Creator Documentation: Subscription Design

Updates Announcements
#1

Hi Creators!

I’m back with new content to help you concept and design subscriptions.

Our team is excited to share our new Subscription Design article where you can learn about some key design concepts, best practices, and use cases for subscriptions, including:

  • Earning and maintaining user trust
  • Providing clear value
  • Designing engaging subscriptions content
  • Bundles, Memberships, Season Passes

Leverage these concepts in ways that fit your unique creative vision and cater to your specific players.

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Stay tuned for more relevant content like this, including topics on LiveOps Planning and Early Access Best Practices!

We welcome your feedback to help us improve future content, so please comment any questions or concerns below. Thank you for all of your incredible creations!

WizardCow47

83 Likes
Subscriptions within experiences: Livetopia Implementation
#2

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#3

This video is very good for new developers which it can help them.

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#4

We really don’t need more subscription services.

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#5

I do not see how ROBLOX subscriptions are going to be good. For a start, why can users not purchase subscriptions in robux like they would for private servers? Also, for private servers, you can auto-renew, so why is subscribers required to too pay in real world currency?

Also, if they don’t have the funds to auto-renew it should be cancelled like Private Servers, but oh wait take it out of parents bank monthly until they notice. Developers don’t even get the real world money, we would be getting it in Robux - so why not permit robux sales?

Another case of ROBLOX decisions being poor when they want to limit the audience here. Either way, I think subscriptions are an awful idea when players will literally forget what games they have subscribed to and would be billed monthly until they see they’ve been charged.

47 Likes
New benefits for adding subscriptions within your experience
#6

Theoretically a good feature for developers, of course, but uhh… as a consumer… I sure can’t wait to pay monthly for VIP when it used to be a one-time purchase for game perks. It’s going to suck when games transition over to monthly subscriptions, too, because then they’ll likely disable the old one-time VIP Game Pass in favor for a monthly payment model.

Yes, it’s good for developers.
It’s disastrous for consumers, especially for young children on Roblox.

This feature could be used for good in some rare cases, though, and I hope those cases remain rare. I hope games don’t transition to entirely subscription-based benefits. :frowning:

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#7

This tutorial mentions providing regular content updates for subscribers but the rules around subscriptions disallow developers from changing benefits. This creates a pitfall for developers since if they add a new benefit and then determine it is too ‘overpowered’, they are then locked into providing that benefit forever, subscriptions in their current form are too restrictive because of stuff like this.

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#8

Is currency earned from subscriptions given directly to you via DevEx or is it converted into it’s equivalent value in Robux?

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#9

Not to subtract from the topic, but can we please have a subcategory of #updates specifically for these? It’s impossible to find older posts about these + it puts non-release content into the webhook that hundreds of discord servers are subscribed to, expecting new platform features.

22 Likes
#12

Woohoo, can’t wait for games to become even more P2W and predatory of their audiences. Looking at you, @BuildIntoGames. I think this would be better if they were Robux purchases, too. As others have said, these costing real money but returning Robux revenue instead of actual revenue is a joke. I hope I never see these in games and I’m not gonna use them.

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#13

Yay, more ways to get the soul and money out of people.

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#14

Makes zero sense to not have this feature utilize the main currency of the platform.

In any case, I do agree that I’ll be avoiding experiences utilizing this on a P2W basis. ROBLOX is already difficult as is when it comes to monetization overpowering creativity in experiences.

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#15

Well, we all saw this coming. Some people will love it. Makes them more money. Some people will hate it. Makes them more broke.

And then, there’s people who just want to play games with their friends for free. Guess we don’t want that no more.

Sad times in the leaf village.

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#16

Who is going to be invested enough in a single roblox game that they will pay a reoccurring subscription for items in it? Don’t most players on roblox play a vast number of games? And this needs to use robux, that way your spending of actual currency is more controlled and managable

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#17

This is a great and informative tutorial on how to make subscriptions succeed for new Developers. These Subscriptions allow us developers to enable a new type of monetization and allow for reoccurring payments for in-game rewards. This is a great feature as it allows the player to have a diverse choice when choosing what to spend their money on.

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#18

Whole reason why the subscription model exists is in the hope that the consumer forgets and gets charged extra for a service they may not use.

You get “extra” per month when people forget.

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#19

We don’t need more subscription services. They are predatory. Roblox Premium and private servers are the most that are ok. -50/10

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#20

Subscriptions.
Idea sounds good on paper, but likely not as good in practice.

Games shouldn’t have subscriptions, bad actors are just going to abuse the hell out of it to squeeze every bit of money out of their games.

Slowly moving towards a dystopia where you don’t own anything you buy and where everything is temporary.
Do we honestly really want games where you lose your skins and items if you stopped paying for them every month?

After losing interest in a game you will probably forget you were subscribed to it in the first place and soon start to question why you’re being charged by a service you aren’t using.
If you subscribed to multiple games you’ll likely have to set up reminders and spend time managing your subscriptions.

Roblox already has a subscription service called Premium.

It already does a decent job at what it’s supposed to do.

A single subscription service you can cancel any time.
Devs can choose to give you benefits like double points in games and earn Robux with it without requiring the player to buy any gamepasses or products just as long as their account is premium.

The subscription service we have already is good enough, we honestly don’t need in-game subscriptions as well.
That would be a subscription service on a platform that already has a subscription service, perhaps getting a little too meta, aren’t we?

I normally don’t like being pessimistic but I really have my doubts on subscription services.
Just look at companies like Adobe, it’s borderline predatory how much they rip you off.
Pay like 10 - 20 dollars a month to temporarily own something only to have it ripped away if you stop paying.

Subscriptions are awful and should only be used for streaming services (like paying for Spotify to listen music without ads).
That’s what they were intended for. You can’t just slap a subscription onto everything and expect it to work and make consumers happy.

But good, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe people will use subscriptions in a good way. Maybe for VIP in club and hangout games?
I still don’t think games should have a subscription service but using it for VIP in a hangout game seems fair enough.

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New benefits for adding subscriptions within your experience
#21

@BuildIntoGames this is gonna be good for you :sob::sob:

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#22

Wow, i can’t wait to pay monthly fees to play Freelance Heists in Entry Point!!!

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