Even then, the audience for mobile games is small, just like consoles. The majority of a games audience is PC.
I agree with the exemption fees.
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Ah, never realized mobile was such a big market. I understand the push for it then. Thanks for the explanation.
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Out of curiosity, what is the user base like for mobile minus tablets? I can see it being popular on tablets but phones feel kinda clunky with Roblox from my experience.
(also I support the idea of not paying for platforms the game doesn’t support when it comes to Roblox taking cuts of the profit to fund those unused platforms)
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Arguably pretty similar depending on the game and how well it supports them, though I’ve always had tablet as the leading platform.
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I do have a question of one of the breakdown points you mentioned.
I’ve seen apple comment with the App Store tax is 30% for the first year, then drops to 15% for subsequent years. I’m not sure if this is only based upon subscription based in-app purchases, or deals with non-subscription purchases as well.
As per Apple’s newsroom statement;
The only contribution that Apple requires is for digital goods and services that are purchased inside the app using our secure in-app purchase system. As Spotify points out, that revenue share is 30 percent for the first year of an annual subscription — but they left out that it drops to 15 percent in the years after.
Can you explain a little more in depth about this part of the post please?
Also as side note; Thank you so much for responding to the community so fast and helping aid in transparency, I love the positve and supportive dynamic we share between Devs/Staff.
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I have been turned off from developing even more after realizing that the rates weren’t going to cut it in the future, but the transparency you guys are putting forward is motivating, and a good sign of what’s to come.
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An appropriate and swift response. I fully understand the costs that come with a platform such as Roblox. I definitely think some level of transparency will help change people’s perception on the matter. Looking at the data and making informed decisions is really important. It is easy for people to make surface level judgements. More analytics are a good place to start and I look forward to what a monetization specialist will offer. Roblox provides immense opportunities and it’s good business practice for both the developers and Roblox to be profitable. I for one believe developers just starting out need more support. I have been on the platform for three years now and still strive to break through. Given how many developers there are making games on the platform it often seems like you see games from the same people and groups countless times over. Furthermore if I don’t invest heavily in advertising chances are slim to my game gaining the traction it needs to sustain itself. There are limited options to getting necessary exposure when you don’t have a significant fan base or following. It seems to me like preference is given to the same games over and over again. I would like to see more attention given to boosting newer developers and their games.
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As someone previously mentioned, they’re probably not just talking about Apples app store but also Android and the XBox stuff.
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24% for the apple store and payment processors?
that is a STUPID amount going to people irrelevant to the platform
surely that number can be lowered
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They could possibly consider providing a mini bonus amount of robux on platforms with cheaper payment processors, while still having a higher margin.
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I wonder if the 24% going to the App Store is actually all properly used. Taking away 25% and 26% for customer support and developer support seems reasonable, however I’m not too sure about the App Store. I can see why you’d wish to support different platforms especially because younger players use mobile devices to access Roblox. However I’d wish to see more delegation between percentages and possible removal of a little from the App Store to maybe moving it over towards Developer earnings. As this way it can bring better quality games on to the platform that can draw a wider audience.
It is nice to see Roblox opening up about the tax fees and where funds go to because it allows for more conversation and transparency.
I’ll keep watch on any progress and hopefully agreements can be made to satisfy both developers and the corporation! 
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I really do appreciate the effort that developer relations makes in order to make developers feel their voice is heard on the platform, and to facilitate dialogue between them. However, this response is not enough to justify the conditions that we experience on the platform. Developers are never going to be in any condition to tell the company what to do with their money, this is something we are well aware of, we are also never going to have as accurate a financial analysis as the company which pays us.
Despite this, the amount of money developers earn (and, I hope there is more analysis of this provided) was only one of the problems listed. There are still hundreds of developers who go month to month without access to their income, and have to cash out at rates below the maximum amount they could be because of the tiered system’s bias towards large cash-out amounts.
The 25% vs 75% is not now, and never was, the main point of contention in regards to the way developers are paid on the platform. It is the systematic lack of access to our income, the lack of a presentation of where the money we earn goes and why it goes there, the improvements in methods of generating revenue being given to influencers and not developers, and the funds we are given that make up the reasons why we are upset. It is that the relationship between roblox and its developer community is a relationship where a body of individuals whose livelihoods are affected by this have no way to effectively express their discontent without running into a wall.
Developers do not have a body that can speak collectively, form statistics, do studies or the like. The only power for argument that we have now is our individual stories and testimonies. And I hope that upon further reading, there will be further response.
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I actually don’t use DevEx because the cost, bar and threshold and other complex issues of the matter. I only take work through direct payment due to the frustrating costs involved in even attempting a 100k cashout and not having it regular enough - I refused to be “locked in” at 50k R$ and having to wait between times for another pay-check.
Having to immediately fork over £20 for a month of OBC just to be able to cashout your earnings to me is an super insult to injury considering the CEO of Roblox David Baszucki has repeatedly been seen repeating the phrase “never charge the developer” yet since DevEx has launched this requirement has still not been lifted.
By taking direct payment from other developers there is very minimal fees and I can usually accept any currency as I have an international bank account that can accept/hold a variety of currencies without automatically converting them using a bad exchange rate and slapping a nice fixed fee on top.
When I try to bring in outsiders I know who have at least 5 years in the industry they take one look at Roblox and the DevEx page and I have to scramble to fight for them to join me with many just walking away.
Roblox in it’s current situation cannot foster teams in the slightest and it never will for the foreseeable future unless changes are deployed quickly. I know for sure I’m not the only one that really has to fight to outside contractors of why they should use Roblox and the further frustrations as a result of this.
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While transparency is welcomed, and I have always been one to note that the hidden costs behind the scenes was probably more than people expected, these numbers don’t do much to hide the fact that Roblox has seen exponential growth in its player numbers. Pushing past 90million MAU, and having active player numbers for single games on Roblox that rival some of the steam chart tops (Adopt Me would rank number 7 on current players if it was on steam as of the time that I write this). In the mean time we haven’t seen an increase in DevEx rates in the past two years.
If I were to speculate, Roblox probably hasn’t made a lot of profit since then (as opposed to revenue, which is money they reinvest into the platform). I suspect that a lot of reinvestment into the platform is going on, and reinvestment into growing the company itself. I know employee numbers have shot up over the past two years, and there has been a lot of cool new things to come out since then. What isn’t being treated as an investment, it seems, is the developers. While toys and new features are nice, players are bought onto the platform because they want to play awesome games with their friends. Not because they saw some toy in Walmart.
In conclusion, if you want to allow top developers to continue to make Roblox competitive in the world market, more transparency and better analytics is called for. But this will not allow us to grow and thrive. We need to know how Roblox plans to reinvest back into the developer community, or we will stagnate.We need to know that we will see a share of that increased revenue, because top devs have made Roblox what it is today. We need to know we are really a concern for Roblox, or we will continue to migrate to other platforms.
I’ve talked to a lot of developers over the past few years and I always ask them a simple question: What is their plan for the future? Most of the times, their response is “Use Roblox as a jumping off point to develop for other platforms.” That is tragic to me, and I believe it needs to change.
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This is a great response, more specific information could’ve been given on the revenue side, but I personally think that this entire debate stemmed from a lack of transparency on where Roblox’s cut goes, and this post reduces the confusion massively.
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That quote you posted from Apple’s newsroom is talking about iTunes/AppStore Subscriptions which are a different topic. Apple takes 30% from all App Store transactions for every app, except in the case with subscriptions they will only take 15% after 1 year.
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Glad to see such a swift response! I’d love to be able to be able to give some feedback directly to staff from a small developers perspective on how Roblox can provide more analytical and monetization tools to help me grow. In addition, I believe there are some areas in the services provided where transparency can be massively improved to help create a significantly better user and developer experience.
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I appreciate the response, but like @Wheatlies said, the tier issue hasn’t been addressed.
Adding 750K and 1.5M tiers would do wonders for most DevEx users.
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$10 on PC gets you 1,000 Robux. $10 on mobile and Xbox gets you 800 Robux. It was my understanding that this was, at least partially, to account for platform fees. I’m not sure where the 24% platform fees figure comes from considering that the purchasing disparity alone already accounts for a 20% difference. Payment processing fees should not be nearly as high on PC.
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