As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to market my game at a higher price point.
During last RDC it was announced that ‘paid access’ would be updated to let developers sell their games for USD and at higher price points. However, the lack of marketing features and customizability of your game/experience page is going to make it incredibly difficult for developers to market their game at a 50USD price point, especially considering almost all profitable, competing Roblox games are free-to-play.
How will developers entice players to spend up to 50 dollars up-front before they can play their game when Roblox offers very few features for users to make informed purchase decisions? Roblox is currently a decade behind other platforms when it comes to describing/visualizing your game to potential customers. And especially given the existing culture of 99% of Roblox games being free to play, it will be easy for users to “play is safe” and join a free game instead of spending money on buying a mystery game.
Roblox currently only offers the following ‘marketing’ features on game pages to help users make an informed decision:
- 30 second trailers
- Thumbnails
- Text-only game description
- Age guidelines
- Server size
- Social links
Out of these features, I would only consider the trailers, thumbnails and text-only game descriptions to be effective features that help users make informed decisions. With these features it can be difficult to answer many of the questions users may have, such as:
- Can I play this game with my friends or not?
- What do other players think of this game?
- Does the game have micro-transactions?
- Is this game actively being updated?
- Can I play this with a gamepad if I’m on PC?
- Will my old phone struggle to play this game?
Competing platforms such as Steam, the Epic Games store, itch, the Google Play Store and more offer features that help answer those questions, such as:
- Game reviews
- Update logs
- Longer trailers
- Game tags
- More granular ratings (i.e. 1-5 stars)
- System requirements
On top of that, those platforms may offer additional features that make users feel more comfortable spending money on a game, for example by allowing the developer to upload a demo or by offering refunds if the user hasn’t spent more than 2 hours playing the game.
I have personally felt a lot more comfortable spending 30 dollars on a game on these platforms than spending even just 400 robux on a paid access game on Roblox. I believe that better tools are needed to help make informed purchase decisions for more expensive paid access games to find success on the platform.
In short, Roblox currently offers very few features that will help developers market their more expensive games to users. If users cannot make an informed decision they will likely stick to playing free-to-play alternatives on the platform. The introduction of more and better tools for developers to show users what their game is about, will help drive more traffic and sales towards those more expensive paid-access games, ensuring better success for paid access games in the future.