Honestly, not a bad update. I could potentially see some conflicts with the old way of things (free games being the standard for so long, but suddenly games made with real currency prices start popping up), but honestly I think that would at most be a culture shock.
My favorite part however, is the part that also makes me really frustrated.
I LOVE that there is an option for robux payments, and that local currency pricing isn’t being forced upon us at the expense of it.
But why can’t plugin creators have that luxury? Why do plugin devs have to sell it for USD, when game devs can choose the pricing method? Extend this functionality to the creator marketplace, and I imagine that a LOT of people would be very happy.
Have you planned to prevent users from abusing the refund system? (i.e. continuously purchasing the same game and refunding it to avoid actually paying the developer)
It would be way better if you had the same refund requirements as Steam, only allowing refunds if you haven’t reached a certain playtime yet.
Exactly. I don’t think I’ve seen a game on Roblox worth $10, $30, $50 either. If they wanted to charge people real USD, they should’ve at least made the maximum price possible $10.
Will we be able to purchase these experiences using Robux? I really don’t like the idea of devexing my Robux just to put it back in to buy some game.
How about you allow for both $$$ and the equivalent in Robux?
I really don’t like the precedent this is leaving on Roblox, as this has already happened with plugins. Roblox games are simply not worth Steam game prices, at least yet.
This is a very exciting initiative, but we won’t be implementing it in Deepwoken until there are cheaper price points.
I don’t believe there have been many successful paid access games on Roblox sold above $5 USD. The average price of the current top 10 paid access games is ~168 Robux ($2.10 USD).
We priced Deepwoken according to the minimum purchase of Robux; 400 Robux, available as a $5 USD purchase.
It would be nice if the option to purchase the game for Robux was retained when local currency purchases are enabled. A lot of people use giftcards or rely on their Premium subscription to provide them the funds to buy products in Roblox games. Completely removing this option will lose us potential new users.
It’s all well and good that we as developers can make more money by using local currency purchases, but if the user experience suffers, we’re going to be losing or otherwise frustrating our users. Currently this feature only feels like it benefits developers, and not the end user. I’d love to see this change as this feature develops.
Either way, it’s early days, and this is a good direction for paid access.
Why can’t robux just be the default payment like it’s not like we can just convert Robux into Dollars right?
Like Plugins alone are no longer paid by Robux and plugins are just ruined by it.
Like when subscriptions were added could’ve easily been a good feature on Roblox if it had an option for Robux like there’s people who earn robux and spend their robux like dollars on the platform. Like they work reoccurring like how private servers are and we make monthly payments like a subscription on private servers.
I don’t get the large cuts when pricing paid access games on the market.
Developer Exchange is why we can just always convert our robux into paychecks. So but I see why the option for just earning the money instead of just robux. But I wonder how this feature would be implemented in popular paid access games.
i dont like this update at all.
i hate the push that roblox has had this year in making things cost real money on roblox.
first it was the update that made plugins cost real USD, now this.
it feels like roblox is pushing away what roblox is based off of, robux.
i simply don’t like this update as i dont like the idea of turning roblox into other gaming platforms like steam.
i refuse to pay more than $60-$75 for games on steam, let alone drop $50 for a roblox game
having $10 be the LOWEST option on release is just roblox begging us not to use this lmao
As you can see from the experience of refunds on Steam, stories about returning money after buying a game, apparently, do not teach you anything. In Roblox, many games can be completed in a day, not to mention 2 days, I understand that this does not make much sense, but I think that some will do this.
A more thoughtful system should be implemented. For example, if a user played a game for more than 3 hours and opened most of the gameplay(a special API for developers would be a good idea for this implementation), they should no longer be eligible for a refund.
I also have a related question about badges: if a player receives a badge and then refunds the game, will the badge be removed from their inventory on the platform?
Now introducing Pay to Play, with more microtransactions than a Freemium game!
Want to play the game? Pay!
Want to advance a level? Pay!
Want to beat the game because it’s blocked by a paywall? You know what to do! (subliminal messaging: pay)
Only on Roblox! (statement not based off of facts or evidence)
Yeah… I’m just a bit worried people are just gonna make those terrible cashgrab games pay to play. Hey, that could be a blessing in disguise! Nobody will be able to play them anyway.
near daily? it’s not that often monthly is definitely a more accurate way of measuring it if you’re looking at someone who buys all the games, but for many they just buy whatever interests them.
I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this change. On one hand, it’d be great to sell access to games for real money, it would greatly improve the overall quality of the games on the platform without needing to force people’s hands. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be desired with the current implementation.
For instance, it’d be nice if we had more granular control over the price, and especially a lower price floor. I think the range should be any increment of 5 between 5-60 USD, this would allow for flexibility in pricing our games.
It’d also be nice if you could gift these games to people on your friends list, or even offer the option of selling your game for both Robux and real money, so we can give users the choice.
Maybe it’d be great if we could price passes using real currency too, so we could use them to unlock things like bonus campaigns or separate modes, that’d also help make our pricing more flexible, especially if it we could do this in free games as well.
I also worry how this would affect Roblox’s reputation, as much of the appeal of the platform is how most of the games are free, it was even a marketing slogan long ago (“IT’S FREE!”). I don’t think this will change much because many developers would be incentivized to create free games due to how accessible they are, and we’ve had Robux paid access games for over a decade at this point, I just hope that this isn’t a sign of the platform losing its way or anything like that.
I was originally gonna say monthly but I felt like exaggerating.
Adding onto this, I do believe we should be able to have more options relating to Robux and Currency, having the option to sell games using both, and to have differing prices in robux and currency, e.g. not equivalent prices. Also, the option for georestricted areas to be able to purchase a currency only game using robux would be nice too.
Probably will never happen, as something similar was suggested years ago with gamepasses.
Please no, this screws over UGC creators (actually it might make them richer if robux only circulated through them, but then it screws developers) and devalues robux the most from since plugins were forced USD.
Think about this, if they make gamepasses cost money, literally the only thing robux will be useful for is catalog items.
This screws over:
people who have premium
people who already have robux
people looking to buy robux
See here for a more detailed explanation on why this may not be a good idea:
Relax, I don’t think Robux will become entirely useless. Keep in mind what I’m suggesting would be an optional feature and there’d still be a reason to sell passes for Robux, since it’d be more accessible to do so (it’d be so much harder to sell USD items while abiding by mobile/console marketplace guidelines), this would just allow for more diversity for how we could monetize our games. The big difference with plugins is that USD is the only way we can sell those, there is no way to sell those with Robux.
Unironically: Who in their right mind would willingly spend $10 USD on a Roblox game, let alone $30 or even $50.
The highest quality Roblox games I have ever seen still feel (and usually look) like mobile games ported to PC.
You expect me to legitimately believe people will pay what’s effectively a weeks groceries for mildly polished mobile games?
Honestly Caspian has a good point.
People often praise the new features coming out on roblox, but fail to realise that other engines have already had these years ago or even a decade ago.
If I want to pay for a quality game, then ROBLOX isn’t the platform where I go to do that.
If I have the option of buying a highest quality that can be roblox game, and an actually high quality game then which option do you think I’ll choose?
And then these roblox games will be filled with microtransactions. “Items” so you have the best weapon in the game, “upgrades” so you finish the game before everyone else, “power ups” so you get to perform better than every other player. I mean does this sound like a game you’d want to pay access to?
You could argue that the developers won’t add these P2W types of products.
monthly is definitely a more accurate way of measuring it if you’re looking at someone who buys all the games, but for many they just buy whatever interests them.