My bad for wording it wrong. What I meant is they mentioned about some revenue of the 25% goes to the App Store that’s what I’m confused with because I thought from buying robuxs from PC to mobile devices would cover the cost of the App Store because I know Apple charges a developer fee of $99 and a cut out of any in-game purchases but wouldn’t the cost be covered by the revenue they earn from people buying robuxs or am I reading the article wrong?
24% of their revenue goes to pay app stores, such as Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, and payment processing engines. These platforms and services take portions of each Robux and premium sale which drastically decreases the companies revenue.
But don’t they have PC users who buy robuxs which can cost up to $10 for 1000 robuxs can cover the cost?
Even PC users have to go through a credit card processor (assuming you’re using a credit card that is), which usually charge a flat rate on top of a percentage even though this amount could vary depending on the credit card processor.
Even with debit cards and PayPal, a fee is charged. When looking at high-level finances, it is important to factor this in as the %s can add up.
For example, games that are released on Steam need to factor in Valve’s 30% from game profits when making business decisions.
The cost of accepting a credit card is usually only 2% + $0.30 (except amex, they’re a bit more expensive). It is not that much unless you’re transaction amount is under $2. While it adds up, it is nowhere near 24%. Pluss, roblox could just direct people to the mobile website, instead of running purchases through the app store.
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The app stores take quite a big portion of sales which is where it adds up.
They could redirect people to the website to buy Robux and premium, but that would obviously be a nightmare. It would drastically cut sales as players would no longer be able to easily buy Robux while in-game. Making people jump through hurdles to give you money is a bad idea. In addition, it very well may cause them to get kicked off of the mobile stores as Apple and Google would see this as a violation by trying to avoid their fees.
- That would decimate mobile sales. Every piece of friction you introduce reduces purchase throughput.
- Mobile sales don’t account for a majority of games’ profits, so this only affects the bottom line in a minor way.
- The increase in developer cut from just this is so small that it does not justify the UX cost and we won’t actually get more money on the bottom line.
- It’s probably against appstore policies.
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IIRC credit card processors usually charge a higher fee for processing credit cards that aren’t swiped. Take PayPal for example, they charge 2.9% on top of $0.50 fee for business accounts.
The 24% also incorporates the app store/google play store fees, which is 30% for one time purchases and 15% for subscription based purchases. Add these percentages together and you land yourself probably somewhere not as high as 24% but near the 20s range.
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I say, remove the marketplace fee (or at least make it like 10%), then adjust the robux/$ ratio, so at least we could have a good amount of robux if we don’t want to convert.
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The thing with the marketplace fee is that it helps maintain the roblox economy so that it doesn’t inflate too much and there isn’t too much robux in circulation. Removing it would mean less people having a need to buy robux since there would be more robux in circulation and sales would most likely decrease from thereon.
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No, the market fee is a relic of a time before DevEx was a thing. Now, millions of robux exits the Roblox economy through DevEx. Removing the market fee or reducing it will just allow for developers to earn more.
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Community question in response to this statement “We’ve recently added a specialist in developer relations to work directly with developers on better monetizing their games as well creating more engaging experiences.” During the keynote it was stated that people in Roblox help developers with their games, I’m still new to the platform only a year into my company and one game. Who are these people and how do I contact them? Thanks for the help.
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No, it will just cost roblox more money. That’s the whole problem here, roblox does not earn enough money to financially justify paying developers more money just yet. The market fee is not some odd random wrench tossed in that’s holding everyone(including roblox) back and tossing real money into some void. The exchange rate in the end is what actually matters, the market fee is really neither here nor there.
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There is a lot of speculation here. I think it is wiser to leave the speculation to Roblox (who actually know all the numbers). Our jobs is to bring the issue to the attention of Roblox and their job is to fix it or face the consequences. That simple.
Roblox has promised they are making changes however it’ll take some time. Are the changes enough? We’ll see.
What changes you may ask? Well, as stated at DevCon, it isn’t as simple as tweaking percents. From different types of support and tools to new methods of income, they are working on it. Roblox has set some nice goals (1 Billion in DevEx payouts, $30,000 USD for top 1,000 devs by play time). They have made it clear they are committed to these goals and if one method doesn’t work they’ll try another. In the mean time most developers have to find work elsewhere or power through it like they have been doing.
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Does anybody have the specifics from the talk about the $30,000 for the Top 1000 Devs by play time?
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Growth rate > more favorable equity split conditions. Roblox requiring EBIT+expenses of ~26% to drive growth is really believable. & I think ppl forget that the company is acutely aware that it’s in their best interest to grow the overall economy as much as possible.
I think a bigger problem to address is revenue / discovery inequalities. The way the games page currently works makes game development on Roblox a zero sum game of big winners & losers. Kills competition.
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As @Alkan said, it’s not a relic.
It’s to ensure that Roblox is sufficiently making a profit, and that the economy cannot be abused.
Of course, in certain areas the fee is unnecessary (putting your own money into group funds) but it does have a very important purpose.
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I’d like to quickly address something I & @TaxRevenue discussed, and not many people have seen this issue that could happen due to a rise in the rates of Developer Exchange. I was entirely introduced to this new point of view and not many people would’ve realised if he did not talk to me about this.
As an increase in rates of the Developer Exchange is all good for top developers, it isn’t in the favour of smaller developers. The increase would lead to the migration of many professionals with College and University degrees in programming, modeling, designing, etc. There will be a larger incentive to use Roblox as a professional game development platform, by no means it is not.
An amateur teenager will not be able to compete with someone with a master’s degree in any of the industries which game development on Roblox requires to be what it is. This will, in its entirety, over-saturate the game market on the platform, it’ll become very difficult to compete fairly.
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