Developer Awards program should be brought back, silent halt of program disrespects the community

As a Roblox developer, it is extremely disheartening to experience the systematic removal of developer-facing services and community appreciation programs. Historically, these programs have served to strengthen the culture & symbiosis between the developer community, and Roblox. This positive symbiosis has led to many innovations, and has inspired & empowered individuals to use their creativity to create fun games or experiences enjoyed by millions of players around the world. This has led to many success stories of people on the platform improving their lives as a whole, and even starting their own companies, which is often an incredibly hard task. In some cases, this has even led to the games or experiences having some of the highest KPI numbers in the entire videogame industry, despite being made by a handful of indie developers and not teams of 200+ engineers and artists. This, in turn, benefits Roblox as a whole - it generates a lot of revenue for expanding the company, improving server resources, generates good PR, makes developers loyal to the platform, and much more.

Unfortunately, ever since going public in 2021, Roblox has been consistently and systematically removing resources from developers, as well as the community appreciation programs in favor of prioritizing investor needs instead, at the expense of the community. As a perfect example of this:

At the time of writing this post, the developer awards program has been silently shut down or halted. Developer crowns, tilt trophies and even swag bags have not been awarded to eligible developers for over 6 months, even well over a year in some cases. Any attempts to email devawards@roblox.com to report these issues fail, the email has not been giving out any responses since the summer of 2022, despite it being the only official contact method for the program. This is unacceptable - it is often the sign of a dying program that is getting ready to be officially terminated. Another example of this would be early last year when the developer stars program suffered this fate. Months and months went by with absolutely 0 communication from the program, false statements regarding its status were made, and then it was ultimately removed, despite a huge portion of the community rallying & protesting for it to be returned with improvements. The accelerator program was also removed late last year, along with the QA program, playfab program, and a few others.
Roblox has a habit of saying things like “our community is our lifeblood”, or “we prioritize community before company”. But as of late, Roblox has been directly contradicting these statements it makes. It does not communicate on these things, and it most certainly does not restore or improve these programs, regardless of how much of the community that protests for it.

Overall, it makes absolutely no sense to remove the developer awards program. It once served to show Roblox’s appreciation for its community. Being a small developer climbing the ladder and getting things like tilt trophies, virtual item codes to give out to early fans, and more can be very inspiring when facing what is often a monumental task - creating your own company with little to no resources or support. Other companies get this… youtube does it with its awards program, Discord does this with its partner program, Twitch has its partner program, and many more! Just because developer appreciation programs don’t directly generate revenue for investors like games do, does not mean they have no value! The fact that this post even needs to be made shows how dystopian the platform is becoming.


Imagine being a new or younger developer & getting trophies & virtual codes to give out… doesn’t sound like much, but it can be meaningful to a lot of developers!

In no uncertain terms, the developer awards program should be restored. With the removal of the stars program, the accelerator program, and many others, along with the negative state of other things (see : marketplace rev %s), Roblox is well on its way to alienating a huge portion of developers, both present and future.

232 Likes

As a developer who has hit many of these milestones recently I’d really love to see this come back. It’s something that is/was motivating for my team and I because all of the work we do is digital, so having something physical arriving to our house to show how hard we’ve worked and the incredible things we have achieved is priceless.

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This would be great to see make a return! It would really need to be done with consideration though. It was shut down last time due to the amount of regular players just trying to get free stuff from it which really wasn’t the purpose of it. If started again it would definitely have to be less easily abusable compared to last time but I think it’s possible.

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Yes please I want my crowns :frowning:

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On some points i can really just agree with you, as a Develeper receiving even “just” an virtual item can be so inspiring! i received myself a “Golden Crown of O’s” and this was really getting me hyped for the future… The problem with the “Awards program” was that these “Awards” wehre not handled very carefully instead they got THROWN out of the window “(or at least it felt like it)” and these “Awards” didn’t got the deserved respect by the community that they should have gotten. i understand that “Roblox” is a big platform so for the future i hope that “Roblox” releases these programs sowly so these failures dont happen again. Although i know that Roblox trys there best to make the platform great for everyone!

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still waiting on two tilt trophies, wanwood crown and swag bag :sob:

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Agreed, but I still don’t know why Roblox didn’t verify that people had actual development access to a game before granting them the rewards in the first place, which would’ve solved the issues that were faced. Nevertheless, the users who used the form as a form of “giveaway” to get other people free stuff ruined this program and its value/exclusivity - they should be ashamed of themselves.

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Yeah this was one of the things that irked me as well - devcrowns were getting abused for a while with a manual form you had to fill out to get them. Roblox recently released its verification program, I don’t see why they couldn’t take the process they’re using for that & apply it to dev awards.

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My assumption is that these processes are simply too different, crowns go as low as 100 MAU which is something easily acheiveable by the average Robloxian while the verified-badge is intended to only catch <.1% of creators iirc, thorough or computionally-expensive checks wouldn’t make sense to apply to the crowns as a result.

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I do hope the developer awards return, I was really excited when I received my tilt trophy and was about to hit the next milestone before they shut it down

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Would love to see them return! Having a physical trophy or a swag bag would be such a cool thing to be accomplished of my work.

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Overall, I definitely vouch for this. Although, I do believe some adjustments need to be made to the criteria such as 40M robux ($140,000 USD) for a swag bag that consists of a hoodie, hat, socks, and a backpack. Reaching that milestone requires a developer to push the envelop with their creations, and I feel like it can be improved. Trophies are a great incentive and motivate developers to strive for their next milestone so I don’t see why these aren’t being pushed out more than they currently are.

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To this point, developer awards programming that should brought back and would be such cool thing about returning after been 2 years since 2021. But it was last time about crown of o’s still not rewards yet, things about free stuff which was considered wasn’t too far from community, as they developer worked for the last time, i think i should awards had brought back possibly after been 2 years ago definitely about achieved awards for the future.

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Roblox could improve this on so many grounds. Such as having a total player time stat in Developer Stats under the Historical Data tab.

Currently, we have to calculate it, and Roblox at one point was sending these out, so they must have the statistic somewhere. I love what Roblox has been doing with the Creator Dashboard statistics, let’s keep it going! More statistics to developers. And bringing back these real life trophies is such a cool thing for studios or individuals to put in their offices or homes.

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I think a solution would be to have a developer program, where to be eligible you must have contributed to the community. An example could be being active in the devforum and helping out other members, or making cool creations that people like :happy3:.

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It should be brought back. I honestly think the studio merch is cool. Would definitely wear the hat if I could. It was most likely shutdown because regular players abused it to get free crowns. As said in my previous post, an official developer program would be beneficial to the community.

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I 100% agree with this, but it might bring more Troll Posts and ChatGPT Made responses here, another way would be by making it so Staff can “block” a user from being accepted if they do something bad, or if they get a Strike not being able to participate for a certain amount of time, just my 0.02$ tho

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I would literally have half of the tilt trophy done, a swag bag, and multiple crowns. The delay is gonna make me get most of the tilt trophy all in one go way less satisfying.

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I remember the announcement of the Crowns. I had no clue they discontinued the program until today.

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Some of the rewards are honestly ridiculous compared to the milestone you have to hit to achieve them, but hey, it’s the thought that matters. With the amount of good some of us have done for the platform, it’s quite sad that Roblox doesn’t even maintain programs like this, at least shut it down officially rather that silently.

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