We introduced the Live Ops program as a way of generating visibility for games that are updating for seasonal promotions.
We’d like to thank everyone who has participated in Live Ops thus far. However, we will be putting the Live Ops program on hold starting on Thursday, November 21st while we evaluate better ways to generate this visibility for your game updates.
We anticipate Live Ops to return in a big way in 2020, so be on the look out for updates about the program!
Hope live ops makes a big return as a game sort on the games page. We can’t imagine what the data looks like, what is the difference between people who clicked on the liveops button in the corner, vs click on the front page when they go to look for a game to play?
Can’t help but feel like LiveOps was tacked on from the very start, released without being given any of the attention it needed on the frontend. It could have been way more successful if it was given even a little bit of attention on the main website.
Hopefully when it returns it will have been given more real-estate than a tiny button in the sidebar, on its own dusty webpage.
Really hope we can see some bigger and better changes to liveops and the process of going through it. Would love to see it be used for more promotional uses and let it be more known about in the future.
Hopefully it comes back with events that give out ugc avatar items; I think that’ll be a major feature to get players to actually want to check the page and play the games
I can’t say I’m shocked with this decision. Live-Ops just wasn’t filling the purpose it had hoped to. I’m excited to see Roblox continue look into ways they can better promote updating games an in-game events.
Personally it might just be better to rely on games to promote themselves and to include stronger search capabilities that enhance users abilities to discover games interesting to them. Perhaps adding special abilities for developers to promote their games that have lower player visit rates if you are wanting to boost discoverability of new and upcoming games.
Otherwise giving developers the tools to make their own great games (like awarding catalog items they are the creators of) would be a great way to help games promote themselves through value to their players.
The 2 week notice was the reason I was never able to use it. I can’t usually finish an update and sit on it for 2 weeks, and I am not confident enough to throw out a date and hope that nothing goes wrong that takes more time. Even just a 1 week notice would have made it much more usable to me.
No offense to the many people who worked on this program, but I am seriously rooting for this program to not return. Ever. It felt forced, poorly thought out, and to many people seemed to just be an excuse to kill Roblox events which were a beloved part of the community.
I only checked out the live ops page a few times I rarely ever pay attention to it, I’m glad that it’s being looked at for improvement.
That said I do wish Roblox events such as Holliday’s were still a thing, I remember a few years back playing games for badges and if you got that badge you got a unopened gift, that was fun.
It was games that was both popular and ones that only had a few 100 players, it was great.
Or a year or 2 after that, you played games to get gifts but there were no badges involved (that I can remember).
After that it seemed like it wasn’t done, it would just be a few games and some items that I personally might not have been interested in.
As I said during the removal of events in the first place:
Whilst I must say ROBLOX proved me wrong in the sense that it did promote games which were not the front page games, my point still stands that it is an event which people lost interest in due to how constant it is.
Am very glad ROBLOX is reevaluating their position on the matter and hope you figure out a better way moving forward.
I don’t see why everyone is calling for the end of Live Ops.
I see an easy way to fix it.
First, allow UGC creators to grant items through games.
Then after that:
If the user behind the live ops game is able to upload UGC hats and clothing, let them write the description for the game and include a picture of their clothing. They’re practically making the event for you.
If the user behind the live ops game is not part of the UGC group (and thus unable to make their own decorations), allow them to add their own mesh and texture for a simple non-hat decoration, and let them write the description for the event.
For every seasonal event (Christmas, Easter, Thankgiving) create a new, special live ops event with an unlimited number of games to feature this way.
Add the current Live Ops period in the thumbnail (for example, “This Week On Roblox - period 30”) along with a new button for seasonal Live Ops runs (for example, Thankgiving on Roblox).
With the exception of a search field or some way to explore a large list for DevOps runs, and adding the ability for devs to award UGC, this is the minimal amount of effort required to bring Live Ops back to a state in which Roblox players would be excited to click that button.
Personally I do believe that Live-Ops still has potential, but Roblox jumped the gun on implementing it. Without an actual incentive to play (sorry but I’m not interested in your new summer palm trees), there was no good reason to launch Live Ops at that moment in time from my point of view.
This is a good step forward - I’d personally rather just see regular seasonal events return but if Live Ops returns with the ability for event holders to give out UGC items as well as getting more promotion from Roblox beyond a small button on the sidebar, I’ll be on board with that.
While I agree with @PeZsmistic that it needs something more than a tiny button in the sidebar, I’d even settle for a button at one of the top corners of the game page. One of the issues I felt plagued live ops was the initial launch though. The first few games felt un-tested, and seemed to be so low end quality wise that I know many players (I say players, as in people who I’m friends with who do not themselves, develop) who gave up looking on the live ops page after the first 3 or 4 rotations. They felt like Live Ops had nothing to offer them because it was such a small selection of games, and generally the selection of games weren’t very good.
While there were a few games that were actually very good that made it to Live Ops (Arsenal, Vesteria, both the Pinewood games, Roblox Titanic, and more) including a paid game like Vesteria is a tough sell. For many people, especially early on, Live Ops was seen as the replacement to the free monthly events. So having a paid access game thrown into that sort, mixed with the lack of earning free hats (which is the only thing a lot of people cared about when it came to events), it kinda felt like the featuring program & events program combined together with some of the not so great qualities.
While I do believe there was effort put forth into trying to make Live-Ops a good alternative, I think the timing played a major downfall. It hurt the Developers to see the monthly events go away (as some people were extremely excited to see a Monthly Event that fit what they were doing already That Racing Month of June, -cough-) coupled with the lack of prizes for the free player base, it put a sour taste in the mouths of a whole lot of people.
I’m interested to see where Live Ops will go on it’s return, however, I think to really wash out that bad taste, more than a face lift to the program is needed. A name change can go a long way. New system, new name, and come back better than ever.
Now’s a good time to bring up my response to a proposal made for the live ops feature earlier:
To summarize, developers have a need to natively share game updates with their players, and judging by the effectiveness of game icon and title changes, players have a need to natively receive game update information.
The existing game update notifications feature could fill this need quite elegantly if it were expanded on, but this feature was dead on arrival due to its comically prohibitive restrictions and low user visibility. Please consider a dynamic and powerful solution such as the one I originally proposed in one of my most famous dev forum posts ever:
