Testimony for Mariofly5
A bit of context on who I am before I start on my views on this. I’m 17 and I’m British. I do not have all of the sidetracks that some people in america have because by law, I’m granted free health care and education up to 18 years old. In short terms, I got really lucky to be born with parents that support me and the good people I surround myself with, and that’ll always be something I’ll care about. Roblox, especially takes a deep place in my heart, as it has followed me through many major events in my life.
I’ve been playing Roblox for more than half of my life now. 10 whole years! I’d never have thought that I’d be making games and financially benefiting from my hobby, but here I am now, making money while sitting in a chair, while other kids my age are starting to get jobs. It’s quite a strange and weird concept. But as I get older, this becomes less of the case. It has always been a dream for me to develop actual video games so that people will enjoy playing something I make, but the choices I have are getting narrow, and next year, after I’ve left my school, I’m likely going to be dropped into the deep end.
To put it bluntly, Roblox is one of the few things that has kept me happy all these years. As well as having a learning disability, and a anxiety disorder, I now have titanium stabilising my neck, following a rugby accident that happened a year ago. The injury basically restricts me from contact sports (due to the added risk), and it also means that my body is fragile. If I slip down the stairs or fall onto my head again, it can cause me to become paralysed, from both feeling and movement.
Now it should be noted that I am a lot better now, and part of that is thanks to Roblox. I broke my neck two weeks before exams, and I was freaking out inside, but after spending time on a project in my spare time (a death star to be exact), I was able to ignore all the stress and focus my energies on something creative. And at the end of it all, I’m now working on bigger and greater projects, and I’m now devexing more often than ever before. However, at the crossroads that I’m standing in, I’m still wondering whether I’ll be able to sustain myself with DevEx, or whether I’ll need to procure some form of job that’ll contribute towards diminishing my living costs.
I would love to continue doing stuff on this platform, and an increase in the DevEx would be tremendous for a couple of reasons. I know that there are plenty of people who spend hours working on game features, hours that may not even be comparable to a normal job because they’re much higher. The amount of time and dedication that goes into making a final product pop is huge, if not daunting. Thus, I ask the question, if developers are working their butts off to get an update out on a popular game, surely they should earn something closely equivalent to the hours they spend on the platform, if not the same. Obviously, I understand that most revenue is based on the popularity of your game, and its playerbase, but the fact that even some of the most dedicated developers on the platform, who love the platform dearly, aren’t able to sustain themselves in real life due to what they earn, shocks me to the core.
However, when it does come down to the core, I believe in the good people in the admin team, and the people who are reading this message. I won’t accept that admins aren’t reading our messages because I know they are. I am in support of increasing the total DevEx rate, not just for me, but for all the hard working developers who make up this platform. It should never come to the point where we have to make potentially controversial choices (lootboxes, high priced gamepasses, etc) in order to make break-even. It should never come to the point, where we have to make a post like this so that developers can be heard (although I seriously do appreciate the response from DevRel on this). And surely, if we’re questioning why we are here, on this platform, then surely there is an area that Roblox needs to improve on.
I understand that this can be a huge headache for the financial side of Roblox, and the DevRel team. Dealing with loads of your talented developers calling you out is probably not a nice thing, and I still believe that you guys are human. I trust in the thought that you believe the same about us, I thank you for engaging in some conversation with us over it, and I hope that in the near future, we can find some form of middle ground where both sides reach a compromise!
Thank you for reading.
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