Creator AMA (Economy) - with Antoni and Enrico [May 22, 2024]

[idelww]

Hey there, I got 2 questions related to Creator Store & Marketplace. I’m going to put them into 2 parts. and give some explaination of some ideas I had related to these questions, which the Roblox platform would benefit from.

1. Right now all avatar items are permanently uploaded into the catalog. Are there any plans on letting us refund people in the future & having these permanently deleted off the catalog? Or, another option, would be allowing us to permanently take these items off sale, make them hidden in the catalog, and only have a visible page to users who purchased them prior to the removal & also make sure this won’t have any bad impact upon those trying to get rid of Copyrighted Material they uploaded years ago.

[Evercyan (Cyan)]

Hi Antoni and Enrico! I only have one question for you all today, and that relates to Gear items on the catalog.

Since their inception in 2009, Roblox has released over 1,900 gears to the catalog, with the most recent gear being uploaded almost five years ago. Players have purchased, traded, and sold millions of copies of Gears, and there is still demand for this feature, as seen with high demand Gears like “From the Vault” series and Periastrons for their special avatar poses and effects, selling for over 100 million robux in their lifetimes.

Gears have been subject to several bugs recently, from not showing their true appearance in 3D mode, to the grip of them being wonky (e.g. “Dual Illumina”'s left sword not welding to your left hand), and Gears overall have felt like a feature that is important to the history of Roblox that is hardly being supported today, since their main selling point was that you could use them in-game in several different environments and types of experiences, from Social hangouts, to both Fighting and Sports tournaments.

Can we expect Gears to be revamped in the near future, possibly to a brand new type of accessory that you can wear in-games? And possibly even UGC support for their own ‘props’?

Currently, UGC Creators have to create Jackets and various layered clothing items to have handheld items they can wear in-game, like swords and plushies. These don’t work in experiences that are R6-only, and just feel janky as a whole with little customization (say, switching it from your right arm to your left arm, or putting it on your back, and so on.)

I appreciate the feedback given, since the community has a lot of confusion around what’s happening to both Gears and Classic Faces, and UGC creators would love to have an official system to support the economy for props and merchandise you can take along with you!

[Raki3dd (Raki)]

Hello Antoni and Enrico! Thank you for organizing this AMA. My question is: What are the best practices to maximize revenue when selling 3D items on the platform?

Wait for your response!

[xyrafrost]

We are able to archive certain asset types. Archiving is an important feature as it is the only way to effectively “remove” an asset from the platform, and helps with inventory organization.

Currently, we can only archive Decals, MeshParts, Audio, and Video.
Are there any plans to let us archive more asset types, most importantly avatar items (classic clothing, 3D accessories/clothing, bodies/heads)?

The fact that there is no easy way for creators to remove avatar items is currently a big problem, especially with moderation. You could’ve uploaded something years ago which is now:

• Against the rules due to TOS changes
• Copyright-infringing, but you didn’t know at the time
• Just not something you’d want public anymore

and you have no easy way to remove the item from Roblox, all you can do is wait for moderation to impact you.

[MisterRedTurtle (Red)]

Hey! Please make sure you limit your questions to one per comment! Thank you!

[ImDeeco (Deeco)]

Hi ! Is it planned that price of free UGC per stock limited goes back to where it was?

Its really hard for us small creators to push up our imaginations with this insanely expensive fees. What I mean is not everyone have millions robux to spend on this.

For exemple we are working on a big free ugc event for the platform which was going pretty great until we needed to lower the stock from 1000 to 100 for almost the same price, this is so unfair… Please make a change or atleast answer why was this needed at all.

[MainHex (Hex)]

Why is there no deletion button on items like UGC, Shirts, etc… Cause it would be helpful to delete stuff on our own then go to Roblox Support and ask to delete it and sometimes we ask and its doesn’t delete it.

[Blizzei]

WIll there be a chance for body bundle’s modesty layer being at least not visible when wearing 2d clothing being an option?
I’ve found that a lot of people dislike the modesty layer for body bundles and that it makes it difficult or impossible to make outfits that include 2d clothing for lower torso modesty layer and even 3d clothing sometimes if the upper torso modesty layer is present.
I feel like this could be done by a separate image object inserted that is named specifically “modesty layer” that layers ontop of the other texture layers which would make people way more likely to buy body bundles and actually use them

[BlueEhinas (GreenEhinas)]

if roblox allowed creator and community have unlimited free ugc limited stock in future ever?

make it only non-resellable

[shadowflame63 (MiniiMann)]

At the moment developer product purchase history isn’t tracked for experiences by default as stated here on the Creator Hub Documentation:

Having a built-in service or API to access developer product history for products owned by that experience would prevent the need to set up DataStores for tracking this, and be incredibly useful for providing support for cases where the purchase fails or the player isn’t happy with their purchase. Also potentially adding metadata to product receipts at the time of purchase would be useful for providing extra information about that purchase. Would such a thing ever be added?

Another tool recently added that is similar to this is the banning API, which removes the needs for developers to set up DataStores to track banned players and retrieve info about why and how long they were banned for.

[DuskEnjoysFlowers (Dusk)]

Since I was asked to put them into individual messages

1. Do you have any plans to lower the current 100 robux per stock fee? As right now it’s barely sustainable for UGC Creators to make profit off their items.

[Melecody]

Do you guys plan to Lower the Limited Fees for Regular Limited UGC items or add a rebate to Limiteds of some sort that have high stock and are not selling out?
(Example)
Creator Pays 10,000 robux up to publish a Regular Limited UGC (189 dollars through buying robux) puts stock at 3000, All of these copies will not sell out, meaning the publishing rebates are pretty useless, as the creator wont earn back all of the revenue, as there is no way for a creator to promote these items and sell them out fast, Will there be a feature that will help creators that publish these limited items with high stock get their money back considering the hefty price of publishing a limited item accessory.

[VegetationBush (FartedWayTooHard)]

What actions will be taken to crack down on predatory monetization strategies within experiences (e.g., paid lootboxes with lousy percentages, gambling)?

[younite]

Wih the introduction of public ugc, items using copied Roblox IP have become more rampant than ever. Roblox has reiterated many times that they will be tackling these copies (https://devforum.roblox.com/t/taking-action-on-copies-of-roblox-created-limiteds/2226390), however it seems that these ‘ban waves’ tackle very little items, and many copies are still able to stay up. It is extremely infuriating to see some UGC creators get away scot-free by making clones of popular Roblox items, while us creators following the rules have to put up with the inevitability of our original creations being immediately overshadowed by a reupload of an existing Roblox-created item. When will Roblox finally devote to cracking down on these items once and for all, and create a level playing field, where only original creations can thrive?
“Our guidelines and policies prohibit the copying of Roblox items”

[Maxxell]

2. Is Roblox okay with users acting as vigilante moderators, using the European illegal content reporting form to take down popular items? Large UGC creators have been affected like this, such as Reverse_Polarity and Blizzei, the latter who was actually terminated (unterminated now) over this abuse.

[GaelPaws (gael)]

Will there ever be an official and effective method of reporting copies of Roblox-made items? Currently, there’s been an abundance of exact replicas of highly valuable Roblox items and there’s no way to report them. The only way these items get deleted is if a moderator happens to come across it, and lots of them do manage to get away.

[Clxzed]

Since I see @MisterRedTurtle is here, I have a specific question: What are your plans to optimize the community feedback program? I’ve noticed that the main group being accepted are popular developers and this is extremely inefficient in what was stated to be the sole purpose, helping get community feedback. I’d recommend doing more polls on changes so that you can get the wider opinion, rather than the tone-deaf, unknowledgeable opinion.

[Rockerite]

Roblox recently released an amazing analytics page for avatar items. While this is incredibly useful, it can be difficult to view the analytics of individual avatar items. Are there any plans to introduce individual analytics for avatar items?

[KaranBlox (Karan)]

1 and 2. the question is related to each other. My other question:

Classic heads and classic faces be included in the UGC program future?

[WhoseTrade]

As the catalog continues to rapidly grow, individual item’s performances begin to suffer, especially in relation to cold starting new releases

are there any plans to manually curate sorts on the catalog to showcase high quality, original creations to give these underappreciated items a boost in visibility? (think of a Today’s Picks but for avatar accessories)