Creator Store: Buy and Sell Plug-Ins with Real-World Currency

Updates Announcements
#376

You are forgetting the fact that a massive amount of players bought plugins for robux, and I mean a lot of players; but with the new change that’s not going to happen because as I mentioned above it’s literally not supported in some countries, and I don’t think anyone would spend real cash for a plugin (I’m not including stuff like Moon Animator though, those plugins are actually underappreciated and I would love to see them get more than they deserve).

Besides, how did you even sell your plugins off platform? I would be interested in buying them off platform since Roblox doesn’t support my country.

2 Likes
#377

A loss for plugin creators or the consumers?

The community overvaluing Robux and pressuring plugin developers to lower the price of their plugins to be worth a very small amount.

1 Like
#378

We have a fix in progress for this, thanks for reporting.

1 Like
#379

I may be out of the loop, but did developers (assuming you meant that over players, because players should not be buying plugins) just buy a stash of random, cheap plugins? You really should only buy plugins you know you will use and you know you will deliver a return on investment. The sales of my and other’s plugins on Itch.io show people will actually pay for plugins when they deliver a value to them.

Right now, countries that can’t buy or sell are the minority. It sucks, I get that, but there is an alternative I’m surprised has not come up: maybe ask the plugin owner nicely for a copy? It’s ever that or you need sky-high Robux prices to make the same revenue.

Itch.io is where we mostly did it, and continue to do it because of “pay what you want” pricing. I don’t think any of us plan to take down our listings because of that.

1 Like
#380

Supply and demand. The reason why people valued plugins as low as in hundreds of robux was because the supply was virtually limitless. At the same time the demographic that demanded this product couldn’t afford to spend a lot of robux/USD on individual products. Finally, the demographics in question (that could afford them) were niche. With this update the consumer base for plugins which costed robux but now cost USD will be much smaller than before.

3 Likes
#381

Linking you to this thread:

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/plugin-marketplace-is-still-flawed-even-in-2024/1921186

#382

I did because I saw this coming. The reason for it is because this update would basically disallow me from purchasing any products on the market that used to cost robux. This is one of the reasons why the update is bad.

According to your itch.io profile, you only sell 3 plugins including 2 free ones. Do you mean these? If so, can you show us the data of how many times people downloaded the free and paid plugins? This is important because if the amount of buyers for both free and paid plugins is the same, then the update may not be as bad as I claim it is. Those that give you money for plugins that are free do so because of those reasons:

  • They don’t trust Roblox. This may be because of how many times roblox data was leaked. Another example may be because they don’t trust how roblox will use their data.
  • They aren’t forced to pay money to buy your product. Instead, you only ask them if they want to buy it for actual money. This has a psychological effect, where those people are more willing to give you money.
2 Likes
#384

Those are mine, yes. I won’t give the whole numbers, but I will show some of the line items. My total numbers aren’t as useful because all of them have GitHub (free) or Roblox downloads.

image
image726×516 44.8 KB

Or option 3: because they want to donate? All of my plugins are free and open source, but some people do pay back as a thank you for making it.

Reminder: Stripe holds your information, not Roblox. You need to ask if you trust Stripe instead.

#385

Yeah there we go. This is why you can’t use your experience to prove that this update is a good idea. You have an approach where people can buy your plugins but if they choose to - they can get them for free as well. This update is not like that. This update FORCES YOU to purchase those plugins with USD$ that previously were sold for robux. It doesn’t give you an option to decide whether you want to pay in robux or USD$. You do. Roblox doesn’t.

Yeah, that’s very relevant to the 2nd reason. When you make stuff for free but ask people to donate, then people usually do donate.

You know that the DevEx data breach also didn’t happen on roblox but on a service that partnered with roblox. Uhhh, what was it? Let me check. Tilpati, wasn’t it? Furthermore, even if Stripe is secure now, you don’t know how secure it will be in the future. Do you want to place your bets on it?

According to UpGuard, Roblox has the security rating of: 812. That’s from a company which had numerous data breaches in the not so distant past.
obraz

Stripe, on the other hand, has a security rating of: 742. It has lower security score than a website which had numerous breaches in the past.
obraz

#386

Then I’ll pull in Elttob’s experience, then.

Or MrChickenRocket’s.

You are confusing me. You talk about Roblox having a data breach, then point to one that Roblox had no involvement in besides just being a customer. And as a side note: it is possible that this data breach never happened. The group behind them never provided evidence when they normally do, then went quiet months ago about the whole thing.

…how is this calculated… and how is this even relevant to the Creator Store?!

1 Like
#387

Let’s hope this doesn’t move on to other pats of Roblox… I am NOT entering my card number just to buy a T-shirt for my avatar.

3 Likes
#388

This update would be great if it didn’t cut people off from unsupported countries. There are a lot of developers who also want to create or even banally buy the same plugins, but they can’t, just because they don’t live in the right first-world country.

Although, of course, it’s good that at least some developers have the opportunity to monetize their work.

2 Likes
#389

Roblox do not plan to roll this out player-side. This is a developer-side economy change only.

1 Like
#390

Personal experience arguments - both your own and borrowed - are not evidence.

Oh. You want specific examples? Sure thing, let me give you an example or two.

In August 2016, Roblox disclosed a data breach that affected over 50k users. The security incident impacted email and IP addresses, usernames, purchases and Robux balances which were left exposed on a test server.

In July 2023, a list of alleged attendees from the 2017-2020 Roblox Developers Conferences was circulated on a forum. The data contained 4k unique email addresses along with names, usernames, dates of birth, phone numbers, physical and IP addresses and T-shirt sizes

Would a group, which U.S. Department of State is hunting down and is giving away tens of millions of dollars for any information about said group - for doing stuff like this in the past and revealing information like that lie about this? Unlikely. They had their demands, and they were likely met behind closed doors.

Would you sleep at night better if they revealed all that information?

It’s relevant because you’re giving away your information to a website which is less secure than roblox. It’s also relevant because this shows you how much less secure it is than roblox. They determine the security by means like website security, email security, network security and so on and forth. You can check out their website for more information.

Oh, by the way, there was one data breach on a website connected to Stripe from what I remember. You couldn’t use that website’s data anywhere except on Stripe to get credit card information of the victim. Paypal was more secure than this.

This is all important because the more parties are involved in processing my personal information then the more risk I take with that information being leaked. Especially since that info is going through websites that have had data breaches or have been involved in them in some way.

This is why this update is bad. It only puts innocent people into unnecessary risk and danger that could have been easily avoided but roblox chose not to.

#391

Roblox looking into my issue at all?

1 Like
#392

There is a bug on the transactions page where the Rows per page is not correct.

Bug report: Incorrect amount of transactions showing in Creator Store > Transactions

1 Like
#393

Terrible honestly.
Can’t describe how mad I am after seeing this.
Can’t even buy a plugin for 25 robux without it being real money, at first i tought real world purchasing would be good.
But why not allow it to be purchased with robux too?
U just ruined it for the developers who can’t spend real money and instead want to invest their games earnings.

6 Likes
#394

NO. Plugin developers have been taken advantage of enough. It is exactly as you said:

Do you think your work is worth a dollar?

Even if sales add up, there is no guarantee your plugin will sell well.

Roblox has finally decided to stop paying developers in monopoly money. I agree that a different and better approach would have been keeping Robux an option for now and raising the devex rate instead, but that still wouldn’t satisfy for the amount of work that goes into these plugins.
Issues regarding the devex rate are debatably real, but this plugin update is a good thing that should be encouraged. I know the frustration of not being able to ID verify, but there is hope for younger developers as the post suggests:

Roblox doesn’t always fulfill their promises, but I think we should keep a hopeful outlook on options for younger developers.
I do wish Roblox did not roll this update out so soon though and waited until an option for younger devs was readily available.

3 Likes
#395

As a whole I’m not for nor against this, although I am really annoyed at how unfairly this is against us younger developers. I can get behind why the change was made, but it has removed so much accessibility for both young creators and users who purchase assets. Robux was a simple and accessible option that let absolutely anybody, no matter of age, purchase and distribute plugins.

I’m not an expert by any means but why not keep Robux and to just have it as an unrecommended option, or as an option for developers not eligible of USD pricing?

Now, if I were eligible for selling for USD, I would, and I wouldn’t be complaining as much, but I’d still feel sympathy for those who can’t.

I really hope that the team is able to find a way that will let us under 18 be able to sell our assets, since it has had instantly noticable drawbacks for me at the time of writing. I am, though, still happy that we’re able to sell our plugins for free, if not for Robux.

3 Likes
#396

No, most of it is free entirely lmao. I believe in openness and open source and just rely on donations. I can make enough from commissions to not have to rely on selling a plugin or another resource which would otherwise be free.

4 Likes