Creator Roadmap - AMA with Dan and Manuel

[Anteraska]

Loving the extra communication from Roblox lately!

The lighting engine has always been one of my pet peeves with the Roblox engine. It feels incredibly limited and creating an environment that is visually appealing (especially in large and open spaces) is far more tedious than it should be.

Are there any planned improvements to it or new features we can expect to see any time soon? Light range was brushed aside a while back for undisclosed engine level limitations, but unless it isn’t feasible for some reason should these not be ironed out for the sake of improving an absolutely crucial element of any appealing map design?

Somewhat related, if mobile support is of concern, would the possibility of adding some more advanced features be considered if developers are willing to narrow their playable devices in order to enable them? I am aware that Roblox aims to be as lightweight of an application as possible but I don’t believe that should stand in the way of quality.

[Abcreator]

• Community-led Marketplace - Everyone can publish avatar items to the Marketplace, including Limiteds (Late 2023)

This is incredibly vague on if any further-protections be implemented before this release? Will I have to worry about my prized Roblox accessory that has a high-RAP / sentimental value (offsales) being re-uploaded with minor-differences?

I understand if this can’t be stated yet (or hasn’t yet been finalised) however this uncertainty just makes it more scary than relieving to see that this feature is coming! I’ve already seen over 30 accessories trying to copy the offsale valkyrie I wear (which has a lot of sentimental value to me, as it was awarded by Roblox DevRel to me and many other former testers), with no way to report the infringing content since Roblox does not handle their own DMCAs for their own accessories?

[Wingardxxm (Ash)]

I understand roblox plans to open up UGC publicly to everyone, as a ugc creator I think thats very fair!
However I do have some concerns, mainly… moderation.

I understand roblox is doing its best to moderate accessories, as mentioned here:

Taking Action on Copies of Roblox-Created Limiteds

Hi Creators, Today, over 90% of our Marketplace items are community-created. Since 2019, we have seen many innovative creations from the community, but unfortunately, a small percentage of these items have been copies or near-copies of Roblox-created Limiteds. We share your concerns about this and are hard at work to find a solution. To start, we want to communicate our policy prohibiting these copies and what we plan on doing in the future to prevent copies of these items from being published…

But since then… more and more copies have popped up, if I recall there was a wave of copy-cat limiteds that got deleted, only to be restored the next day because they contacted support.

How does roblox plan to deal with a larger scale of players creating UGC accessories, if they’re not really able to manage the amount of creators at the moment?

Another thing, a lot of players right now are taking advantage of other ugc creators, tricking them into uploading accessories without knowing the accessories break the rules i.e copyright infringement…
the copyright infringing accessories are still on the platform, and the only person who gets in trouble is the person who uploads it, and not the guy who asked for it to be uploaded. I understand its the uploaders fault however this happens a LOT and its always the same people.

It would be nice if roblox were to keep track of groups who publish things against tos and possibly revoke accessories being uploaded to them as a form of getting rid of bad-actors who do things like this, does roblox have any sort of plan for improving moderation this way? or any upcoming features specifically regarding accessory moderation? because it feels like accessory moderation isn’t working…

[RobotGentleman]

Hi Dan and Manuel,

In the roadmap, there are plans to make the UGC program public before the end of this year. As the UGC program expands and more creators join, there is also growing competition, making it increasingly challenging to earn a sustainable income.

Currently, UGC creators earn 30% for every sale of their item, while developers earn 40% simply by selling other people’s items in their games. This distribution seems disproportionate, as affiliates receive a higher revenue percentage than the original creator of the item.

Are there any plans to address this issue when UGC goes public and potentially switch the percentages between UGC creators and developers to make it more equitable and rewarding for UGC creators?

[Femtrs (saku)]

Hey Dan and Manuel! I have 3 questions regarding the Creator Roadmap that i’d like more clarification or details to.

1. Automatic Chat Translations
Is Automatic Chat Translations a forced feature or a toggle feature, and what if the translation is wrong or has said something inappropriate by accident? Will this count for moderation action or be moderated?

2. Inventory API
What’s the difference between Inventory API and MarketplaceService when MarketplaceService already has MarketplaceService:PlayerOwnsAsset, As Inventory API is supposed to check if a user owns an item?

3. Friend Invites
Lastly, When it comes to this feature specifically, is this like or similar to the old party feature?, Is it something entirely new?, Is this the Squad feature people have been teasing and releasing?, and how will it fully work, Will it require you to be in the same party as your friends or work like a regular Experience Invite?

Those are all my questions regarding the Creator Roadmap, If you choose to answer these, Thank you and i appreciate the work you guys have been putting to improve the platform and it’s features!

[TheKingsHappyFool (Dan)]

We want our creators to use the best tool for the job and that does include external script editors and source control. We are working on a way to seamlessly expose files from Studio to support script editors, source control, etc but also doesn’t lead to inconsistencies in Studio, Team Create and our cloud APIs. Right now this work is in the design phase.

We’ll keep you posted and give you an update at RDC.

[MrChickenRocket]

Hello!
I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the future of “middleware” on the platform, and what is happening over at Roblox to support creators who want to build tools, toolchains and plugins to support other developers?

Any plans for opening up more access for plugins inside of studio, like file system support?

Also are there any plans for financially supporting these kind of tool developers? The current plugin marketplace doesn’t really reflect the reality of software that licences for $100 USD+

[Spectaqual (Ivy)]

Additional Spam & Plagiarism Protections - More rigorous plagiarism detection and punishments for repeat offenders (Late 2023)

Alt-Account Detection - Take action on repeat offenders and help us combat exploiters on Roblox (Late 2023)

Over the past several years, there’s been a lot of groups which use blank alternate accounts as the Owner, with the real accounts behind the group at a rank or two lower. Often, they’re doing things which violate Roblox’s ToS, such as uploading stolen material they expect to get a DMCA takedown and hoping that when they get caught Roblox only moderates the blank Owner account.

Is this something that you expect to be covered with these changes?

[Rainbo1239 (Rainbo)]

Hey! I have a few questions about the future of public UGC!

There are features which are presumably going to be released to all UGC Creators (for instance, shoes), but we haven’t gotten a release yet, and they aren’t on the roadmap. Are these features going to be rolled out before everyone has access?

When “everyone” has access, does that mean every account has access off the bat? If so, I feel as though the 24-hour cooldowns on limiteds are going to be pointless if some creators choose to make alts to upload their limiteds to when the marketplace becomes accessible publicly.

What’s going to happen with the 750 robux upload fee when UGC goes public? This feels as though it may be a barrier for many who want to start uploading. Will this be shifting at all, and will it vary based on item type (as has been the case with the on-sale fee for limiteds)?

Similarly, will the price floors/ceilings be adjusted at all? Different item tiers have different limits (i.e. face items have a floor of 15, while head items have a floor of 50), and this can incentivize intentional improper categorization of items. This has been mentioned a few times before among creators, such as:

@younite

I brought this up in a separate DevForum bug report a month ago (which I unfortunately have yet to hear back from). This inconsistency has restricted developers from allowing them to set a hat accessory to 15 robux, while they can do the same with a face accessory. This has resulted in some cases of creators miscategorising their items in order to reflect a better value for their items. Introducing a unified price floor/ceiling will allow creators much more control over their pricing and will stop misclassification completely - something that Roblox spent many months trying to fix before.

Thanks!

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

Adding on to my question:

How will a developer be able to prevent an exploiter from changing their avatar’s position illegally?
Will the server now have authority over the character and now we will be able to finally prevent hacks such as no-clipping, speed hacking, etc without doing hacky things or will you guys just offer a basic public module for a simple anti-cheat?

And, how will you guys solve the alt account problem where an exploiter can quickly create an alt account and return to continue cheating? Will it affect a normal user creating an alt account for an innocent purpose or will they get punished as well?
(For example, a youtuber creating an alt account to be anonymous)
How will this system work? When I get a punishment for another reason(maybe false) other than exploitation will I still be able to create a new account and play Roblox or am I not allowed on Roblox anymore?

[Elttob (dphfox)]

The largest issues facing creators today are economical in nature. Currently they way Roblox’s economy is set up is rather opaque and hard to work with, because systems like DevEx (respectably) attempt to simplify the costs of Roblox’s services into one universal ‘tax’.

Can we expect to see more relevant information about what costs our games and products are incurring, so that we can work to optimise our systems and allow them to run more cheaply, perhaps in anticipation of future savings being passed to developers?

[aStarZomkied]

Hola Dan and Manuel!.

Names aStarZomkied, a developer that’s going to make upcoming games.

So, since you are able to transfer experience ownership to someone else then would you also get the crowns based on the visits on the other account too? since if you are transferring ownership then that means you gain everything related to the game like visits, likes and favourites.

Also, will there be a another roadmap? Will there be improvements to promoting roblox games and making smaller developers have a much better chance to getting their games popular depending on if the game is really good?. Because, people want to get their awesome games out already where at least 100 people can play it. Also, the games discovery page needs a slight change as if you were to type in your/someone’s game then it wouldn’t show up. If you type the game name, it will show up the game but it should also be based of how high the likes, favourites and visits it has so once you type it in then you will see the real one.

[AC_Starmarine]

Would roblox ever be getting an official FPS unlocker that is built in? Will there ever be any optimizations done to the engine to increase performance? I get better fps in triple A games than roblox sometimes.

[idealxy]

Totally in agreement with this statement.
Feels weird that we, UGC creators are the one spending hours to make a good accessory for the Catalog and getting underpaid by only receiving 30% of revenue.

Meanwhile, the developers gets 40% by just being a middleman. It doesn’t make sense for our hard work.

[KaranBlox (Karan)]

Will you continue to impose rhtro on users by force?

Why is the block theme being tried to be destroyed?

Why roblox need kill history? Okay innovation innovation innovation but you do this by removing everything that people have fun with.

Community events like egg hunt are gone and roblox won’t be releasing, the official limited anymore. Bloxy awards has been degraded and the new name is ‘innovation awards’. Users don’t want this to happen, and you’re doing it by force, why are roblox doing it?

Do you think it’s a good idea to leave everything to the users? (limiteds, marketplace and events)

Come assest,game remove feature?

And this bugs not fixed for months:

1. Rthro shouldn't be the default avatar idle pose

2. If you use the profile picture change feature, the r6 posture position will deteriorate.

And lot of bugs is roblox deliberately not fixing these things? If yes why?

[coolguyweir]

Let’s just keep it simple, and I’m sure most if not all developers on Roblox are extremely interested about this:

Will DevEx rate increase?

I love all these features and stuff but there’s only so much that these features will do for the community compared to DevEx raise.
100k → $350 is kinda absurd. Yes, unarguably roblox provides on of the best connections from devs to audiences. But a ratio of 0.0035 use per robux is crazy, especially considering that this 0.0035 was raised from 0.0025 was around half a decade ago. Since then, Roblox has gone public, has had tremendous growth through quarantine, and has become a multi-billion dollar company.

So Roblox, I’m not mad at you, but a response to this would be nice.

It seems as if this issue is purposefully being ignored by Roblox and it’s not even a shock to me if it is being ignored.

EDIT: Indeed, as mentioned in the above bold: Roblox has proven to us they’d love to ignore this issue.

EDIT 7/1: I’m assuming roblox is being quite unjust as usual - reading from the bottom up. I’m hoping that’s the reasoning for why this important issue isn’'t addressed. Otherwise it’d mean they just don’t care about this, not surprising at all.
-coolguyweir

[Brian1KB]

Hey,

Appreciate y’all taking the time to do this. My perspective on the key issue with Roblox for developers right now is the lack of transparency surrounding the algorithm, and what is required to grow your game. Today, with the analytics currently available to us, two games can have matching analytics but entirely different numbers of new visitors provided by the algorithm. Additionally, sweeping algorithm changes are made without announcement, which can lead to huge, unpredictable shifts in revenue for developers on the platform. Platforms like YouTube have a clearer correlation between their available analytics, and algorithmic success. This leads to my question:

What is Roblox doing to help creators focus on the correct aspects of their game (e.g. monetisation, session length, etc.) in order to drive algorithmic growth?

[TheKingsHappyFool (Dan)]

With a goal of empowering creators to build rich, lifelike worlds, our immediate focus with lighting is to improve Future Lighting’s performance so that more users have access to it. Afterwards, we’re focusing on unifying our lighting models so that they look better, more consistent, and scale more smoothly across devices.

Then, we’ll work on bringing state of the art lighting technology – like volumetric lighting and global illumination – to Roblox in a way that all users benefit, not just people with high-end devices.

[orangewarrior78]

Hello Dan and Manuel!

I’m definitely grateful that you’ve given us this opportunity to answer some questions and hope that we’ll see at least a few more of these sessions going forward.

So first question, are there any plans to improve the R6 style going forward? Because there’s defiantly been a lack of support for it in terms of newer features on the platform like scaling or layered clothing.

I’ve heard of some rumors that the old version might be scrapped in favor of a newer one with updated code that would allow more possibilities.

It would be amazing if we all had the ability to make avatars like the one below in the future with the help of UGC, so I do think the potential of the R6 style could be improved on.

Second question, will we see player-made events that have the ability to hand out actual UGC items?

There’s been almost nothing from the events category so far and we haven’t really seen anything live up to the much older events like the Winter Games 2014, Egg Hunts or the Siege of Quebec.

Because while we do have the ability to make special event-like games, I personally haven’t heard much about how we can grant players the ability to earn UGC accessories from badges alone.

It would be great if we had more events that somewhat match the quality the originals, so seeing more of these would be amazing.

Third question, could we maybe see more starter places like the Modern City in the future?

These places alone have really helped me with my projects so far and they were very visually pleasing from just a simple glance alone.

The open-source assets in them have also been very useful, so I’m wondering if we’ll see much more of these in the future since they really do help developers with limited experience and budget.

That’s basically all the questions I have, so I’m hoping to at least see one question answered for the time being.

Thanks again for letting us do this!

-Orange

[BackspaceRGB]

Hello Dan and Manuel! This is a really cool idea by the way, would love to see more AMAs like this one in the future.

I’ll keep it simple. Is R6 still planned to be deprecated/removed? Many games including my own are pretty much impossible to migrate to R15, in my case because of limb sizes, offsets, etc. My game has morphs, which follow the R6 body type, so it would be really difficult to make it work for R15 seamlessly.