Maybe for large studios, but 100,000$ a month could support about 16 programmers (assuming its all programmers of course) with a salary of $72,000 a year (also assuming its stable income), which is definitely good (except bay area of course). I really think if you’re at the point in which you need like say, 30 employees to run a game studio on roblox, you might as well make it outside of roblox. Especially considering working together at that scale already makes it more complicated to do with what team development tools roblox offers (team create is cool, but relying on it by a large team is bad idea)
Another thing for me is I personally don’t want large studios on roblox. It’s a great platform, many kids are learning development on it and giving them a chance to start something, I personally started on roblox as a kid back in 2007, and now i’d say i am decently successful with it. However, making it easier for large studios to work on the platform just makes it even harder for the small folk to have a chance at success, because they have more resources to pump out content.
That being said, money is great. Increasing the devEx rates by a bit would still be nice, though i still think it’d be better invested in roblox employees (as they’re always hiring) to further expand the engine and make it even better to compete against other game engines.
Yeah I agree and this is the essence of what I’m saying. Even if Roblox’s return rate is good, it needs to be competitive, otherwise entrepreneurs will look elsewhere.
All of us indie developers have an instinct to preserve the Roblox we fell in love with, but I think larger studios are an inevitability. That being said, it’s not like we’ll be forced out. I think indie devs can still find the same magnitude of success, even if the top 50 games become studio games. Plenty of opportunity for smalltime breakouts to gain traction (minecraft, they are billions, etc)
Thank you for your transparency and response. I was saddened that this thread had lost any traction it had and just got lost. Still waiting for an official or unofficial response on possible plans for DevEx from @Roblox Devrel.
It is crazy to think that $66,000 just got sucked into a vacuum back into Roblox.
Also, theoretically, the $66,000 taken by Roblox ironically went back into you and other interns (obviously not at full amount) while they paid you per/hour to be there to make games as part as your internship.
Hopeful thinking but these things are decided far above DevRel and the forums and next time rates are changed I imagine it would happen out of the blue.
On the topic of the market fee, I don’t see the point for such a steep one. Any percentage loss would be enough to prevent Robux from freeflowing between accounts willy nilly, as it was designed for.
But, as the others have charted out above, if we also account for the disparity between the going rate for Robux and the DevEx rate, it comes out to the dev earning just 1/5th of the money that’s being put in.
I wish whoever ran the Video Stars Program and the interactions with the YouTubers worked with Developers. I don’t know how long it took them to achieve the “Star Code” program when purchasing Robux, but nonetheless, they got and done and communicated with the YouTubers.
I heard the communications with the YouTubers and Video Stars Program is very swift and fast, admittedly there are less of them. However, I have an email I sent to DevRel six weeks ago that hasn’t been responded too. DevRel is either understaffed, poorly managed, or both.
I know DevRel isn’t responsible for increasing DevEx rates, but I’ve sent this thread to several DevRel members and it seems they just ignored it. I for one would just like an answer on how likely this may be within the coming year. I would like some transparency and communication. I think that it would be very plausible that they could ask whoever is in charge of DevEx and ask them if this is in the works or has even been considered.
In response to Grace’s “In response to Developer’s Feedback on Developer Exchange”
To start off, I want to address how this replied completely killed the conversation of raising Devex. We got presented with ““Yeah we’d love to do it, but we can’t! So sorry! And the here is why…”” and in my opinion the why were these very vague answers with scarce numbers that don’t actually help us and are seemed to be rounded and slightly skewed to stop the conversation to make it seem like no way possible DevEx will ever be raised which was completely unfair to the community.
Now to the actual rebuttal breaking it down point-by-point.
They acknowledged that they saw our posts, but they never build off of it, just a “cool thanks for sharing” and they never really go back and fully consider the effect of DevEx on peoples personal lives and businesses. They never address how Roblox Studios are bottlenecked and cant expand, David himself said he’d love to see big 100 people teams, but Roblox doesn’t even seem willing to even take the first step to make this possible.
No one is arguing how payouts are made, in fact, the service is pretty nice. Most DevEx request take around a week and the team behind them are amazing. They respond in fast and mannerly time whenever I have issues.
If you’re growing the player base, you’re still not increasing the DevEx rate… still the same rate, just more people buying Robux which goes back into Roblox…
You guys can’t always share the conversations and rarely conversations ever happen… The last time the VP of DevRel even posted was a year ago prior to her response to us. I personally can’t trust that anything is happening because barely anything in the works gets communicated, and I think a lot of people share that opinion. Yeah, I know, they might not tell us things because NDA or because they fall through, but HOLY COW, even if you want to communicate to DevRel you HARDLY EVER get a response and if you do its WEEKS later.
(More critiques about DevRel communication in this thread)
The specialist I’m assuming is only available to top devs, which defeats the purpose of @theamazeman Middle-Class dev arguments. Also, not to toot my own horn but I think I know how to monetize my own game a lot better than the “specialist”… and I can always get a second opinion from my peers. Also once again the issue isn’t how many robux are in our group funds or accounts, it’s at the rate we exchange it.
As the wise poet Blueface says “You can’t show me how to make a mill’ ‘til you make a mill’”
This is the part of the post that shuts down the conversation. Nobody can point at any flaws in this part. She gave us the numbers… and nobody can say she’s wrong because we don’t have access to see if this is true or not. I personally think these numbers are exaggerated or skewed, or not completely accurate, something just doesn’t add up… We still only get 20% of one robux, it goes through the 30% tax and the exchange rate. These numbers are just so hard to believe, the only thing right about this paragraph is, yes, you guys can do a way better job of articulating the prices/cost in the future.
This is the only part of the post that actually addresses the exchange rate, the rest is just fluff, and the response is “No its not possible because of these percents”.
I haven’t seen much dialog with DevRel and the community recently and from my perspective, it’s been a silent month. This is me trying to forward the dialogue with the community.
You gloss over the fact that within the 2 years of the last devex rate raise the platform expanded exponentially and actually reported to be profitable along with gaining millions of dollars in investments.
Totally true! Of course that comes with increased operations cost but I’ve experienced enough exponential growth in tech businesses to know that revenue grows much faster than expenses.
They gave a vague answer as you say and people accepted it. Otherwise this topic would be much larger. That sucks. It will take much larger / organized approach to get a larger share of the pie.
From my point of view, the only ones who can push for a change are the very top devs. berezaa seems to be the only one who is trying to do so and while important he is not ranked in either on what I think roblox considers the most important categories: Popular & Top earning.
Top members of this categories see very good returns from their work so they dont have as much incentive to push for a change (which may be a risky and demanding move to the eyes of someone who is already very well allocated)
Would it be possible for Roblox to multiply the devex cashout rate by 1/0.7 times?
Because 30% is the minimum tax regardless of any purchase on the entire platform. Multiplying it by 1/0.7 would partially remove the minimum tax , without putting recursively taxed robux into account. (So only Robux that’s directly spent on something devexable, right after it has been purchased.)
And because you’re only affecting the rate at cashout, the tax could just reside like usual for premium and non-premium members.
The effects of such a change would only be limited to successful devex attempts.
Such a change would make the baseline cashout of 100k robux to 350 USD into 100k robux to 500 USD.
This change that only resides at the very end of robux’ presence in the market could incentivize developers a lot more.
(Something else I thought of)
I’m not sure how much USD gets spent on average before a single baseline cashout can be done since the purchase rates of Robux very per platform (and perhaps country too), and then there are also cases of Robux being earned from trading hats etc…
The best method I could think for approximating this would be by creating a table of all possible methods of acquiring robux besides: selling clothing, gamepass and developer products.
The table would include duplicates of the same processes but with different amounts of USD spent for every 100k robux acquired. At the end the average of all those methods could be displayed.
This isn’t a great estimation to say at the very least, but I don’t know of any other methods.
There’s nothing innovative about increasing it 1/0.7 times over increasing it by any other amount, that’s still just an increase that means Roblox spends more money and we get more money. The extra money doesn’t magically appear out of nowhere. For all we know the current rate could already be adjusted for market fee. So this introduces no new argument in favor of increasing the cut we get unfortunately. The cashout rate is just the cashout rate, it doesn’t care about other fees, it’s always the same.
Yeah, nevermind what I said. What I brought up wouldn’t work cause the taxes and value of robux would stay the same but only the cashout rate would change. Which just means losing more money on Roblox’ end, unless players start magically buying more robux on a consistent basis as soon as that change happens. Which won’t happen.
It was an idea of how far Roblox could “realistically” go with increasing the devrate; it actually came out as a 43% increase because it was assumed that if a developer were to somehow get 350k robux that has only been taxed once, he/she would be exchanging 70% of that batch’s earnings (0.7*143 = 100). This was a bad approximation because of the very nature of how I came with that number.
After rethinking my idea it doesn’t seem like changing the rates rightaway is a great idea. I think Roblox is working its way to doing that by adding more sources of revenue and making roblox development more appealing by introducing new prices related to online memberships etc. (with premium being cheaper than bc (and doing immediate robux payouts when purchasing premium so users are more compelled to buy more robux when said gifted robux runs out)) before changing any devexrate.
Please hear me out. I know there are many developers that agree with these claims!
Roblox takes more money from Developers than any other platform, in fact they take more money from developers than Steam and Epic Games combined.
Steam - 30%
Epic Games - 12% Roblox - 80.4%
How do I figure this? Well lets dive into some math shall we?
DevEx Rate: 1 Robux = .0035$ (At the time of writing a Doge Coin is worth more than a DevEx Robux )
Marketplace Rate: 1 Robux = .0125$
Player buys 400 Robux for $4.99. Player buys a gamepass in developers game for 400 Robux. Developer makes 280 Robux off this exchange. 280 Robux converted at the Marketplace Rate would be equivalent to $3.50. Now on any other platform this is where the transaction would end, the developer would pocket the $3.50 and the host would pocket $1.49, but this isn’t any other platform. This is Roblox, where sadly greed is king.
The second any Robux are purchased they must instantly be valued at DevEx Rates. So that $3.50 that you would of normally made becomes a grant total off… $0.98 Congratulations! You made 98 cents off a $5 purchase! Now you pocket $0.98 and the host pockets $4.02, youre basically being ripped off.
The math behind this claim
400 * (1 - .3) = 280 (Robux Earned | 400 is the Robux spent | 1 - .3 accounts for the marketplace fee)
.0035 * 280 = 0.98 (USD Earned | .0035 is the current DevEx Rate | 280 is Robux Earned)
0.98 / (400 * .0125) = 0.196 (Percentage Developer Makes | 0.98 is USD made | 400 * .0125 Is USD originally spent)
1 - 0.196 = 0.804 (Percentage Roblox Makes | This is self explanatory)
Heres some formulas
(DevEx Rate * (Robux Spent * (1 - Marketplace Fee))) | This tells you the amount of USD you would make off a specified amount of Robux with the current DevEx rates and Marketplace fees.
Example: (.0035 * (5000 * (1 - .3))) = $12.25
Robux Spent * Marketplace Fee | This tells you how much the player originally spent for your gamepass.
Example: 5000 * .0125 = $62.50
12.25 / 62.50 = .196 meaing Roblox took ~80% of your potential earnings.
Heres some code
Feel free to paste this code into a script in Studio and fool around with it, see how much USD you are going to make off your ingame purchases and also see how much you could potentially make by fooling around with the rates. You really get a feeling for how much Roblox is taking from you compared to other platforms.
local DevExRate = .0035
local MarketplaceRate = .0125
local MarketplaceFee = .3 -- 30%
local function CalculateEarnings(PriceInRobux)
local DeveloperMakes = (DevExRate * (PriceInRobux * (1 - MarketplaceFee)))
local RobloxMakes = (PriceInRobux * MarketplaceRate) - DeveloperMakes
return "At the current rates a purchase of " .. PriceInRobux .. " Robux or $" .. tostring((PriceInRobux * MarketplaceRate)) .. " would give you $"
.. tostring(DeveloperMakes) .. " and Roblox $" .. tostring(RobloxMakes)
end
print(CalculateEarnings(500))
Thank you and hopefully something can be changed. 80% is an absurd amount of revenue to be taking from developers. If anyone has anything they would like to comment on please do Have a great day!
EDIT: I don think I am a high enough member level to reply to questions about this post. You will have to DM me for me to answer any questions.
To reply to @Autterfly Roblox is a private company valued at over 4 billion USD. I am 100% sure they can afford to increase DevEx from .0035 to .005.
There has been long discussions about the very big differences between something like Steam, Epic Games and Roblox before. Have you considered that a lot of the revenue goes into providing you as a developer with services that other platforms don’t offer?
There’s a ton of useful info here. Roblox are very familiar with our thoughts, since then we’ve been given Premium Payouts which is great for developers that haven’t monetized but usually a 15% increase for those that have.
I truly hope that, at some point, people voice their concerns enough for this change to take place. This issue deserves more attention and discussion. Some may believe there’s no point in talking about it, assuming it won’t lead to change, but I strongly disagree.
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Have a great day!