I was wondering what people’s thoughts are about charging a token amount to access my game. I was hoping this would reduce or eliminate fake reviews and ratings as well as keep bots from entering servers.
If it’s a very good game with excellent description and screenshots would I get players?
How important is it in terms of revenue that players enter a game completely free?
Thanks!
Edited to say R$25 instead of R$1.
IIRC the minimum is 25 robux, so you wouldn’t be able to.
I believe there is a minimum of 25 
for paid access games.
Ok so does the idea work though? Does charging a small fee keep botters and fake reviews down or does it just scare away a good % of the players?
Seems like a good idea if you don’t want your game botted. The fake reviews most likely would be solved but 1 robux isn’t a lot so it’s not really guaranteed but on the other hand 1 robux is alot for the people who don’t have any which prevents some players from playing the game.
You will lose all of your free playerbase. No one without robux will ever join your game. This will reflect in your “Playing” count, so you need to make sure your game is high-quality with a lot of replayabillity/runtime to avoid critical drops in “Playing” counts.
I understand it would effect key metrics. Games like Jailbreak don’t do it. I wonder if there are Jailbreak sized games though who do. The question I suppose is related to player/market research.
A popular game that is paid access is Vesteria. They have nearly 300k sales on their game.
People are willing to pay for games like Vesteria becuase it’s made by a team of already popular developers, and is known for “pushing the limits of Roblox”.
It might not work out so well for smaller game developers.
True. Another example is Roses, the horror game. I believe it won/nominated for a Bloxy recently and it is paid access.
To answer your question, yes 25 
will remove the issue of bots. Whether or not you’ll gain any players to a paid access game depends on whether or not your game is appealing in many aspects, including uniqueness.
However, you will most likely lose a fair amount of revenue in doing so, probably enough to make dealing with bots worth it (just a guess, no metrics to prove). There are many players who passionately disagree with paid access games on Roblox because you just have a Roblox game. You will receive commentary from these people as well.
Not worth it. You shouldn’t sacrifice a potential playerbase by locking your game with paid access simply to combat bots. If your game is popular enough, your volume of likes will very easily diminish those created by bot accounts.
When it comes to paid access, it should be used more with your market approach in mind rather than as a guard against something inevitable. Paid access is often used to support developers early, test markets and incentivise early plays with some rewards after it faces public release. Payment helps keep your support circle small in the beginning and not have to deal with a large market before you’ve had a chance to address everything you want before then.
If one of the approaches of your game is to have it in paid access mode permanently (which is completely acceptable as a game as well), then hooray for bots not being able to get in but it also fits in with the scope of your game. Rather than making users pay because some exploiters outside just have that kind of boredom and see entertainment in the downfall of others, use it because it fits in line with the direction and visions you have for your game.
Visuals are definitely something that capture a player’s attention, so use them wisely. The game details page isn’t too featureful as of right now and I don’t believe many players actually spend the time to look at it, but something that looks interesting will capture interest and produce attention. Use the game details page as a means of drawing players in.
With regards to an excellent description: be mindful of how you use it. Unfortunately it’s one of the only ways of conveying information to players but be sure to get the main point of your game down first and foremost, as per the intended use of a game description. Get the point down in a few words or less; put things you know players will want to see before entering a game.
Welcome to Bloxburg is an excellent example of a paid access game that knows how to roll. Check out its description. It’s quick, it nails the point of the game with simple terms and there aren’t a whole lot of words to be concerned about trying to read.
Ultimately, it’s your choice what you intend to do and it’s nice to receive feedback, but take these responses more as advice and recommendations from others than something to be believed at face value. The greatest weight in this decision is yourself and being able to recognise the consequences of each action you put to motion will help you better decide what is appropriate to do here.
Good luck on your game.
Wow. Thank you for taking the time to provide a detailed and thought provoking response! After doing some looking around I noticed Bloxburg is the only paid access game listed above that has a fairly high player count. Perhaps that is related to the genre, perhaps it’s the entry fee. Either way thank you all for your time. I will most likely release my game without a fee. I’m thinking it isn’t worth missing out on the free players who may play the game and then decide to spend later on upgrades. There is always the possibility that bots will be kicked from the platform in a different way in the future.