Context:
In my game PLS DONATE, which focuses on Robux donations, many players struggle with the requirement to create game passes or clothing items to start receiving donations. This challenge significantly impacts my game, often leading to a decline in player retention, as there’s currently no easy method for donating or gifting Robux to others without going through the whole process of creating new game passes, clothing, or UGC.
Issue & Suggestion:
Despite the “Gift Robux” endpoint being added to the Roblox Economy API two years ago, it hasn’t been put into action. This means games like mine, which rely on donations, lack a crucial tool for players to gift Robux to each other directly. I’d imagine this feature would still include taxes & commission, similar to how game passes are handled. Implementing something that doesn’t require the creation of game passes/clothing would greatly improve my experience, and I believe there will be a noticeable increase in new players to games like mine if something like this is added.
Additionally, if the open cloud asset upload API could be extended to gamepasses (when opencloudservice is expanded), I think that could work too.
I strongly believe it would greatly benefit both myself, Roblox, and many other developers if there were a way to gift players Robux within an experience without the need for creating gamepasses or clothing items. This improvement would positively impact my game, PLS DONATE, and numerous other donation games on the platform.
I personally think that game passes and clothing items shouldn’t be solely uploaded for receiving donations. This may contribute to clutter in the catalog with numerous “clothing” items not intended to be worn as clothing.
Please consider implementing the described feature, it would be incredibly beneficial for us and for Roblox.
Very much agree. Some transparency on what happened to that highly anticipated Robux gifting API endpoint would be nice, as well. Something must’ve occurred internally that caused it’s development to be halted… I remember keeping my eyes on it, being interested to implement it when it came out, just to be left with radio silence. If it was to be released as a result of this feature request, it’d take away so much of the hassle for both users (having to create gamepasses/clothing assets just to be donated Robux) and developers (having to use hacky methods to retrieve users’ on-sale assets and prevent fake donations).
If this feature simply isn’t feasible (for whatever reason), Roblox has been pushing how they want players to be able to create their “own experiences” inside an experience over the past few months, starting off with their In-Experience Asset Creation feature. This functionality could potentially be extended to both gamepasses and clothing assets(?), which would make it much easier for those looking to create donation assets in these games. Regardless, this is still an inefficient and unintuitive solution compared to the feature described in the OP that was already being worked on, and should really only be a last resort.
one thing i’d like to know if the endpoint is ever introduced is how commission would actually work.
with conventional gamepasses / clothing, there is an incentive for roblox to provide a commission to game owners because of the fees involved + the fact that the game facilitated the transaction.
however, with a gifting API endpoint being added, would there be any incentive? i guess roblox would still take their % cut, so that’s one thing, but if gifting was added, there would probably be a client-facing method on roblox.com to directly gift to others.
obviously the best case scenario (especially for those like @haz3mn) would be a similar cut to gamepasses or clothing. just wondering the route that roblox would most likely take.
With all due respect to PLS DONATE, I think the ability to gift Robux via API has too much potential for abuse and could consequently destroy Roblox, and here’s why.
Unscrupulous devs would suddenly flood the platform low quality donate experiences, seeking to cash in. This is the opposite of what Roblox is currently trying to accomplish.
It opens the potential for money laundering and gift card scammers. Buy Roblox gift cards with illicit funds, redeem, donate in game, and repeat to launder through multiple Roblox accounts. There may already be a measure of this that goes on within PLS DONATE, and I mean no offense and I’m not making accusations. But the potential is there.
It may result in Roblox accounts being targeted by hackers/scammers. Hack an account, visit an illicit donate experience, dump all the Robux, and move on.
Any one of the above reasons would create a major liability situation for Roblox, particularly because their primary user base is under 13. All it takes is one angry parent who’s child had their account compromised and it would be all over the news. That would destroy the platform, along with every developer on it. This can’t happen, and we shouldn’t be advocating for a feature that could do it.
With the current PLS DONATE process requiring players to create game passes and items, it acts as a sort of 2 Player Authentication to ensure that both sender and recipient are legitimate parties. It might be inconvenient and negatively affects player retention, but it encourages a behavior that is fundamental to the Roblox platform and game development; creating monitizatization products.
I recommend that instead of requesting this feature, create an onboarding process within PLS-DONATE that walks a player through the process of creating products when they claim a booth. Detect if they already already have products and give the player an option to bypass or cancel. No products, no booth.
Or give them the option to create a booth for In-Game Currency only donations. This gives mobile players an option to participate in the experience as a donation recipient.
Alternatively, you can contact Roblox and advocate for a more direct tutorial for new players to create products in some of the demo experiences in Studio.
In any case, I feel it will be an uphill battle as roughly 2/3 of all Roblox players are on mobile only and don’t dev.
Just wanted to add I have a tutorial that runs for players who haven’t played the game before detailing how to upload clothes to sell and how to upload gamepasses (onboarding process)
It works well and the tutorial can be accessed anytime by selecting it from a gui.
I agree. The idea of making the process of transferring Robux as easy as described is a huge liability and would give phishers and scammers an extremely easy way to cash out a victim’s Robux balance, which is probably why this was never implemented in the first place.
As far as I’m concerned, the only way Robux can be transferred between players is through trading or buying products, and it should stay this way.
Kind of a moot point to bring up for a reason why easier robux donation accessibility shouldn’t be a thing. This is more of a personal opinion rather than an actual argument against donations on the platform. Robux donations shouldn’t be a thing because… “I don’t want to support low quality donate experiences”
Scammers already exist on the platform without dedicated robux donations. They already easily exist by using gamepasses and tshirts. They already do it with the current system, adding donations won’t magically introduce scamming or even increase it.
Anyone can already make a t-shirt and gamepass and anyone can then buy that t-shirt or gamepass already, there’s no “authentication” to ensure both parties are legitimate… I think you are confused because you assume there wouldn’t be the same pending period as t-shirts and gamepasses for robux donations. In fact, I 100% guarantee roblox will still have the 30% marketplace fee, that’s not the issue.
The issue is that gifting robux to other players is a hassle for the average user, and creating an official “gift” option would allow users to easily do something they can already do in a round-about way (creating a gamepass, and then making the developers (us) use endpoints to try and find all the sellable ones and listing it in a game where it’s visible to other players). Gifting robux is already a thing, so why not make it easier for the average user?
If there is a donation system added, it should have zero percent cut to the game owner (not only to avoid abuse, but to avoid games like pls donate existing as they exist off the VERY scummy idea of making money through people donating to eachother)
You can already do that: Gain access to an account and buy an expensive gamepass. I would like to see Roblox add optional safety feature that would require each transaction to require 2FA pass.
Wanted to come and bump this, I really think this would be great in a way if it is implemented, just needs a bit of things changed around.
One thing for certain, it is truly impossible to make a Donation Button in PLS DONATE as a new player/mobile user, and I have seen completely new players not even know what to do in the game, even with the in-game tutorial, which ends up to them leaving 5 minutes later after playing the game and never coming back.
It raises a lot of questions to why Roblox implements these endpoints yet never gets over to it until a couple of years later. This could really help experiences that try to have some sort of robux economy in game, yet is not being considered to be implemented for the public. This endpoint would specifically help for Mobile and Tablet users, and definitely Console Users, due to the fact that the player is required to leave and go on a website, login to roblox and go through a very, very lengthy process just to make one singular button, which yet again as mentioned, causes players to leave and never return.
This could be another viable option for fixing the lengthy issue of creating gamepasses, and just make it more easily to be done through game. More of like a UI where you would pick what experience you would create a gamepass under, uploading your images, naming it and so on.
If this endpoint does ever get released, a few things need to be acknowledged for the in-game side of things:
Make it behave the same as Developer Products.
This could work for your items to be locked to one singular game, which would really keep it neat and kept under what games you would like to make these products underneath. Since developer products are specifically for the creator of the game, “User Products” would be a great alternative name for it. It can be purchased an infinite amount of times, however the owner of the item can’t buy their own User Products, just to prevent them from losing robux. As well as that, keeping the commission system the same, game owner gets 10%, user gets 60%, roblox gets 30%.
gives you access to edit these products in-game.
Since this could possibly replace gamepasses, there really has to be a way for you to edit and remove your items, Which is why a custom built-in UI could be made for this system, with these items to behave exactly like gamepasses. uploading images, naming the item, possibly giving it an item description, setting its robux price, and then publishing it as a User Product.
I, for sure do believe this as well. Many games would make it easier for players to earn robux this way and, yet again, would save the hassle of going through the lengthy process through the website since most players who play roblox today are mobile users.
People have already been doing this for a year now, just using the gamepass system instead. There would be no change with the amount of games popping up due to the fact there are already plenty of donations game that exist out there to this day,
This is also true, however has been done many times in PLS DONATE already so there won’t be any change to this. Donations are logged after all, so its easy to find out who is trying to launder robux.
Again, don’t hackers already do this through the website? As well as that, robux purchases are logged so it would be easy to contact support about this. This wouldn’t change anything, making your points unreasonable to why roblox shouldn’t implement this feature.
If a Roblox engineer does see this post, PLEASE add this, it would be beneficial as a whole and would make a 2-year-old endpoint actually worth using.
So if laundering is already happening with the existing systems, do you think Roblox should make it easier to do so? Do you think they would? I think it’s more likely they would work to limit it.
Its not about making it easier to do so, this obviously wouldn’t of course. I think you should think about what you are typing before you are sending because creating items in game would be the same as creating on website.
Game passes are a developer feature. The “Gift Robux” endpoint is a developer feature. Both are functions of game development, which can only be done on desktop because Studio is only available on desktop. What you propose is adding a developer only feature that is a clone of an existing process that can be enabled in game by another developer for the purpose of working around an API endpoint that Roblox hasn’t enabled for years. It would make more sense for Roblox to enable the API endpoint then it would be to create a workaround for it.
My contention is that Roblox doesn’t want players giving other players Robux, and it’s my belief that the “Gift Robux” endpoint was a mistake. The process of creating game passes and UGC ensures that something of value is received in exchange for Robux, and it’s my belief that games like PLS DONATE doesn’t provide the intended value exchange. Rather, its an unintended consequence, and I believe that Roblox is quietly looking for ways to shut down donation games. I base this opinion on the fact that for over 16 years, Roblox never considered allowing the exchange of Robux between players.
The potential for abuse and fraud is just too great, and I think it would destroy Roblox and the livelihoods of every developer on the platform.
You can have your opinion, I’ll have mine, though I see that this feature would greatly benefit than destroy the roblox platform in many ways, thats for sure.
