Automated Group Payouts are flawed, but they don't have to be

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to handle group payouts.

As Roblox continues to expand and grow, so too do the many studios present here, and as our many studios grow, more Developers are hired on to help keep them moving. Payment to multiple Developers (anything above 10, assuming they get an even split) becomes an incredibly tedious and difficult task.

Our only options at present are to manually handle the payouts via One-Time Payouts, or use the current Automated Payout system. Option two may sound like it solves the problem, but it’s flawed in how it currently works.

The way the current Automated Payout system is handled is, it calculates the percentages on each individual sale and then immediately tries to send the Robux towards the relevant developer. While this sounds great, it leads to people getting underpaid.

Here is an outline of the issue;
Monty works for Studio Python and is marked for 3% in the Automated Payout system,
Python is selling their Dev Product for 25R.
A player purchases this Dev Product from Python, Roblox then takes their 30%, leaving Studio Python with 17.5R, assuming Roblox rounds up, they end up with 18R. Roblox’s system now tries to calculate how much money is owed to Monty, Roblox rightfully concludes that 3% of 18 is 0.54R

Roblox then decides to either;

  • A) Round up, potentially causing Roblox to ‘generate’ Robux (In this scenario 33Robux would be distributed total if we had 33 Developers at 3% each, unrealistic, but possible)

  • B) Round down, causing these ‘decimal’ funds to be deleted entirely, preventing Monty from being paid.

  • C) direct these funds into Studio Python’s funds instead, as they do not have enough to point them towards Monty, causing Monty to not receive his percentage forcing Python to manually pay it out

While this may not seem significant, it adds up over time. This is especially true for the high volume sales made by many of the larger studios on Roblox. A developer can miss out on a significant amount of their allotted pay due to the inherent flaw in the current system.

My proposed solution is to have Automatic payouts and Escrow for group funds executed in ‘bulk’. Instead of a purchase being immediately sent into a 72 hour escrow, it would be sent into “72 hours from Midnight on the day of purchase” escrow, basically (time_until_midnight+72hours).
Roblox could then distribute the allotted percentages on this ‘bulk fund’ that will be coming out of escrow all at once, as opposed to a per-purchase basis. This would SIGNIFICANTLY mitigate the amount of money/time loss to the end developer and studio. Instead of losing 525 Robux because percentages were calculated on 1000 25R purchases (leaving poor Monty with a bunch of individual .5R), Monty would instead be given his full 525R since the percentage calculation was done on the TOTAL sales for that day.

If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because it would allow Studio Leads to focus on their other duties, and ensure Developers got the pay they’re promised

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#2

Also, it would be handy to be able to calculate it per game. A group could have multiple games and there might be someone who is only hired to do work for the one of the games. With the current system they would be overpaid if the one game doesn’t do well and the another one will be popular.

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#3

While I understand the use of a new system like that, this post is focused on the easier task of trying to repair our current system while we await an improved version such as per-game payouts.

EDIT: Not to mention, without these fixes applied, we’d have the same issues still occuring, just on a per-game basis instead of a per-group basis.

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#4

Check this out, I solved this years ago here and gave away my spreadsheets for free for all to use

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#5

While I recognize we can use workarounds to side-step roblox’s system and do it by hand. We should not NEED to sidestep a system that Roblox has put in place to get the functionality we expect out of Group Payouts. This is a problem that will have to be resolved as more and more people are requesting Per-Game payouts and more studios are popping up. I still greatly appreciate your link though!

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