Hi Creators,
Just in time for peak usage and concurrency in the holiday season, we are launching several new tools today to help make your events and updates more customizable. We’re also continuing to test ways to make events and updates more visible on the experience details page.
A newly unified ‘Events and Updates’ system
When managing your experience in Creator Hub, there’s now a unified “Events & Updates” tab, your one-stop destination to customize and promote both events and updates for your experience.
Updates refer to permanent upgrades or changes you may implement into your experience, such as a new game level, new feature, or new item. Events, on the other hand, are usually seasonal or short-term. You can use this new system for both events and updates, such as a short-term holiday item drop or a long-term core gameplay update.
New, deeper customizations
Launch users straight into the action with a customized join flow
Now, you can use a unique EventID in GetJoinData to customize the join flow for users entering through your event or update. This means you can modulate state - for example, if someone joins the ‘town hall festival’, you could immediately teleport them straight to the town hall.
You can imagine doing all sorts of things with this - teleporting users, showing UI, giving items, or anything else. Check out the documentation on how this feature works.
Here’s an example of a user joining via the event and seeing a special bundle related to the event
Express the details of your event/update with richer metadata
We have also released richer metadata fields for you to define exactly what it is that you’re promoting. This includes new categories to select from and a new subtitle field.
Ongoing testing to boost discovery of your events and updates
Your events and updates deserve to be seen.
We shared earlier that we’ve been running experiments in which we’ve more prominently shown all events created on the experience details page to a portion of user traffic. We initially tested this with desktop users and we’ve now expanded the test to mobile users as well.
We’re encouraged by some early promising results and wanted to share them with you.
- One upcoming winter event has broken records and has already seen 1.5M+ RSVPs.
- Twin Atlas, whose team built some hit experiences like Creators of Sonaria, Dragon Adventures, and Drive World shared that:
“Our Roblox events get 5-10x the signups after being featured on the experience page. We haven’t seen engagement this strong with traditional marketing off-Roblox.”
Users will see your event or update on the experience details page. Currently in experiment.
Richer metadata in the events detail page
In the new year, we will wrap up testing on the experience details page and kick off a new set of tests to explore more ways to boost visibility of your events and updates.
How to make the most of the new unified events & updates system
Here’s what you can do to engage users during this holiday season and beyond.
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Create a limited time promotional event for your update from the unified “Events & Updates” page in Creator Hub.
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Add unique metadata that specifically describes your event or update, separate from your experience’s more general description. You’ll find:
- A new set of categories that allows you to tell your audience what kind of updates you are promoting, like a “new map,” “early access,” or “content update.”
- A new subtitle field where you can provide a short, catchy tagline to educate your users about your current update.
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Track performance with annotations for your events and updates in Creator Analytics.
These creator tools are now available to all creators and described here in detail.
FAQs
Is publishing an event a factor in the recommendation algorithms?
Indirectly, yes. Events when thoughtfully put together help re-engage users. We value that re-engagement behavior in our recommendation algorithms.
What are the new event and update categories?
- New Content
- Item Drop
- New Season
- New Location
- New Map
- More Levels
- New Features
- Early Access
- Expansion
- Challenge
- Quest
- Festival
What about Experience Update Notifications?
Users who RSVP to your event or update receive an in-app notification at the start, with mobile users also getting a push notification.
The old Experience Updates page where you could send an in-app notification to your followers will remain available until Q1. You can still access this page by starting to create a new update or event.
Beginning in Q1, we will automate this and followers of your experience will also be eligible to receive automated in-app notifications about your events or updates.
Notifications are auto-localized to both users who RSVP and your followers.