Introducing: Plugin Marketplace!

[RoxyBloxyy]

Hey developers!

As you are all busy making incredible games, we know that an important part of your workflow is using plugins to speed up development. We also know that there are many of you out there making those awesome plugins and sharing them with the rest of the community.

So, on that note, we are extremely excited to announce that we are introducing a new category in the Studio Marketplace. Have you made a really awesome plugin? Well, now you can put it up for sale. Are you looking for a plugin that does something specific? You can buy it and support the wonderful developer who made it! Of course, free plugins will still show up in the Marketplace too, so you can enjoy some of the best plugins from our developer community… without ever. leaving. Studio.

You may be thinking, “why would I pay for a plugin when there are tons available for free?” Well, by enabling our plugin makers to sell their plugins, we are hoping to incentivize the creation of even better tools for the rest of the community!

Our top plugin creators have curated some great plugins for all of you to buy and use (some are even free!). Navigate to the Marketplace section of Toolbox and select Plugins from the dropdown menu to check it out.

For all you awesome plugin creators out there, you will notice that we also released new publish and configure workflows in Studio as well as the ability to access your own plugins via the Inventory and My Creations tabs in the Toolbox! Let us know what you think!

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FAQ

Q: When will more developers be given access to this feature?
A: In order to ensure the safety of our community, we are starting with a closed group of plugin creators who can sell and share their plugins directly in the Marketplace. However, we also know that some of you are awesome creators and are going to open this up capability to more of you soon! Stay tuned to this space for more details on that soon!

Q: Will we be able to sell other asset types too?
A: Yes! We will be extending selling support to all Marketplace assets over the course of 2020.

Q: How does Roblox ensure nobody just re-uploads assets from the Marketplace or other peoples’ creations?
A: This is a hard problem to solve, and we’re still working on a solution that works at a large scale. This is part of the reason that the plugin creator program is currently limited. We are actively investigating different solutions for protecting our creator community and their content.

Q: Will developers need to be Premium members to sell items in the Marketplace?
A: Yes. We currently require that all sellers have a Premium membership.

Q: What are the price floors and ceilings for selling Marketplace items?
A: Currently, there is no price floor or ceiling for selling plugins. This means developers may opt to put their plugin up on the Marketplace for free or for a price. Additionally, we do not intend to institute a price floor or ceiling for other asset types as those roll out but this is subject to change.

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This could not have been done without our awesome team: @iriszh, @Mr_Purrsalot, @iMightBeLying, @ZeroIndex, @longlongchien, @portenio, @St4rst0n3, and @westbyz80!

[CJ_Oyer]

Do you have plans on allowing subscriptions to plugins in the future? Similar to how VIP Servers work currently.

[coefficients]

Whoaaaa let’s digest all this info first!

[buildthomas]

Will this prevent developers from inspecting source of plugins they install (or make it more complex in any way)? Developers of top games would probably not use plugins if they can’t verify that the source is safe and/or there is a proper permission system in place for plugins.

I’m also skeptical about the financial viability of this system as-is at scale (not just with X curated creators), due to the fact that there is no extra real estate available on the website / asset page to advertise your plugin. In other words, you have to do it with an icon and an asset description. Is this enough to convince people that this random plugin they’re looking at is what they need and is worth the price they’re paying?

This will start to become interesting when there is more advertising / demo space available to show what your plugin does (i.e. ability to add (video) thumbnails to plugins) to incentivice buyers into spending their money on your plugin, and a proper permission system for plugins so that I don’t have to worry what a plugin is doing in the background. Until then I can’t see myself spending money on a paid plugin.

[TheCarbyneUniverse (Carbyne)]

This is an awesome feature. The feature rewards the developers that create quality plugins.

Just one question though: will we be able to get a refund if we did not yet use the plugin we just bought? (For example, if I buy a plugin that I may think is not suitable for me, as long as I do not open it and operate it, will I still be able to uninstall my plugin for a price back?)

[kenami]

NO WAY? Is this perhaps the first market ever for developers ? i never tried to make a plugin at all but now that it have a unique turns, it might motivate alot of users to learn and release something.

Still, I have a very big worry regarding the re-upload issues that will come alongs with it, what are the current ideas thoughts for preventing it ? it’s incomplete indeed but considering it is not quite the same as UGC Catalog, it might be much harder to verify stolen contents…

[ScriptOn (Genya)]

@RoxyBloxyy

You may be thinking, “why would I pay for a plugin when there are tons available for free?”

@RoxyBloxyy

Q: How does Roblox ensure nobody just re-uploads assets from the Marketplace or other peoples’ creations?
A: This is a hard problem to solve, and we’re still working on a solution that works at a large scale. This is part of the reason that the plugin creator program is currently limited. We are actively investigating different solutions for protecting our creator community and their content.

While people may not be able to re-upload your plugin and ask for money, they surely will re-upload it for free…

[fivefactor (factor)]

Great addition! This will probably be useful for the Studio+ team who were looking to have their plugin used as a paid service.

Is there going to be additional plugin access settings? This would allow plugin creators to whitelist certain users that can use the plugin.

[Just2Terrify (J2T)]

This is an incredible feature, I do have to ask… what is the speed of the plugins popping up? I saw a massive delay on the video but I believe that is just the video itself. Is it extremely slow or is it relatively fast like the other categories?

[Elttob (dphfox)]

Can paid plugins be imported with game:GetObjects()?

[Daw588]

People already started abusing sell feature, and I see plugin (useless one) that costs over R$1M.

One more question, how we can preview plugin before we gonna pay for it, since I dont wan’t to buy plugin and then, realize that’s just an empty, click-bait, or virus?

[Po0k (Pook)]

I don’t particularly agree with this feature yet if it were released to the public, as it could create some very dicey situations, what if you buy a plugin just to have the creator take out/modify a feature you may have bought the plugin for? Adding onto what buildthomas said, they would have to re-introduce the idea of private modules if they were going to fix the re-upload problem, which then again brings up the overall issue of malicious code being implanted within a module. For now the system is a white list, so I doubt this will become an issue, but it’s something to think about.

I’m optimistic that all these issues may be worked out, this is very enticing and sure does add an incentive to making plugins despite these issues. Another way for developers to find success on Roblox.

[berezaa (Bereza)]

Allowing plugins to be closed-source is best way I can think of to allow paid plugins to work at scale, otherwise the issue of people re-uploading plugins (either as exact copies or even with significant changes) can become too big of an issue.

For what it’s worth, as a developer I would feel 100% comfortable running a closed-source plugin if there was a proper permissions system in which developers have to manually authorize the plugin to perform certain actions (datastore access, HttpService calls, InsertService on behalf of the game, etc.) which could cause harm.

I will say though, the paid marketplace really excites me because factoring revenue into search relevancy will completely obliterate the swaths of botted assets that currently plague the library. If done right, this will drastically increase the quality of assets available to developers on the platform.

Edit: a follow-up on a closed-source plugin giving its creator admin commands in your game:

Introducing: Plugin Marketplace!

If Read/Write Script Source, Insert Assets and Require External Modules are all permissions, then no, a plugin would not be able to do this without raising eyebrows.

[kenami]

Why would abusive prices matter ? those are just going to be ignored like clothings & items of the catalog

[Spectaqual (Ivy)]

@RoxyBloxyy

Q: How does Roblox ensure nobody just re-uploads assets from the Marketplace or other peoples’ creations?

I wouldn’t say re-uploading to the Marketplace is the issue here. We’ve got two major problems going against each other.

• Nobody wants to end up using a plugin which isn’t trustworthy. They want to inspect the source, or at least be sure that Roblox has put in precautions to prevent backdoors from being slipped in, which last I checked is still an issue.

• If the source is available, it can be reuploaded. The incentive here isn’t cash for everyone though, no. It will be the groups of people who can’t afford plugins. This already happens at a much larger scale with programs like Photoshop. People are going to be setting up places to download plugins without having to pay the creator.

Only solution I can really see is if Roblox finds some way to ramp up security on plugins enough that we can rely on not needing to see the source. Even if it’s solved though, I’d imagine that pirated plugins are still going to be a big issue. Even if the code is closed-source, it’s still on our PCs. I can see it being a market where devs will pay to have the tools to crack plugins wide open and distribute them online.

[MrLonely1221]

Apparently this happened when I already had studio open? Because I don’t see this in my toolbox, haha.

[NickTimesTwo (nickx2)]

Yes! This for models and decals too! Roblox Development won’t just be games! This is a whole economy you’re building, right on Roblox!

[Daw588]

It gets annoying, for example: someone would like to try to find an plugin, and instead of viewing actual plugins, see botted plugins that are empty or with some sort of virus.