Creator AMA (RDC 2024) with Nick and Tian [September 19, 2024]

While I have this opportunity, I’d like to address the following:

In My Longer Response to "Discovery on Roblox: Past, Present, and Future Vision", I point out the flaws in Roblox’s current discovery system while detailing how Filters & Tags would improve it.

Filters & Tags is an industry standard when it comes to content discovery. Why is it not on Roblox? Is the core value of “tak[ing] the long view” the hold up? I fear this is a particular decision by someone at Roblox to stray away from transparency and user action in favor of ‘Semantic Search’, which I deem to be a flawed vision.

Imagine Filtering by Price (hopefully robux or USD), Server Size, Genre, etc. Not just one sort made by Roblox. That’s the system for 10 percent of the gaming market. That’s the system for a billion users.

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Will Android be seeing Future lighting and Depth of Field relatively soon?

(~ a sober user stuck with mobile rendering)

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What does the future of UGC look like on the platform with respect to game compatibility? You mentioned new scaling controls, but how robust will this really be given how inventive creators are? Is there any tech ready to talk about at this point?

Right now, there seems to be an unstoppable problem with people bypassing avatar accessories and clothing to the point where games are now starting to simply outright turn off UGC. This is the new “cat and mouse” problem. We can imagine systems such as “separated categories for standardized versus outlandish UGC” + “multiple avatars” + “games choosing the type of UGC they allow”, but what direction does Roblox plan to pursue? Will we only be getting stronger scaling and hitbox controls, or are there other ideas currently in motion?

With giant spongebobs in the sky, it’s hard to imagine one generic avatar scaling solution will be enough.

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When will we be able to upload dynamic heads to groups?

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Hey there! Always like seeing these.

Can you tell us a bit about the new voxel lighting grid coming next year and occlusion culling, which is scheduled still for this year?

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My other question about the Shopify x Roblox integration is below

** When do you guys plan to post information regarding payment splits? (or any other associated fees?) **

I imagine there is a lot of parties that all want a cut of each sale (Shopify, Roblox, Appstores, etc) so I’m curious how this dilutes the creator’s margins.

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Hey there, is there any plan to add a new API for planar/screen space reflection or proper cubemap reflections? The current one we have for indoor environment mapping is very outdated and visually looks very inaccurate.

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Last q&a, you guys said PBR was coming soon for UGC accessories. It’s been a while and we still haven’t received any updates. Is there any timeline for that?

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What plans are there to increase user privacy over the next year? At RDC, a Streamer Mode was teased for Star Creators, and while it’s a great first step, I’d love to see this mindset applied across the entire platform. The amount of harassment I’ve gotten for having a little blue Verified icon next to my username is ridiculous.

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Hey Nick and Tian!

Now that Roblox seems to be giving more to paid access games, will we ever be allowed to advertise paid games via sponsorships? I’d love to work on more involved projects but having to purely advertise on off-site platforms (twitter, tiktok, etc.) tends to be a hit and miss if we have to purely rely on 3rd party algorithms and people remembering that the game exists.

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Will the 3D Foundational Model be able to generate individual assets by itself?

From the demo it looks like it kitbashes already created assets to create a whole environment + editing certain properties.

I’m just confused if it can create those assets by itself. Rather than only doing world-building with them.

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As a reminder, we are only answering questions related to what we announced at RDC this year. You can check out the DevForum, our documentation, or Creator Roadmap for other topics.

Additionally, please remember to keep your questions brief and ask one question per comment.

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I still don’t get why youtubers get access to those updates but developers don’t…

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Are there plans for the future, to improve the lightning system? Perhaps after android gets future is bright update, could we expect to see higher quality shadows appear on desktop devices?

Roblox’s 2010-2012 shadows had a better resolution compared to what we have today, once properly optimized, could we expect to see higher resolution shadows come to roblox engine?

We already got high quality shadows for the dynamic lightning but not the sunlight-shadows

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Can we see Deadly Dark Dominus become limited

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With the ability to make Roblox-based shorts and posts on Roblox coming soon, could we see a feed section for these shorts and posts made by all users? Basically, like a social media section?

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how about groups are there plans to let users only get acces to one experience trough a creatorhub role and will there a option for the roles to be visible in the group

ai sumary if you dont understant my reply
Will there be plans to allow users to access only a specific experience through a Creator Hub role? Additionally, will there be an option to make these roles visible within the group?

this my only custion i could ask cuz its 10pm now by me

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Hi everyone! I have a question regarding the new feature about paid access games for real currency. Since the sunsetting of user ads, there’s currently no way to advertise ANY paid access experience. This has been a major setback for my team and me, as we’ve been working full-time on a paid access experience for 3 years. I want to ask if paid access games for real currency will be allowed to be advertised on Roblox, and hopefully, games using Robux can be advertised as well. I’m really looking forward to this because, at the moment, it’s very difficult to launch a paid access project.

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Are there plans, aside from the new improved revenue split and USD pricing, to make paid access experiences more sensible/worthwhile for developers?

For example: lowering the minimum from 9.99 USD, regional pricing, not disabling engagement based payouts etc.

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Hey, thanks so much for doing another AMA.

Back in May I asked about the possibility of more transparency between UGC staff → creators, and opening up a ‘top’ UGC creator server where we can forward issues, set up office hours, etc.

UGC is currently extremely volatile and once again we have an even worse lack of communication from staff. Has there been any developments on the UGC teams end in fixing this connection since we last spoke?

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