Issues with the Developer Exchange: Testimonies from the Roblox Dev Community

[Inyo22]

Testimony for Inyo22

I have been on Roblox since roughly late 2010 I primarily focus on building and modeling. I also happen to suffer from COPD (Chronic Obstructed Pulmonary Disease).

For a majority of my life my career has been one of a railroad man. I was a Locomotive Engineer for a small short-line railroad making roughly $10,000 a year working sometimes 60 hour weeks at a pay rate of $12 an hour. However in times when my COPD flairs up the medicine I need to take cost far more than what I can afford on my Railroad pay alone.

Thanks to DevEx one winter, I was able to purchase life saving medicine for my failing lungs which I would not of been able to afford without.

DevEx has literally saved my life that winter without it I am certain I would be 6ft under.

I am now pursuing Roblox Dev full time from my original life long career of railroading and it is making me far more than I ever did on the railroad. Roblox has given me the opportunity for a better life I have never had or would of had the opportunity for.

With higher DevEx rates I can more easily avoid a life or death situation which often plaques me due to my failing lungs and increase the quality of life I had never been able to experience before.

[TheRings0fSaturn (SaturianNightmare)]

While I’ve never actually been able to DevEx on Roblox, this is still concerning to me that even top developers on Roblox are unable to hire other developers for their games. This should definitely be addressed as it’s something that will prove to be detrimental to the platform’s growth and could potentially kill Roblox itself.

I think being able to cash out around 70% of your revenue would be more than enough to allow larger studios to form. The current 20 - 30% plus taxes is one of the worst in the industry. And it sucks too because Roblox has the potential to be a million times better than other platforms.

Signs

I 100% support this.

-TheRings0fSaturn

EDIT
I should point that the current exchange rates are perfect for single, one man teams, such as myself. However, for much larger teams, it’s simply not feasible to develop on Roblox, unless the other developers on your team agree to not be paid as much. If Roblox wants bigger and better games, they need to increase the exchange rate in developer’s favor. The aforementioned 70% shouldn’t be harmful to the platform.

[sleitnick]

For me, this is a matter of my future career choice. What I’m writing below is not necessarily a complaint, but just an inside look at what it would look like to move away from a full-time software job and jump into Roblox game development at the current DevEx rates.

---

I’ll just be as transparent as possible. I currently make $75k/year at my current gig. Considering where I live (Ohio) and how long I’ve been in this career (2 years), this is great, especially considering I started out at $60k. I could work my way up over time. The job is stable and the business is doing well. It’s a pretty typical software engineering position.

Thus, I’m stuck here: If I want to do game development, I feel that I must at least make on Roblox what I make at my job. If I don’t, how could I justify quitting my current job? And if I quit my job, I also lose all my benefits (401k matching, healthcare, dental, eyecare, etc.)

In other words, I need to make 20M-30M Robux per year in order to match my current job. So, roughly 2M Robux per month. I made 30k Robux last month. In other words, I am 1.5% toward my financial goal of being able to quit my job and move to Roblox game development. Ha.

However, I also don’t have any games currently profiting at the moment. Most of my R$ comes from my first-ever game, RO-Port Tycoon, which wasn’t built to be monetized.

There is certainly a responsibility on my own end to work on other games and try to monetize properly.

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To dive into the bigger picture, I also want to start a game development studio here in Columbus, OH. While I stated my personal financial goals, I can’t stop there if I want to employ others in the future. At the moment, all of that is very far off in the distance.

[cloakedyoshi]

Testimony for @cloakedyoshi

I’ve been on Roblox since 2009. I played it as a player from 2009 to 2013, eventually vowing to quit in 2013 after my friends had long left the platform. I decided to stay around to learn Lua and to develop games once the Developer Exchange released. At the time, I never expected to get enough to ever get a profit, but it was an amazing motivator. It meant that the time I put into game development could actually have a turnaround and help me in life and with finances.

I would say I’m probably the perfect example for someone who uses the Dev Ex as a bonus for creating content.

As @zKevin stated:

Doing what’s morally right isn’t advised if you want to make a living here.

I refuse to go into predatory marketing. Lootboxes, P2W, and other malicious ways to get income from children are a no go for me. I think lootbox gambling should be illegal for minors, but it’s currently the only real way to earn a living on Roblox with the current robux tax and exchange rates.

I refuse to do that. Instead, I offer hours of bonus content and cosmetic items at the cost of a few cents and a fair amount of my own time. If I got 100% of the revenue or even 50%, this could start being a part-time or full-time job for me. Instead, it really ends up being small amounts of money I occasionally can use to buy textbooks. It’s not shabby, but it could be so much more. If it was more, I could allot more time into game development on Roblox. I could convince real life friends to join me in Roblox development, and I could polish my games here even more. Instead, it’s really more of a passion project, but eventually I’ll have to leave the platform if I can’t make a living.

EDIT: I also just thought of an interesting perspective. As ludicrous as this sounds, even if Roblox were to remove the 30% tax and give the developer a 1 robuck = 1 cent exchange rate (real life money equivalent of robux), they still make all the money from limiteds and hats. So asking for something like a 70/30 or 80/20 split isn’t unreasonable.

[vCaffy]

Roblox has given me the ability to go from developing games as a hobby to developing games full-time. With the recent success of Dungeon Quest, I was in a position where I could support myself and fully commit to working on the game. This has been an amazing experience and I am truly grateful to have this opportunity.

In order for me to keep the game alive, I had to put 100% of my effort into it (and still do). I quit my internship and took a break from college to focus on the development of Dungeon Quest.
Putting everything in your life aside to pursue a career in Roblox game development is a huge commitment where one must weigh out the potential benefits against the opportunity cost. I asked myself if the decision to pursue this goal would be the right one a few years down the road. Would I have been better off if I kept my job and continued with my degree?

Thankfully I have the luxury of not having to pay any bills, so this decision is easier for me than it might be for others. I would imagine most talented developers, especially ones outside of the Roblox platform don’t share this same luxury, so making the decision to switch to Roblox may not seem like a viable choice to them. In order for a developer to commit to Roblox game development, the benefits must outweigh the opportunity cost and one of the biggest benefits is of course the Developer Exchange.

Increasing the DevEx rate would entice more talented developers to enter the Roblox platform. It would also allow current devs to invest more into their games which would in turn create better games overall for Roblox. Developers would be able to hire larger teams to work on games which would allow currently improbable concepts to be a realistic goal for a game.

[Kampfkarren (boyned)]

Today marks my 11th year on Roblox. I’ve made a game with currently 127M+ visits that has earned me some decent money. However, that money has to be split between four people, meaning that for all the work I put into this game, I will get an amount far less than should reasonably be expected. Factor the low rates in with the tier system of the DevEx system where if I want to hit higher milestones each time, I have to neglect school work and work crunch time, it’s extremely demotivating to work on my game rather than enjoyable. I’m burnt out, and I don’t want to work on it anymore. My group is only 4 people, I can’t imagine how badly this impacts much larger teams.

I strongly empathize with @zKevin. It seems the only way to reliably make money on this platform is to drop all responsibility and morality and create predatory skinner boxes filled with loot crates and garbage. You are actively punished on Roblox for making a well designed game. Higher developer exchange rates wouldn’t eliminate this problem completely, but it’s possible more developers would be resilient to these sorts of tactics if they could earn a more reasonable wage without them.

[BSlickMusic]

Testimony for BSlickMusic

I’ll keep it short. I have had the opportunity to work with so many devs on the platform, big as well as small. It’s no secret that assets, especially art driven assets, have the ability to give a game so much more polish and beauty, that it’s silly to think it’s not important. Having said that, not all developers have the skill to create art NOR pay someone the amount it requires to get decent art assets.

The DevEx rate affects me too, because as a mostly 3rd party contracted composer, I am able to charge for my music in robux. This has led to me being able to keep creating music and assets for those who need it, as a full time job since I got laid off from my corporate job back in January. It hasn’t been easy of course, but making a job out of the Roblox is real. It’s right at the tips of everyone’s fingers, and it could be much more of a reality if we considered all of the above.

Thank you.

[Maxx_J]

Any improvements for Devex would be something in the right direction, since capabilities in regards to devex are required to justify risky endeavors such as pursuing Roblox Development full time, or even part time. For people that do commissions as well as game-owners.

I already spend a lot of time on Roblox but I’m hoping to crank it up a notch as I’ll be graduating from high school soon. I’ve accumulated enough robux lately to devex a few times but I’ve spent it on a few projects in hopes of further increasing profits in order to justify spending most of my free time developing on Roblox. I could imagine that one bad month with somewhat lower revenue from Roblox could hit a smaller developer pretty hard, which could actually discourage one to further work on Roblox and to instead find a more stable means of income. Tweaking the current status-quo could encourage developers to fine-tune experiences more on Roblox, which in turn could mean an overall increase in game quality and could help create a better perception of Roblox. I see rather a positive feedback loop in changing devex details.

[Dev0mar (Omar)]

Testimony for Dev0mar

Roblox has been a huge part of my life, There has not been a single day since I’ve joined the platform where I have not came on roblox or even thought about it. I am so grateful for all the experience, friends, opportunities and connections I have gained from the platform.

While I don’t have games under my own name, I have worked for a few popular games, most notable Freeze Tag, by @ConnorVIII, I’ve spent a great amount of time on freeze tag and its community, I truly enjoyed every second I was apart of it, be it working on Roblox events or making updates for the game that the community ask for. However, after the 2019 egg hunt I needed to step down as both Connor and I have bills to pay (Life expenses, college, etc) what we were getting from the game was simply not enough to support the both of us, leading me to step down from my position.

If Roblox were to increase the DevEx rates, it would be much easier to work on games we are passionate about and being able to support ourselves, I urge Roblox to take all these testimonies posted by my fellow developers and myself, and consider looking into the DevEx program to better support its developer community.

Thank you.

[jandel]

Testimony for Jandel
(Fray, Bed Wars, Floppy Fighters)

I tend to agree with most people in this thread, a perfect example of how the poor dev-ex rates affect game development is with my title Fray. Last RDC David talked about how Roblox wanted to appeal to a wider/older audience so we quickly began development on Fray, using the latest technology (Technically RThro wasn’t out yet so we made our own rig). We have since needed to abandon the project because simply we weren’t generating enough revenue - our only saving grace was the people from the Developer Relations Team like @Nightgaladeld and @InceptionTime who put in a lot of personal effort into getting our game featured in the featured sort allowing us to commit to more development time. Without them, Fray would have been such a huge uphill battle we might not have even broken even on our initial investment. If Dev-Ex rates increased we would be able to re-visit our title Fray and keep developing on it, until then it sits dormant - and we simply can’t commit the resources to further its development.

People like @InceptionTime, @chewbeccca, @Nightgaladeld, @new_storm at the developer relations team have all been such a help to my projects that I’ve felt the security I needed to branch out and commit to projects that aren’t your usual simulator titles, and do something new and fun on Roblox. So a huge thanks to them!

Even my game Floppy Fighters see’s growing pains due to the Dev-Ex Rates (but not to the extent Fray did). An increase in the Dev-Ex rates allows me to focus on my more niche audience within Roblox without the worry of having to make 1-2M Robux per month to just pay bills.

[callmehbob (nightbarbie)]

@Onett

The DevEx rate suggests your contribution to a games success is around 25%, and the agreement of the DevEx program creates a looming uncertainty that even that percentage may be denied on a month by month basis.

This hit me hard in the feels. very well written.

[tyridge77]

Testimony for tyridge77

I started playing roblox in 2008 and quickly fell in love with learning how to make games in 2009. I’m not nearly as successful financially yet as many other developers here submitting testimonies, but because of my 10 years of experience on the platform, and my love for creating games and the faith I put in Roblox and my abilities, I’ve made the decision to work full time on game development and hold off on college or other fields of work for the time being.

Now, entrepreneurship has always been a gamble. However, as several others here have pointed out , Roblox feels like even more of a gamble for creating a sustainable income off of - a lot more than it should be.

I’ll try to summarize how I feel about the situation without being verbose or going into details that others have already covered quite clearly.

In order to sustain yourself comfortably you need a pretty successful game. Front page developers don’t usually have as big of an issue, but even they will likely make less than the same game if it was on another platform(assuming everything else was the same).

Because the rates are too low, trying to stick around on Roblox climbing the ladder to success can be very difficult. You don’t need money to make your break, but sometimes you need time and motivation. Motivation can start to die as people find that they can’t treat Roblox like a job until their success has already happened.

Because the rates are low I think it also encourages people to go down the simulator route. Not that I have anything against stereotypical simulators or the people who make them, but a lot of people don’t want to spend several months of work creating their passion projects because even if they end up selling and have 1000 concurrent players, they’re still going to feel like they’re making absolutely nothing in comparison to some of the more simpler, “exploitative” quick bucks on the front page.

A lot of new developers are trying to go down the easy route not because they’re lazy people or just want to try to be exploitative, but because they’re worried that making what they actually want to make simply won’t be a viable option because of how low the low tiers are.

I don’t want to try to go down the simulator route myself, because I wouldn’t enjoy that and I want to enjoy my job, it’s all I do now. But feeling like I need to if I want to stop worrying about financial sustainability gets a bit saddening

[Semaphorism (standalone_ecu)]

Honestly, i feel the current devEx rate is fine,

@berezaa

Epic Games offers developers 88% of their revenue in return for a storefront and a game engine, and is currently giving away $100M in grant money to students and dev teams), more developers will see Roblox as an unsustainable platform to base their livelihoods on. This is reducing the experienced developer talent pool, which in turn makes it harder for studios to find employees.

I feel comparing it to Epic games store isn’t really a fair comparison. Epic games store provides no where near as many services as Roblox or steam as an example. Steam would be a more fair comparison, they offer steam workshop, which is like what we have with upload-able assets, obviously the game distribution itself is important, proton is a large project they’re working on to expand their platform further, and many other systems such as friends, groups, etc. Steam gives 70%, and still provides all those services. However, Roblox i would say provides more, they do all the server hosting for games, databases (unless you use http instead of DataStore of course), and uptime for all of it. They work on the engine itself, and are trying to expand it to more platforms, such as playstation (as they had job listings for PS development).

Now, considering how much Roblox offers, we have to consider the financial impact of increasing DevEx rate on roblox. Roblox is always hiring and trying to expand to other platforms as mentioned above. We don’t know their revenue/profits and can only speculate. This could affect them more than we know with what we know.

From rumors/info I’ve heard some top devs literally cashed out over a million a year. I don’t understand how they can’t hire people. Many game studios have started out small, like most on Roblox there are some successful ones as far as i’m aware.

I am in full support of increased devEx rate, as it’d help me financially for sure, I just am unsure if they could afford it or not. I personally feel the current rate is good and it should go toward improving the platform further.

Though i said whats above, It would definitely allow more successful teams to operate, and eventually expand to make more games, ultimately making Roblox more money. One thing it COULD do, though unsure on this, is basically allow devs to monetize less aggressively, making it easier on the players who ultimately pay our salaries.

[Dekkonot]

While I am by no means a top developer and have never been, I feel like my testimony might be of value here because of how long I’ve been on the site (going on 10 years in all) and as someone who’s chosen to not pursue development on Roblox

I’ve been hesitant to pursue serious development on Roblox because of the difficulty with breaking into it. In order for it to be more than a hobby, you have to have at least a semi-successful game. Roblox seems to actively make that difficult to achieve with how the sort system rewards already established games. It’s a coin toss if you’ll ever go anywhere as a new game unless you have the money to pour into advertising, and while I’m all for spending money to make money, I have to weigh how much risk I’m willing to accept in my life.

In order to make a game and profit through DevEx, I have to purchase Outrageous Builder’s Club and gain 100,000 robux before I can even break even. The cost of OBC is on top of whatever money I might spend on ads, hiring outside people to help me along the way, and any money I might need to spend on uploading things, or creating a group (which I will need to pay people I hire…).

Simply put, it isn’t worth the cost. Roblox developers don’t even get paid consistently with the current DevEx rates. It’s just not worth my time as anything except a hobby that I invest little to no money into.

I am and always will be a big advocate for Roblox. It’s potential is incredible, and it got me interested in programming, which has pushed me to my current career path. But something has to give, and with the current direction, it’s going to be developers.

I’ve had good friends of mine tell me that they’re exhausted due to Roblox development. Those same friends have complained about the DevEx system hurting them before by putting a tier just out of their reach, or by taking an unusually long time to process. If Roblox ever hopes to make their platform a place where developers and teams of all scales can prosper, it’s imperative that DevEx be adjusted so that it’s fair to everyone. As it stands, it’s just not fair that the producers of the main draw of the platform are so undercompensated for the work they put in.

[Vorlias]

Testimony from Vorlias - Aurora Australis // Heroes Legacy

I was the developer for a game called Heroes Legacy. It was a high quality passion project I developed from 2014 through to mid 2018. DevEx was one of the reasons I stuck around rather than leaving like a lot of the people I knew did, because I believed I could end up making a job out of it. I believed that Roblox and the DevEx were going in a direction in which you could make a high quality game and make a living off it.

Unfortunately I was wrong. While it felt like a job in the later years, it never paid out like one. The Robux I did earn from the game was not enough to live off of when cashed out. I could not afford to hire other developers to help me work on the game, I instead had to find volunteer community members who were passionate about the game to help out. Due to them being volunteers, it led to a lot of problems around free time and getting things done within a reasonable timeframe.

I am truthfully able to say that the lower rates aren’t that great. Those of us with smaller communities as well as smaller developers aren’t able to make enough money off of Roblox to turn it into a living. I think not only would this help out a lot of current Roblox developers, but it would also help attract more outside developers to the Roblox platform, as it would actually be viable to make a game on Roblox and still make a living even if you can’t make it big, rather than just being a game of luck.

[Revlayz]

Testimony for tankattack9 Studios (Iron Curtain)

I started playing Roblox back in 2008. I dont really remember how i got there; I was young.
In 2013 I started inviting friends to roblox and thats when I invited my friend roksi12121, and we play roblox to this day.

Over the years 2014-2017 I had several attempts at creating a game (4 major ones ) and none really worked out until the summer of 2017.

I created a group and a game revolving around a virtual world called Iron Curtain. The community was doing great from a start, we got members fast.

There were moments where the game had a huuge drops in income, but it managed to stay 2 years.

But, there were 3 moments when the game almost died. - The income of smaller games with core fanbases is not really good for roblox. (But I’m not that kind of developer to create a simulator either.)

1.5 years into the game development of Iron Curtain I created a studio with my name on it - tankattack9 Studio.

And thats when I noticed the struggles with devex. Roblox DevEx rates are 3.5$/1k, thats extremly low.

For comparison - Second Life at one point had 15$/1k of their currency for exchange.

It’s really hard to fund a studio when you’re not a front page game, and as of 2019 it’s really hard to get to the front page, and with time games with fewer and fewer players should be as sustainable.

Right now I go to highschool, but for the future i’ve been thinking about Roblox Game Development for a living, but even though I do earn some pennies, I wont be able to afford a living as a non-front page developer.

I will have to either switch platforms or quit the idea entirely.

Roblox is earning more and more, without the devex changing.

And did I mention the INSANE pricing devs have to put in order to be earning in the first place?

[Ben_Est]

Testimony for Ben_Est

On a beautiful evening in June of 2008, I saw a sketchy banner ad for a site called “Roblox” while playing flash games. I had been dreaming of something like this for months prior! The moment I stepped foot into this great new world I knew it was something special, I was hooked. Fast-forward to 2016 when I graduated high school, I made the choice to take a gap year and pursue my dream of creating great experiences on this platform instead of just part-time. Within a year I got lucky enough to score an internship at the HQ for Spring 2018 and took advantage of that opportunity to create my first full game within a 3-month span. Given the time constraint and my level of experience; the game ended up being an “ok” release. I earned enough cash to create for another 6 months. With a 50/50 split that would have been a 1-year runway. After the game settled down I decided to take a great job to save enough cash to live for 2 years with no income and to learn to work with a team. I am currently working with a small team to create a simulator to accelerate my path back to Roblox full-time.

Fun fact: When searching for investment funding after creating a fairly successful game I was turned down / given an unacceptable deals due to the % of profit received from the games. I would not longer take investments but that does say quite a bit about the cut in general.

Ultimately I believe it’s on the developer to create an experience that people want to play in order to earn more money. I can see this from both perspectives. In the end, a larger cut for the developers would mean the people in my situation could make enough money to simply live until they hit the exponential curve to the front page. having enough to simply survive should not take a front page game. But I do believe there still needs to be enough financial pressure to continue to strive for a front page game.

I am EXTREMELY grateful for Roblox! I do hope we can find a middle ground that will satisfy both parties in this business relationship. All prepared boats should rise. Thanks for hearing the community out as usual.

Signature: Ben East

[Alkan]

Testimony for BrokenBone
The Conquerors 3, Store Empire

I feel the developer exchange rate should increase partially because of a lot of cases like @Crazyman32’s. He is an old and very talented developer that could be doing crazy good games for Roblox, but he can’t afford to abandon his solid real life job to make that full investment on Roblox. He’s got something great going on in his real life job that is not at all something one could give up without more guarantee. Roblox is naturally just not a platform one can expect to earn reliably off of. Not much can be done about that in particular, that’s the nature of game development, but Roblox can(or should) raise the developer exchange rate to allow more leeway for mid-tier developers to thrive.

How it pertains to me: I’m a mid-tier developer who is making an alright living on Roblox, but I cant help but feel like I’d happily trade that in for the deal Crazyman32 has going on. A similar pay but with way more stability and lower taxes along with several other important benefits? The only reason I haven’t made a jump like that is because I haven’t found the opportunity yet. But if I did, I’d jump on it and Roblox would be out a developer that is earning them a fair bit of money.

There are a lot of developers that just haven’t yet made that great and successful game that you know they are capable of, at some point the money they are currently earning wont be enough for them to justify the effort they are putting in and they will have to move on in life and get another job off of Roblox. That’s a huge loss of potential, and something that has already been happening and will continue to happen. This should be mitigated as much as reasonably possible.

[LoganCreates]

Testimony for LoganWallace25

I’ve been on this platform since 2012, and have grown up with Roblox. The rate of growth this platform has shot up with is astonishing. I spend 60-70+ Hours a week working with my teams on

1. Koala Cafe
2. Pizza Simulator
3. Battle Noobs (WIP)
4. Pizza Corporation (WIP)

I feel lost financially . Without my parents support, what I’m currently making now with Developer Exchange would have be struggling to the point where I wouldn’t be able to continue doing Roblox Development full-time with the current rates of the Dev-Ex Program.

The Roblox team has provided me and countless others with amazing opportunity to build a career, and I’m extremely thankful for that, but we need to have a higher revenue share to help sustain ourselves and our growing teams.

With the higher revenue split, Roblox becomes a more attractive environment to developers who happen to be currently developing on other competing platforms, it’s a win-win.

Happy Devs, Bigger Teams, Better Games.