Let's feature more designers

[Nilvou]

Hello! My name is Nilvou, and I’ve been designing clothes since 2015. Creating clothes is something that is so fun to do, it never gets boring, and you’ll always be motivated with your improvement and editing/drawing skills.

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible for other players to find my clothing or clothing of original designers without major advertising. The catalog is massively filled with copied clothing, and I know although we cannot do anything to fix that issue, showing NBC players, or just players in general, how to support original clothing, would mean a major difference to us.

There is not one hint of original clothing on the catalog, it’s gotten to the point where hundreds of thousands of items get re-uploaded by bots, there is major groups selling copied clothing, and it’s even gotten to the point where I can’t spend 5 minutes on the website without seeing an advertisement for copied clothing. Roblox should be a place to power your imagination and creativity, not to have it stolen.

I do realize there is not much we can do about it, but I suggest that Roblox features more designers again.

In the catalog, Roblox features their favorite hats, faces, gear, and etc! Why not also feature clothing? Roblox on Twitter can simply give a shoutout to a cool new designer, or maybe just one outfit they like, or even someone can take 10 seconds of their time to talk about clothing they admire from someone on a Twitch livestream.

The NBC outfits are seen everywhere, why not spice things up a little bit and give them more free clothes so they have a little more variety? I understand they do this for marketing purposes, but I get spammed every single day with people asking me for Robux. They’re little kids, it’s pretty understanding to know their parents wouldn’t want to trust them on the internet, or they might think their money got stolen, or etc, there’s a million reasons as to why they won’t buy their kids Robux. I think everyone can agree that every NBC players would still want to buy Robux and Builder’s Club, even if they got a little more free clothes.

I’m going to talk about a person & a clothing group as an example as to how copying has worsened over the years, but I’ve decided to just keep them anonymous so it doesn’t seem as if I’m personally attacking them. Some of you should know what I am talking about.

A person has group has 12k members with almost 900K+ visits on one of their homestores and with 70K+ on their other homestore (they are rapidly growing).

So, what can be wrong with this group?

The group has 15 pages (and counting) of FULLY COPIED clothing.

I cannot go 3 minutes on the website without seeing an advertisement for their homestore full of copied clothing.

Did I even mention all the gamepasses for the homestore?

Now, this group is just getting started. So, can you imagine how this will grow in prosper in a few more months? Their bestselling pants, (which are obviously copied) has 207k+ favorites. I have been designing clothes since 2015. My clothes are featured in Cinderings game, I run advertisements, and guess how many favorites my bestselling outfit has.

300

This person is making SERIOUS bank for taking two seconds to copy clothing. Not to mention the copied clothing is being shown every single day to all the players online.

This isn’t what Roblox stands for. There are hardworking developers that make what she makes in a day, in a year. It’s not fair to anyone.

Adding on to that, I just found out this person runs 30k Robux EVERY DAY on ads. So, what does that tell you…?

They made over a million sales. Just by doing nothing but stealing. How are they not terminated yet?

I suppose the total Robux she has made in a year is 334 MILLION Robux. Isn’t that like 1 million USD? Just by taking two seconds to copy clothing? Yikes.

In conclusion, there’s too much copiers spreading and spreading on Roblox and it’s only getting worse. I feel that it’s necessary to do at least something, even if it’s the smallest thing, because eventually, the designing community is going to be completely ruined.

[Mimi_Dev]

This is a good idea More featured clothing would be great.

The catalogue is getting a little crazy… This case pictured below is especially sad because the clothing literally has my name both on it (visible on the back for branding) AND in the title of the items…

(The ones made by “Focus Dance” are the orignals btw, because that’s my group)

I had an idea for the moderators:

What if whenever a new image is uploaded the moderators are also shown any similar versions that Roblox can find, basically like how google can filter through and find similar images on the internet. If the exact same clothing already exists on Roblox the new upload is denied. Whether or not to approve would have to be decided manually as the computer could easily mistake similar clothing for identical clothing or players could slightly change the colours to evade the computer.

There would be some question about remixes, clothing that looks similar but have a few changes like colour, or the addition of a purse. Would these be possible to spot and remove, or would they end up the exception? Also, similar clothing by the original uploader would have to be ignored in case they want to upload something almost identical but with a small fix.

Does this seem like a good idea?

[Nilvou]

Yes, it would be fairly easy to bypass that, but the bots that are uploading it hundreds of thousands of times make no changes. It would make a major difference.

[blobmista4]

I don’t mean to shoot you down because as a clothes designer since about 2009 I empathise with your position, but realistically I think ROBLOX doesn’t have much motivation to fix many of the problems that lie with the clothing market on ROBLOX because it impacts such a tiny portion of the economy (I believe it’s in the range of 1-2%). In short, there’s little monetary incentive for them to fix its problems.

Call me cynical if you like, but the lack of attention over the years speaks volumes.

I remember when the price floor was introduced a user went out of their way to statistically prove that the price floor was not in any way beneficial to designers, and in response, a certain high up employee (who I won’t name) said this:

“It’s a business decision, deal with it.” - Yes, that’s a direct quote. Following the controversy, they deleted their post so it was rather short lived and sadly that means I no longer have the evidence to prove that was said.

[Nilvou]

Yes, I truly agree it doesn’t affect most of us. But in reality, every single player is wearing clothes, so realistically, it affects the players wearing unoriginal clothing. I understand Roblox might not have any motivation to fix the issue, that’s why I suggested that they can give simple shoutouts They don’t have to necessarily fix the problem, but they don’t have to be so quiet on the issue, and at least do something to promote originality, you know?

I do believe your quote, and yes, that’s how it is. I hate to say it but I feel that most of the updates nowadays are for the Roblox employees to make more cash and for the developers & everyone to make less so we have no other solution but to buy more Robux & BC. I personally am okay with making less money when you see all the NBC’s that have nothing. I love giving back and donate whenever I have the chance, but we should be able to be confident in our payments for our hardwork. Sorry if this get’s off topic or something

[wravager]

It does not make sense to feature clothing. Users will search for what they want, not what is recommended.

[Nilvou]

By featuring clothing I meant two things

• Picking designs to make free clothes
• Putting clothing in the spotlight

I beg to differ it wouldn’t make sense. NBC’s see the same thing in the catalog every day. It doesn’t matter what you search for, people use irrelevant tags so you won’t even find what you’re looking for, and theres thousands of duplicates of one thing. It’s extremely difficult. I believe if t hey see a new outfit, that isn’t something they’ve seen repeatedly, and if they like it, then hey, they might buy it

[Mullets_Gavin (Mullets)]

Featured clothes are practically a thing, I saw my friend get on the FP of the catalog for making really nice hoodies, then someone else took his spot. Featured clothing wouldn’t be something the player community would look for. They find that buying perks for games they play often is worth the robux than clothing. My brother is 10 and he doesn’t care for clothes. He has spent thousands of my robux on games and I’m fine with that, but when you buy a bunch of clothes you wouldn’t use, that to me would be considered waste, and so does my brother agree, he wouldn’t buy clothes.

I do enjoy seeing well-made clothes, but when the user finds what they’re looking for, no need to view multiple clothing items. As I stated before, the front page is more or less the featured sort because most of the community is buying those clothes.

[blobmista4]

The problem with the front page for clothing is that the algorithm to determine what is most relevant is determined by how much revenue it has generated in a set period rather than factoring in any sort of quantity sold.

The effect of this is that for the past few years the front page for clothing has been greatly exploited by users deleting the created shirts from their inventory and then buying them for a very large sum (e.g. 50,000 robux). Given that they’re buying something they created they only lose out on 30% from the tax anyway.

A counter point might be that it’s an easy fix, but again I feel that loops back around to what I mentioned earlier.

[WhoseTrade]

clothing is one of those communities roblox doesn’t feature often, and that probably won’t change

groups have became one of those (However they have some positive signs from the Q&A panels at RDC, but for now, when was the last time a group was featured?)

its just how it is, they’ll rather focus attention to games/artists it seems.

in a nutshell, they only have so much time to do so many things, they have made their priorities and they’re likely not going change.

[Mimi_Dev]

Tbh at this point, I’m mostly worried about stolen intellectual property. This goes for decals and music too. When you are making a profit off clothing, sold in the catalogue or in-game, you want to be sure no one else can use it without your permission.
Featuring clothing wouldn’t solve this of course but it would be a step in the right direction for giving credit to the original creators.

As an afterthought on the price floor situation: Clothes are worth way more than 5 robux, I can sell them in-game for 10 times that price without complaint from users (and that’s only to use them in one game).

[Nilvou]

I did make a suggestion on Roblox about trying to fix the issue of copying. People nonstop commented how it wasn’t going to happen and they wouldn’t care, so I made an easier suggestion. It wouldn’t cost anything to do it and would help designers out a lot. Roblox is a community driven website, we rely on eachother, but to be at the point where we’re stealing from eachother…ugh

[MissShu]

Roblox really needs to do something. i have been designing on roblox since 2014 and i only hit 1+ k sales (now i am dev designer) bcs my copied clothing are getting more sales than me.

[blobmista4]

I know the feeling, several terrible quality copies of my clothing are in the first 5 pages of best selling shirts/pants of all time.

Meanwhile, my clothes are just there on a few sales.
If I were to account for all the revenue made from copies of my outfits, I reckon I would be owed in the region of nearly a million robux, if not more.

Let’s just say there’s a reason I stopped selling clothing publicly a long time ago. I stick to commissions now.

[Nilvou]

Your clothing is amazing and very detailed. I believe you should advertise your clothing if you don’t already. I would happily make ads for you if you’d like. That’s a MAJOR issue. Hard work is going unnoticed meanwhile copied clothing, that take 2 seconds to copy, are making so much bank.

[MissShu]

SAME Plus i profit more from commissions and i feel like my clothing are more appreciated.

[Cindering]

In case other people forgot, this was one of the promises that Roblox originally made when they removed tickets:

They only did one round of featured clothing (2 years ago) and then completely forgot about the program, which is a shame. NBC users hardly have any choices of clothing to wear, and legitimate designers continue to get buried by an endless supply of copied clothing. Roblox ought to show clothing designers a bit more love - shirts and pants play a big role in defining each person’s unique, creative avatar.

[EchoReaper]

I wonder if ROBLOX’s version of steam workshop would have any impact on lack of exposure. We won’t know until the avatar is finalized though, since that’s when it’s slated.

@Cindering

NBC users hardly have any choices of clothing to wear

Not just that, but nearly all free items have been sponsored. We’ve turned our non-paying players into walking billboards.

[Mimi_Dev]

Wonder what will happen when they open the catalogue to full UGC. Are we going to see thousands of clockwork copies?

[EchoReaper]

That’s one of the main issues they identified with the catalog and are designing the UGC so that won’t be possible. From what little has been said, it will involve some sort of community review process. I’m not sure if that will catch everything bad, but they’ll make sure it’s not a problem.