It probably means that you must use player’s Roblox avatar rather than having a custom in-game avatar system.
Most likely legal. 500K USD is alot of money.
Yes that is made clear in the OP
@PresidentAbdous There are no requirements around group visits/income for a studio. If you feel you have the skills and experience required to release a new project with high potential on the platform, please don’t hesitate to apply.
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@mkivtt Will budgets under $500,000 be considered? The listed minimum is $500,000 but surely something great could be done with $300,000 or even $100,000.
Okay a few questions I have about this
If someone does get approved, and the 500k is handed out, are we expected to pay it back in any form?
What happens if an idea flops or something unfortunate comes up in a devs life that puts the project on hold or maybe can’t be finished?
Is there going to be a deadline for any project ideas that we give?
What happens to the cash if the project is not able to get completed?
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Thank you for addressing these issues. These are my main issues with this program as well.
Roblox should be first improving the engine, their moderation (I was warned twice a couple days ago for uploading an “inappropriate” leaf image for a fighting move…) and a wide range of other things that many people have already said and I don’t feel like repeating those issues over and over.
There’s a large issue with this program, and it’s that I don’t think you’ll ever be able to push the current engine’s capabilities so much to the point that you’d need $500k to spend on hiring developers, assets, advertising, etc. There’s already many issues with the current engine that make it impossible to create a game that “sets the bar higher” than it currently is for Roblox Developers.
If anyone experienced enough is reading this, you probably know the limitations of things such as TeleportService and game optimization. It’s extremely hard to create a very realistic game without the game just straight up lagging, and making a high quality game available for mobile users is impossible if it’s not low-poly, low part count, etc.
Roblox needs to fix their problems first, and probably change a few of their priorities as well before creating programs such as these. It’s just inefficient and bad for the platform in general.
We need a more stable, optimized and reliable engine. Without this, there’s no point in releasing programs that give out huge funds towards projects.
Edit: Fixed some grammatical mistakes since I was writing this while developing my project; mind was someplace else.
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I feel that this is not necessarily correct all the time, and so I am going to say a few things, right here, right now and give my personal opinion on this matter. Money may make a good game with good people hired, but that doesn’t mean the game will make that money back. Money does not dictate whether a creation in Studio is good or not; What if they make the game too FPS heavy and so many cannot play it? Yes, this may make it gain reputation as a great game, but they would not have many players due to the FPS requirements. Bugs can be a factor in losing players too. All in all, there are many, many factors to consider here, and hiring all the best people for it would be costly and could be bad for a team. It is quite a gamble when you think about it and think about pay.
Many games are going to flop and that’s only natural; They could even have many factors in the game that usually would keep players coming back, such as engaging features, and good advertisements, but be in the red due to the sheer cost and stress of having to handle this much at once.
Yes, people will spend a lot of money on monetized in-game items, but it will be hard to make back $500,000 when you include developer payments, and other factors, such as the dev-ex rate for Robux as of right now. The greatest builders, scripters, and animators will most likely take a HUGE amount of money to commision, and will want to be paid in different ways. If you hire them, chances are they will make a good game. But will that money ever make itself back? The answer cannot be said for certain, but it would take a long time depending on how their game does.
This may be true some of the time, but I believe you have overlooked a factor in them making this money: Stress. The stress of making a game for this much time and for this much money being put to very high expectations can be a lot, and can lead to what I like to call Development Hell, where you have little motivation but need to work on the game anyways as you are set to very high expectations as a developer. Yes, studios can adjust schedules to fit this and let developers have time off, as I learned, but at some point or another, developers may be experiencing lots of stress due to the sheer amount of work in making a game, and some will need to keep working and pushing through this while other developers are on a break. It’s a team experience and so it will be treated that way by many unless it is being made by a solo developer, and, from interviews I have seen, can be quite stressful. For example, as said above in the announcement, teams will be paid by Roblox staff and provide funding based off progress towards certain milestones. It’s the same with some IRL game studios; Developers work extremely hard alongside their peers and are set to very high expectations but can be subject to extreme stress and burnout while making a game with high expectations, just for pay. There’s many examples of this online, if you search it up.
You have some very fair and good points here, but I wanted to add to them and say possible obstacles that could contradict these statements. Obviously these will not apply to every person or studio but generally this can happen.
This was all just constructive criticism and my opinion on this matter. I hope this clarified some things as I wanted to say some things you may have overlooked.
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You have done an absolutely amazing job clarifying this statement and have many fair and valid points; I must say I agree with what you have said here. This is a large issue in the program and something me and others have noticed, and it is one of the only issues I personally have with this program myself.
For example, Studio still has many issues and performance problems. So many so that I am not going to go into them all, as it would take a very lengthy statement and quite a bit of time. I feel the engine should be made more reliable as well.
This is something that was very well said, and as someone who has helped work on these types of games before, I can say that it is a very laggy and hard to play if there is not a low part count and low-poly builds. Take into example Horror genre games. A lot of these games are usually very FPS heavy and can be played only by higher-end devices, while mobile devices cannot play this. I have tried thinking of ways around this before but they were all either extremely difficult to make (We tried) or were just not possible to get around. Higher quality games can be very unstable and laggy and can even crash on many devices due to them being highly demanding.
This as well was extremely well-said-- The current limits of the Roblox engine have been tried and tested and if developers were to set the bar higher than it currently is, the sad truth is their game may be completely unplayable without certain measures in effect to keep the game working well and performing well. It’s something that cannot yet be done well unless the engine is seriously improved because it currently has some issues.
Again, great job @lysandr for addressing this, and great job to OP (Who I was responding to), for the great statement on their opinions of this all. I must say that I agree with all they have said. If any Roblox staff or Developer Relations members see this, please try to take this feedback into account.
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Hello, I was looking at the application and wanted to see all the pages so pressed the go next arrow, then the application got submitted. Is there a way to cancel the submission of my application? As I did not fill it out correctly?
No, there is no way to revoke an application.
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Lovely, well… at least it’s not restricted to submit another one.
I have a few questions regarding the requirements:
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You are required to be 18 years or older of age - how will Roblox confirm that you’re 18+? Roblox can’t just say give me your birth certificate.
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You guys are giving $500,000 USD to developers, this seems to be more than you really need to give.
You should give $500 up to $500,000 based on skill
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Thanks for the reassurance! I’ll be sure not to disappoint. But seriously, thank you for heading this program, the Game Fund has tremendous opportunity for the platform as a whole.
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Super cool, might look more into this later down the road
This is an overall thumbs up for Roblox! Even though I don’t meet the minimum age requirements myself, I hopefully will get to experience these games myself along with others in the near future when they are done! I’m looking forward to the games these talented people will be making!
I believe this is a really good way to solve roblox’s current problem of there not being new innovative games and mechanics!
Great job Roblox, keep up the good work! 
This is an amazing program and I feel like it’s going to expand the platform a lot. Just wow.
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Uh oh…
This is Roblox’s way of getting their own ideas of what Roblox SHOULD BE by incentivizing:
- Multiplayer focus
- Cross-platform, with mobile optimization in mind
- Social mechanics as key to the experience
- In-game avatars that reflect elements of the user’s platform avatar identity
*> Ability to leverage ‘Metaverse’ items (i.e., that can be equipped on platform avatars, like the ones you buy in marketplace)
Frankly, Roblox could do with a wider range of things. Also:
- Age requirement 18+
- Details about you and/or your team
- Short description of your project
- Pitch deck (high-level strategy, design specifications, etc.)
- Project milestone schedule and budget
Is it just me, or is that only things that legitimately only professional devs actually can do? Seems like Roblox is trying to create Studios, fund them, and turn them into puppets for what they envision their Metaverse to be. I just don’t like the idea that Roblox can steer their own platform away from the natural and fun direction into a corporate landscape. Oh well. Let’s see how it goes.
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Roblox is trying to market itself to an older audience. Higher quality games attract older audiences, and thus attract investors. It’s a really good idea on all three sides, developers, Roblox, and the players.
They want to make sure only professional devs do get this, because of the fact they don’t want to waste 500,000 USD. Also, 18+ is because they’re likely to need to sign a contract. They allow solo devs, too. So they aren’t essentially making puppet states for the country of Roblox, they’re just making sure that these people are dedicated to this to prevent wasting 500,000 USD.
Maybe you can show a drivers license or something? I don’t know about anything else.
The 500,000 USD is so they can make amazing games to really push the limits of the platform. Making games can cost a lot. They’re thinking Adopt Me-size games.
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