Avatar Shops are seeing a massive traffic decline

[Offpath]

Starting around mid October, Avatar and Catalog games have experienced massive declines in traffic.

Here’s are some weekly charts showing the impact to all avatar/catalog games. Catalog Avatar Creator is faring the best, though even their traffic is abnormally down by significant margins.

Around the same time this all happened, the first week of November, nearly all of these games abruptly disappeared from the “Top Earning” sort.

The below data table shows the change in weekly visits and average CCUs across every game in the “Avatar Shops” sort. The median change is -75% in visits and -71% in CCUs.

Game	10/2/2023	11/20/2023	Visits Change	10/2/2023	11/20/2023	CCUs Change
Catalog Avatar Creator	24,348,925	19,465,790	-20%	24,445	21,169	-13%
Avatar Outfit Creator	3,524,584	1,726,742	-51%	2,632	1,807	-31%
Faire’s MM2	827,516	566,259	-32%	834	560	-33%
Catalog Avatar Editor	496,382	302,477	-39%	456	324	-29%
ANIME DESIGN	556,203	199,206	-64%	320	114	-64%
LIMITED NOCTURNO VALK	680,599	57,911	-91%	188	12	-94%
Outfit Loader	339,079	378,733	12%	141	153	8%
Avatar Outfits	454,837	156,010	-66%	322	125	-61%
Outfit Loader Testing Place	357,861	185,949	-48%	162	87	-47%
AI Outfit Creator	429,522	103,581	-76%	239	64	-73%
Catalog Avatar Creator Test Update Server	206,828	157,170	-24%	223	185	-17%
Avatar Outfits Ideas	248,826	62,104	-75%	71	21	-71%
Matching Outfits Ideas	258,711	38,425	-85%	149	20	-86%
Matching Avatar Outfits Ideas	213,994	82,831	-61%	81	36	-56%
Preppy Avatar Outfits	197,744	76,240	-61%	112	59	-47%
Matching Avatar Outfits	160,223	57,375	-64%	65	27	-59%
Matching Outfit Ideas	156,823	42,113	-73%	75	22	-71%
Limited LookaLike Copies	148,098	23,528	-84%	46	2	-96%
Matching Outfits	153,055	15,660	-90%	96	7	-93%
Outfit Ideas Shop	121,004	40,926	-66%	69	25	-64%
Girl Avatar Outfits Ideas	135,314	24,836	-82%	36	7	-80%
Envy Avatar Studio	81,759	71,244	-13%	60	52	-12%
Halloween Outfit Ideas	150,498	1,686	-99%	56	1	-99%
Outfit Checker	84,109	64,468	-23%	53	45	-15%
y2k Outfits	111,787	33,895	-70%	34	12	-64%
ENDLESS OUTFITS	129,701	6,621	-95%	54	2	-96%
Outfit Shop	102,591	19,946	-81%	19	4	-77%
Toch Matching Fits	100,235	21,267	-79%	47	10	-78%
GIRL AVATAR OUTFITS	101,644	13,264	-87%	39	4	-90%
[GIRL] CUTE CHEAP OUTFITS	90,202	17,437	-81%	28	6	-78%
Clout Baddies Outfit Idea Shop	75,600	16,788	-78%	23	7	-67%
WKC OUTFIT DESIGN	68,719	14,887	-78%	31	8	-74%
[GIRL] HEADLESS OUTFITS	70,348	12,545	-82%	20	5	-74%
[BOY] HEADLESS OUTFITS	68,774	13,238	-81%	18	5	-72%
Tactical outfits ideas	64,351	16,019	-75%	16	6	-60%
Foreign Outfit Ideas / Trendy Avatar Shop	41,306	25,915	-37%	12	8	-33%
Trendy Avatar Outfits	53,092	5,470	-90%	16	2	-88%
Avatar Customizer	33,889	18,583	-45%	44	30	-32%
[+300] Buchones Outfits	28,464	20,023	-30%	14	23	70%
Outfit Ideas Mall�	38,385	9,893	-74%	9	2	-73%
Da Hood Fits	41,537	6,056	-85%	12	2	-81%
Avatar Ideas	41,639	2,703	-94%	14	1	-93%
[UPDATE] Preppy con Outfits	32,185	11,058	-66%	8	3	-61%
[CHRISTMAS UPDATE] Matching Outfit Ideas	27,554	14,147	-49%	9	5	-41%
Matching Outfits For Girls	25,027	14,984	-40%	7	4	-42%
[+500 FITS] R6 CORE	22,630	3,411	-85%	7	2	-78%
Dolls Matching Outfits!	18,187	2,634	-86%	8	1	-87%
Catalog Tester (Online Marketplace)	16,148	3,503	-78%	12	6	-46%
MATCHING OUTFITS IDEAS	12,079	3,307	-73%	5	2	-68%
MATCHING OUTFIT IDEAS HOMESTORE	13,665	1,349	-90%	4	0	-93%
R6 Avatar Ideas	13,638	1,232	-91%	1	-	-100%
Wrynx Outfits Shop	12,910	1,773	-86%	5	1	-80%
UGC Notifier	9,866	833	-92%	3	1	-72%

Can we please get acknowledgement that this is happening, is not unique to a single game but the genre as a whole, and some sort of detail as to why these changes took place.

Expected behavior

Please, return our traffic (and our revenue).

[bvetterdays (roman)]

This is likely some sort of stupid algorithm change which is nothing new for Roblox. All I’ll say is good luck getting this fixed… you’ll need it

Roblox’s Algorithm Changes Are Killing Our Game

Introduction I run a team of 4 full time developers and a rotating team of part-time contractors called Ruddev Media. We’ve been responsible for many projects throughout the years but the project that our team has depended on over the last 4 years has been Bad Business. This is an FPS game that has 390 million visits, been featured in platform-wide events (Egg Hunt 2021, Ready Player Two), and was initially funded by Roblox in part of the Accelerator Program. Starting sometime in mid-late Apri…

[AxlezDev]

I wonder if it’s intentional or not. I could see it likely being a fix, since in the recent past a lot of my front page has been taken up by avatar and clothing games, which now doesn’t happen a lot. They were even being put in my recommended when I have never joined one before

[Offpath]

That seems very plausible. They created a dedicated “Avatar Shops” sort right around the same time this occurred, except nobody uses the Discover (sorts) page and just sticks to Home (algorithm). Maybe while they were killing off algo traffic to Avatar games, they created the sort as a consolation prize?

[Evanbear1]

Yup, we’ve seen a massive decline in our game Avatar Outfit Creator. It started happening as soon as we were added to the Avatar Shop sort.

[2xA_Imagineer95 (2xA)]

Hm, it’s almost like putting catalog games inside of a catalog makes the game useless . Seriously, the catalog is so stupid at this point… There’s no way this is a bug, just Roblox screwing people over as usual.

[Evanbear1]

No, we’re talking about the Avatar Shop Sort that’s on the Discover page, not the one inside of the catalog that they’re showing to an extremely small subset of users.

[2xA_Imagineer95 (2xA)]

Even still, an entire category dedicated to shopping isn’t very appealing, especially for kids.

[Offpath]

Update on the traffic decline across the entire Avatar Shops sort from the week of 9/24 - 9/30 compared to 11/26 - 12/2.

[Offpath]

Related issue but with the new analytics dashboards we can see exactly how much of daily sales are being withheld on catalog games:

[KnightGaladeld]

Thank you for your bug report. We’ve identified and fixed the issue. You should see improvements to your impressions in your analytics dashboard.

We’re conducting a post-mortem to learn and prevent future occurrences. Your feedback was crucial in this process, and we appreciate your support.

[Reditect]

Hi,

I’ve been researching various issues such as this one. Could you go more in-depth about how an issue like this happens? Maybe a term in the description being flagged wrong or just a genre declining in popularity? How would Roblox know?

Showing drastic drops by pulling analytics and reporting it seems like the only way to fix this. At least for us developers.

Of course, you can’t please everyone and give everyone success. I see posts by staff speaking on rankings and ‘fixing’ issues games have in the algorithm.

From what it sounds like, any game on the platform could be getting ‘shadow banned’ or have a bug related to discovery, without the creator even knowing why or how to fix it. That’s quite a scary thought.

Best,
Reditect