Best Practices for Collaboration

#1

Hey Developers,

We are excited to see collaboration and teamwork between developers on the rise and wanted to take a moment to issue an abridged list of best practices to keep in mind when partnering with other developers. Below is a short list of practices that are particularly important when teaming up with other Roblox developers.

  1. Do your homework. When collaborating with other developers, please do your research into their history before you sign any contract, do any work, accept any payment, etc.
  2. Have they used the Developer Exchange program before?
  3. Does the developer own a robux earning game?
  4. Are they in the Developer Forum?
  5. Do they have any incidents in their past that give you cause for concern?
  6. What does a Google, Twitter, or Developer Forum search tell you about them?
  7. Learn more about the project. You want to know exactly what you’re working on - otherwise, how can you ensure your contributions to the project fit?
  8. Ensure originality. Learn more about this topic at the following article (Reminder about IP)

The first tip is especially important for people who are doing contracted work and being paid directly by another developer. Please keep in mind, receiving Robux from an illegitimate source can prevent you from being able to use the Developer Exchange program.

Thanks,
The Roblox Team

Update to Developer Forum Entry Process
[RCD] ROBLOX Community Developers
November 2018 Recap: Keeping Up With the Developer Community
#2

Don’t use this as a catch-all. Sometimes a DevForum member uses DevForum Membership as a “look I’m a good person” only to screw you over.

I’ve had experiences, okay.

Some other good practices. Never pay early for something. That’s ridiculous, because for everything and anything they can show you what they’ve made without giving it to you, so they have no reason to claim you’ll ‘steal’ it without paying.

#3

Not to mention there are very competent and adept developers who simply don’t bother joining the devforum. This isn’t a very good pointer.
Same thing imo with if they’ve made a Robux-earning game, or if they’ve used DevEx before. There are very good developers out there who haven’t bothered to work on their own fully-fledged game.

Some of this is reasonable but some of it is also a bit misleading, a developer doesn’t need to be a part of the developer forum or be earning money from the platform to be trustworthy/skilled in what you might be looking for. Looking for developers is really much more of a case-by-case basis and although some of these are true I feel like a few of them are a bit out-of-place.

Maybe I’m making too much of a big deal out of this /shrug

#4

An important point to remember is have fun! If you can’t have fun working on the project it will make it significantly more difficult to do.

#5

I think the point is that these are like “good” practices. Of course there are people who haven’t DevEx’ed who are good, and people who aren’t in the DevForum that are good. I think the biggest reminder to be made from the OP is that if all of these check out, you should be in good hands. Or even, a good majority of these.

#6

This is why I strictly only accept payment in the form of USD. Ive had several users attempt to hire me and pay me off through the R$ used in limiteds, which means that if I accepted the pay then I would have worked for nothing an essentially been scammed.

Where as physical money is regards. Things become a lot more serious and scamming is subjectable to legal punishment, as it should be. That and I also don’t have to go through a third party and pray my history isn’t tainted to get paid. cough devex cough

And lastly, im a contractor not a roblox developer, therefore i don’t use virtual currency to buy or pay for things. And I encourage other developers to start doing the same.

#7

ehem Me.

I’m pretty good at what I do, but I find working on a project on my own really hard so I don’t really have any completed solo projects – for years I’ve essentially been looking for a team that can pull their weight and keep working on the game, but I never seem to find one. Literally every team project I have joined has died haha.

Anyway, I don’t think checking if someone has been successful in the past is a very good indicator in most cases. Maybe if you’re looking for someone who will be working on a really important project it might come in handy, but otherwise it shouldn’t be an issue as long as they are good at what they do.

#8

I appreciate this thread being made, but it feels lackluster. This doesn’t necessarily provide practices, rather tips, on how you can do your research first before taking up a request. Yes, this is good and all - it wouldn’t be wise to jump into something without knowing the full extent of what you’re going to be working with. What of the developers then? I think a lot of them - not to throw shade - could use pointers on how to appropriately structure their own Collaboration requests beyond the informational threads.

I have seen… some very terribly written requests being posted there. Inane time constraints (i.e. "show progress every x hours/days of the week), horrible payment rates (less than 50% to contribute to a majority off the game, no upfront payments for completed work, no offer to take alternative payment, etc.), lack of appropriate information (how long, how much to be done, what needs to be done, etc.) and several other requests in the same “bad” nature. It would be nice to either remind people of the existence of those sticky threads, expand their information or grant us some kind of post to help us form better recruitment requests.

If the thread is going to be named Best Practices for Collaboration, then it should be accommodating for both the employer and the contractor.

#9

We appreciate all of the feedback on this topic. It was intentionally written in a high level format as we are unable to focus on all of the great specific scenarios previously mentioned here.

This is a perfect opportunity for developers to note those specific scenarios to help others learn more about them.

#10

Also think about how you work with others. I’ve realized one thing I’m bad at is making sure I’m up to date with communication with people I work with.

There might be areas where you could improve personally to be easier to work with. It’s not always the other person’s problems :slight_smile: