We’re excited to announce the full release of the Friend Referral System, a new feature designed to help you grow and engage your player community. By encouraging players to invite their friends to your experience, you can boost player retention and overall engagement.
Those who play with their friends are more likely to spend additional time in creators’ games. In fact, we’ve found that co-play sessions are typically 1.9 times longer than solo sessions*. This feature is available today and is the perfect way to leverage social connections within your game!
* As of Q2 2024
What is the Friend Referral System?
The Friend Referral System enables existing players to directly invite their friends on and off Roblox to play together. This system allows you, as a developer, to:
-
Track Referrals: Identify which players are bringing new users into your experience.
-
Measure Engagement: Monitor which new players join via referral links.
-
Reward Participation: Create incentives for inviters and/or invitees to foster continued engagement.
Key Features
-
Referral Tracking: The system automatically tracks the inviter’s ID via the
ReferredByPlayerIdproperty inGetJoinData(), making it easy to identify and reward referrers. -
Customizable Marketing: Offer badges, in-game currency, or other exclusive perks and showcase the reward via customized icon and reward name in an in-experience banner.
-
Bespoke join experience: For off platform invitees, they will see your experience image when opening the Roblox app and join your experience right away
What’s changed since the beta?
If you’ve already implemented the friend referral API in your game, we’ve made some improvements to the feature to improve its visibility and make it clear to players the benefits of inviting their friends.
First, you can now customize your in-game marketing banner. Head over to the Creator Hub to find your experience; there, you can add an image, a name, and additional details about your reward program.
For players who are considering inviting their friends, we’re adding a tooltip that recommends they invite their friends and makes it clear what reward they’ll get if their friend accepts the invitation.
Note: Changes to the player experience, such as the tooltips and banners, will be rolling out over the next few days.
For people who are invited via the friend referral program and aren’t logged into Roblox yet, they’ll see a preview of your game in the message they receive and when opening the Roblox app.
How to Get Started
Getting started is easy. In Studio, implement the Friend Invite API which will allow you to use the ReferredByPlayerId property of Class.Player:GetJoinData() to track the inviter and invitee relationships. This way, you can be sure to distribute the reward correctly.
Additionally, you can also set up and customize in-game marketing for your referral program in Creator Hub. There, you can select a name for the reward, upload an image to best represent your experience, and share any additional details to encourage more users to participate in your program.
For a step-by-step guide, please refer to this developer documentation. To help you get the most out of your referral program, we have also created a best practices guide included in the developer documentation.
We can’t wait to see how you use the Friend Referral Program!
We’re excited to hear how you use the Friend Referral Program to grow your community, and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Stay tuned for more updates, and get ready to build a more engaging and connected experience for your players!
Start growing your community today! 
THANKS! I LOVE YOU!
