS AFTER that offer was opened and closed.
Beginning
I want to bring up the message @Seranok posted from the convert your game to a group game thread after he closed the offer;
Perhaps at the time, “I decided to end this offer because it only provides value to a handful of developers and I would rather spend my time on features which benefit all developers,” would have made sense. It was an offer that only a dozen or so people claimed in the span of 7 months. The benefits of owning a game under a group were fairly unknown still, and the visibility of this offer was very limited. I genuinely can’t blame anyone from thinking this way at the time, but fast forward 6 years and I think circumstances have changed.
It’s now 2022, and things are a lot different. DevForum was still an acceptance-based forum, meaning as far as I know, even the knowledge of this offer existing was only extended to a “handful of developers” in the first place. Many developers are also hesitant to jump into a brand new feature head first, nevermind a low key & makeshift solution involving the ownership of their beloved games. Recognising the drastic changes in ROBLOX game development from the past 6 years - a large majourity of the games were solo run, and didn’t see a benefit in switching to a group at the time.
The mainstream acknowledgement of the benefits to using group funds wasn’t fully recognised until years later. Looking at the ROBLOX Fandom Wiki, which I think is a good benchmark for mainstream knowledge - the first time the ‘Group’ wiki page acknowledged group funds being distributed to members wasn’t until October of 2018. This feature came at the beginning of a transition stage for ROBLOX where games weren’t being run by one singular developer, but development teams. A majourity of the mainstream appreciation for this feature came long after anyone had a chance to benefit from the offer.
There has been no leeway for games that were solo ran that expanded into being run by a team of people. Call me dramatic, but the fact we aren’t able to transfer games to groups can be severely damaging a project’s potential for growth once it is able to provide for itself. Without being able to share revenue, or pay commission to other developers/artists for their work properly, either cuts into the project’s profits all together, or deters developers from expanding/outsourcing work at all.
Imbalance
ROBLOX’s 30% fee, and the way it can so easily stack to become a 50%+ fee, is a whole other topic entirely - however I still believe it is important & relevant to bring up. Not to state the obvious, but there’s of course a 30% fee/tax to transactions before they go to the creator. It’s also common knowledge that the only methods of transferring revenue from account to account involves another 30% fee/tax on top of the already reduced amount they received initially resulting in a 50%+ cut going into the void. “Well, duh” - but it’s important to note the underlying issue and pre-context.
Group funds were ultimately introduced to prevent this fee stack, and although this broadly solved the issue and reduced the amount of tax taken before it reached a respective developer - it also immediately imbalanced both games that were created in the past, as well as the weight of the irreversible option of creating your game through your profile or a group.
There is LITTLE TO NO downside for creating a game under a group over creating it under your profile. By inherent benefit, I mean you are [sometimes unknowingly] opting into either having a 30% fee on transferrable income, or having a 50%+ fee on transferrable income without a chance to revert that decision. It is no coincidence that almost all of the new large games, including solo developed, are owned under a group, while games like Work At A Pizza Place that have been around for ages, are not.
When a big platform introduces a new feature that has an inherent benefit and improvement over the prior, it is generally good practice to either balance the two features, or remove the old one entirely. When it comes to irreversible options like the one we are talking about, you should expect everyone to be offered a chance to revert/upgrade to the better feature. Without doing this, you are just nerfing every single game created in the initial 10 years of the platform as well as games created without the prior realisation of said differences.
The truth is that we need to stop treating these as two separate “features” and start considering the group funds/game ownership feature as merely an UPDATE to how you are able to manage games. You can’t pretend they aren’t related, and you can’t pretend that there isn’t only ONE wise choice between the two. Even though you technically have the option to choose either, for new developers who don’t know their way around the platform, it is unbelievably difficult for them to find out that they can even create games under groups - nevermind realising they are at an inherent disadvantage if they don’t do so.
I’d compare it to the new Creator Dashboard that offers more advanced statistics - if this was only available to games created after the feature’s implementation, or by opting into it when initially creating the place… that wouldn’t make any sense and would be a clear disadvantage.
Current Compromise
Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the current options developers have to “migrate their game” to a group, and how they either don’t work or can harm/reset a game’s progress. I’d also like to say that this problem only affects games that already have a playerbase - afterall this isn’t a matter of you losing your game, but your game losing it’s momentum and reputation.
You can theoretically copy your game and make it function exactly the same through a new experience under a group. This will bring you back to Game Marketing 101. The best solution to transferring a playerbase to the new experience is by simply updating your old game to automatically redirect players to the new one immediately when they join. Yes, this will populate your new experience with anyone who tries to play your old one, but will instantly make the old experience appear to be completely unpopulated. Eventually you’d want to fully migrate the game so you’d remove/private the old game after some time passes.
This only works in theory but will be a very slow and harmful transition for your game’s growth. All of your stats are gone and any algorithm advantages your old game might’ve had are now useless. Anyone who played your game will no longer see the new version in their favourites/recently played (which is 90% of where I look for games to play). Most casual players will assume the game died or was privated and won’t bother looking into it. People will now see your game and assume it’s a fake copy.
This “option” is not an option at all.
Proposals
Finally, it's time to give my two cents and brainstorm possible solutions to this problem.
The obvious and possibly the quickest solution would simply be a way for developers to migrate their games to a group. This doesn’t have to be a thing that everyone can do inherently. You can even come up with a game eligibility metric to prevent overflow, and/or make it a more streamlined manual process where developers can email/apply to request for ROBLOX to do it themselves. Since the benefits of group owned games primarily benefits already-successful games, I see no problem in making it more exclusive to the games that would actually benefit from the switch [at first].
The true issue at hand isn’t necessarily that we all just want a game under our group, the problem is simply the imbalance between the two. The solution doesn’t even need to be migrating at all. You can address all of the advantages groups have and individually apply/balance them to player owned games. When you consider this, the possibility for a feasible solution is way better.
If you allow the possibility for developers to transfer game revenue to other individuals without the fee, then a majourity of the imbalance is already gone. A rough example of this would be giving an option for revenue to go to an “Experience Fund”, directly to a group, or directly to your account (which would be default). From there you can take revenue that you want out, or transfer your revenue to a group [of which you have a proper permission for] without the fee. That way you can utilise the group fund mechanic without your experience having to be under that group. This also prevents the feature from being widely exploited and keeps it strictly to game revenue.
Ultimately, I don’t care if any new features regarding this issue require eligibility at first. Whether anyone can just click a button and switch between the two options, or whether you have to pay R$10,000 and apply for a migration manually in hopes of getting approved (extreme example, cut me some slack) - anything is better than nothing, and we currently have nothing.
Everything is always easier said than done, and I won’t pretend I know anything about what implementing any of these features might entail. All I want is for there to be more transparency and communication regarding progress to solving these issues. It’s easy to look at this thread and think this is a niche problem that a small amount of people encounter. Instead, I believe this is a problem that many people encounter, but gave up on the hope of it being fixed. These things should be addressed.
PS: I know a lot of these points have likely already been mentioned in the thread, but I decided if this request needed a revival then I might as well just start from scratch. I didn’t intend for this message to be a 200 page book at first, so pardon me if it’s all over the place.
