We are making improvements to how you can earn from subscriptions within experiences.Starting on May 15th, subscription earnings will be based on the price a user pays, regardless of which platform they use. Additionally, Roblox will no longer take a platform fee on earnings for subsequent subscription renewals. This means that for the first month of a subscription, you will earn 70% of the Robux based on the subscription price, which represents the base Robux earnings minus the platform fee of 30%. For subsequent months, you will earn 100% of the Robux from subscription renewals.
We are making these changes to increase payouts to the creator community while simplifying our payments systems. Previously, subscription earnings paid out were based on the price of the subscription on desktop, regardless of which platform was used to sign up, with a platform fee on earnings for each renewal purchase.
With subscriptions within experiences, you can earn monthly recurring revenue by offering exclusive benefits to your users. In fact, we find that creators who add subscriptions within their experiences increase their revenue by 7%. Thatâs because subscriptions are a great incentive for users to engage more frequently with your core loop.
For learnings on how to design subscriptions to engage your fans and encourage renewals, you can read our recent case study on Bloxburg and Slap Battles.
Read our documentation or more information on how to design and implement subscriptions within experiences.
Whatâs launching next:
We are adding the ability to take a subscription off-sale without impacting existing subscribers. Creators will now be able to add short term subscription benefits that are still honored once the offering is over. This will launch in the coming weeks.
We are expanding the number of places on mobile where users can buy subscriptions.
Users under the age of 18 will have an easier time subscribing to experiences. On desktop, users under 18 will be required to add new credit card information for each new subscription transaction they make. Previously, users under the age of 18 needed to be linked to a parentâs account to purchase subscriptions.
How much can I earn from adding subscriptions to my experience?
Subscriptions within experiences is a great way to earn monthly recurring revenue by offering exclusive benefits to their user community. In fact, we found that developers that added subscriptions saw a 7% increase on average in overall in-experience spend. After implementing subscriptions, you will earn in robux based on the price a user pays, regardless of the platform. Only the first subscription payment will have a 30% platform fee. Subscription renewals will not have a platform fee.
How do I optimize my subscriptions to improve my retention rate?
Users return to experiences for engaging gameplay, fresh content, and social interactions. Ensuring that your subscription content is valuable and continuously improves the user experience will help build trust and promote long-term retention. We have more in-depth guidance on how to design your subscriptions in our docs.
Can I update my subscription pricing after I publish my subscription?
Not at this time. To update your pricing, youâll have to create a new subscription offering. We plan to launch the ability to archive an existing subscription offering without impacting current subscribers in the coming months.
What are the eligibility requirements to implement subscriptions within my experience?
All developers that are ID or phone verified can implement subscriptions in their experience.
How do I design my subscriptions?
When designed well, subscription benefits are something your users look forward to each month, and provide predictable earnings while driving more attention to your experienceâs shop. To learn how to design your subscription benefits, you can read our documentation on Subscription Design.
How do I implement subscriptions within my experience?
You can create a subscription by heading to Creator Hub, selecting your experience and navigating to the Subscriptions tab under âMonetizationâ. Once your subscription has been created, youâll be able to tie the ID to your benefits in experience. Activate your subscription to make it available for purchase. For more technical details on how to implement subscriptions, read our Subscription Creator Docs. See here for more tips on how to design a subscription.
How do I view analytics on my subscriptions?
Subscription analytics are viewable in the Analytics tab for your experience on Creator Dashboard under Monetization. You can also use our cloud API webhook, which includes triggers for subscription events (canceled, purchased, refunded and renewed) to create your own custom analytics.
Can people buy subscriptions in experiences with robux or gift cards?
Not at this time. We understand that this is a point of frustration, and are looking for a technical solution but do not have any updates to share at this time.
This is a really neat update - Although I think to make subscriptions of any substantial use, a Robux solution is needed. Would like to see this in the near future.
Currently subscriptions do not count towards the algorithm. When will this be added? It makes no sense that everything else counts and subscriptions donât. We are actively being harmed by choosing subscriptions over gamepasses.
Speaking of subscriptions; any possibility in the near future for updating Roblox Premium prompts? So that developers might get a cut from the initial sale, or something along the lines of that. It would increase its adoption across games, which would lead to higher conversion rates from freemium to paying users.
Its up to you to design something players want, roblox is just making it better for those who manage to do it. If you read the full thread you can even see theyâve provided a case study on how other successful games design their subscriptions
This certainly makes subscriptions more appealing to use. Being able to manage instanced subscriptions will also be a great improvement. Iâd also like to be able to update subscriptions without touching current subscribers until their next payment, but I suppose that would be possible by creating a new subscription.
However, the one thing that still concerns me are the refund conditions. Iâm not sure if anything has changed since I last read when subscriptions were first released, but it seemed like it was actually possible to go negative and actually end up costing me real-world currency. If real-world currency is held after purchase, I donât think a refund should be possible once the real-world currency has officially been paid out after the holding period.
Although Iâve actually been super happy with a lot of the updates recently, subscriptions feel like itâs heavily pushing towards the benefit of Roblox whilst falsely portraying itself as beneficial to the developer.
Charging real money has disadvantages, but the FAQ mentioned that you guys were looking for a solution, so thatâs not a main issue. Developers earning Robux is also not the main issue, because thatâs how most of us make a living anyway. But these two together, giving the developer Robux whilst charging real money is the issue.
To me, this feels like word-play to make Roblox look more appetizing. I think that the reason developers earn Robux was so that Roblox could benefit from subscriptions, whilst still being able to say âyou earn 100%.â to attract more developers. Yes, as someone said the key word was âRobuxâ, but anyone who does not look into it will be misled into thinking that theyâre going to earn 100% of the profits from their subscriptions.
It is okay to say Roblox takes a cut, because it provides developers with server hosting, constantly updated tools and a lot of other live-service stuff - any reasonable person would understand and approve of that.
My feedback is please, please, please, give more transparency towards the community - rather than a heavily cherry-coated announcement.
Well I guess some people count Robux as a benefit, you will get more to DevEx. Regardless, the fact that developers will be earning 30% more on renewals is beneficial to them and Roblox itself since this will encourage more developers to implement subscriptions within their experiences.
I donât think they are being âdishonestâ or âmisleadingâ in this post. They didnât say youâll be making 100% of the profit, because of course, Roblox will take 70% of your money when you convert which is what every single developer who makes money off of Roblox knows. Misleading would be blatantly saying youâll be making back 100% of the money they spent.
This is what happens when you canât care to look around the Docs for 5 minutes of your timeâŚ