I just replied to @As8D with a proposal of having an upfront “upload fee,” which I think would make users think twice about uploading a duplicate.
Also I’m not arguing against donate button, I think it’s a good idea, but getting an actual buying system would be even better.
Having to pay for model authentication would be interesting. You still have the problem of people buying and selling for free but that doesn’t really profit them other than maybe more takes than you or possibly some false recognition.
I’m also seeing that selling models may not be the best for new devs because it can restrict the quality content to paying users which I don’t like. This is where the donation idea would help out because it would keep quality items free but still allow model makers the opportunity to earn some R$.
Way to kill content creators who wants to make cool free stuff for people 
- some new person with no Robux may want to show off their avatar with their friends on a stage as a free model, but can’t now. Roblox wants to let developers create content without fees, so this goes against that ideology.
Also, what about plugins? - those are also just models that you download. People can start abusing plugins and create plugins to let you spawn leaked models for free, just to note a way to circumvent the fee and potential moderation of the several thousands of models uploaded each day.
There’s philanthropists on roblox who don’t need the extra ROBUX.
Also, it’s not eliminating free models. It’s just some people don’t upload models in the first place if they don’t get anything out of it.
Fee only for paid models. And someone still needs to have originally bought the model to give for free.
But that one purchase can mean the loss of potential hundreds of future purchases, if there’s not a system to 100% prevent leakage of the models. So in case I sold a model for 100 R$, and could’ve gotten 1000 sales, but the first person to take it sold it for free, I’d have lost 99000 R$.
Well it’s up to the devs, personally I wouldn’t really donate but I guess I’m just extra selfish.
Also there’s a quote about the value of an item, I forget where it’s from (probably some movie, I like movies XD):
“Give someone a bottle of water for free, they’ll throw it away. Charge a bit of money, even 10 cents, and they’ll think twice, they’ll value it.”
I believe this is very applicable because as I’ve stressed, the leaker has to pay for it in the first place, and gets virtually nothing out of leaking. Even so, that individual model is 1 out of like a million, so it’s not very probable that other users who are searching for leaked ones will require it.
Okay.
Let’s be cynical and assume this is a real issue:
But what are the odds the model person A leaks will be required by person B, a person who knows about the leaked content?
Yes you may sell the item, but if a leaker grabs the item and puts in on sale for free with the same description and everything it would probably show up nearby the paid version. Now, would you rather pay for a model or get an exact copy for free?
I see two main ways that model makers could earn R$ right now:
Paid Models
Pros:
Cons:
Donations
Pros:
Cons:
If you have more pros and cons please let me know and I’ll update the list.
That is pretty good, but honestly if the creator of the model is against making money [off the model], then he/she can put it up for free.
Also we can have a system to flag and remove models if they are free version leaks of paid ones!!
Also for your new devs arguement, if the person is learning, then he/she doesn’t need professional models to work with. Else if he/she wants to make a game, then he/she can find a partner to do it with - and learn teamwork in the process, a crucial skill and collateral benefit of paid models!! Lastly if the developer wants to make money, or needs some, he/she can upload his/her own paid models, creating a positive feedback loop: you need pro models so you make pro models to buy pro models!
I absolutely agree that you should still be able to put up models for free if you want though I’m still skeptical about how well a flagging system would work because of what I’ve seen with the catalog and the number of copied items there.
As for you last argument that new devs don’t need professional models. Maybe they don’t need those models but they may be extremely useful to them and they could learn a lot from them. I know that quite a few people first learned how to script by looking at code in free models. The finding a partner part sounds great but I have spoken to quite a few people who are having a hard time finding partners. That’s not to say they can’t, but it isn’t the easiest thing to do.
Your last statement is interesting and I sort of agree but I’m sort of skeptical that that’s what would end up actually happening.
(I wish these issues weren’t this complex but unfortunately it is)
The reason I think a flagging system would work is because roblox is being paid to handle the issues ( more model sales at a premium price ), and they care about money, so it’s in their best interest to handle thieving.
Also it definitely does make roblox a better place. Having models cost money makes people who would otherwise NOT upload models upload, not people who upload free ones.
I gtg I’ll finish typing this later Srry
Edit: back, kind of forgot where I was going with this but: because people who upload free model scripts currently do it, they will continue to do so, meaning that we are only adding possible content, not putting a price tag on current ones.
I’ll tag u to let u know I finished @EndorsedModel
Like selling plugins, I think the number of people who would actually buy a model is so low that this would just inconvenience everyone who’s just trying to make small projects without earning any significant amount of money for the creators.
More on the number of people who would actually buy a model: The target audience here is people who are:
Which I think is basically nobody.
What happens when I use someone’s table model to furnish my building model?
This is a really good point.
I think I (along with many others) would fit the buyer category because:
A. I like to rush my projects and not wait on someone (a builder) to finish building
B. I script not build, meaning I need buildings, and I think my time would be better spent scripting then both building and scripting.
C. Someone not willing to give up % profit of game, but rather a one time upfront fee - buying a model would be cheaper then hiring someone because the creator can easily reselll without changing anything, and the model isn’t tailored to ur needs.
Also it’s just an extra feature, not everyone uses every feature on roblox, but I think it would be nice to have, and I think the work involved on roblox’s part is worth the money
Shoot. XD
THATS A REAL DILEMMA!!
I don’t really know what to say… don’t do it???
Maybe have some sort of prerequisite models necessary to be owned - although it gets really complicated…
“Models necessary” in description
“Buy all” button
Idk tho
Even if this doesn’t get added, I’m glad I posted because it has been very educating and I learned about some issues I had never even thought of before!
Alot of people have brought up issues with the paid model idea, and I agree with most of them. However.
Here’s my solution to the paid models problem:
When publishing a model, users would have the option to make it a free model - no upload fee, and no paid option - or they can make it a paid asset, but it requires a startup fee of around
R$ 100 to prevent copies and to make sure that people only put up content they care about.
The rest of this will be addressing the issues raised in the rest of this forum thread:
Addressing theft/reproduction of paid models:
I don’t know if it would be possible to implement into Model Properties a read-only flag called “paid”, or similar. This flag could be automatically set when a model is published as a paid model, and from then on only the original creator (Creator Name property?) can actually use the Publish feature on that model. When publishing, Studio can auto-check published model to see if it has any children with the “paid” flag set to true, and as such prevent publication.
Now, there are issues with that - such as simply moving the parts out of said model into a new one an republishing - but (since we’re throwing around hypotheticals anyways), Roblox might be able to locally log, using studio, which Paid Models have been used in a project. If you try to publish an asset, Studio could integrate a scan of the uploaded model against the Paid Models which were used in the project (which might add some time to the upload process, which could be a problem).
Anyways, back to something closer to reality.
I think what’s described above would be fairly effective measures for preventing (or at least diminishing the amount of) copied/stolen assets. However, a normal reporting system would also be well worth while.
The other side of this to be addressed however, is the web side. When looking for models on roblox, often times new users won’t be able to afford paid models. As I mentioned above, I don’t propose removing free models at all - they are a vital part of helping people learn how to use the platform. However, I do think that talented developers should be able to make profit off of models they’ve spent time on. To that effect, on the website I would simply add a new section/division to Libraries called “Paid Models”, or similar. The main models tab would still display Free Models, which most users are looking for.
Another problem with paid models versus free, is that there is risk in purchase. How does a user know if what they are buying is actually what they are looking for? To that effect, Roblox already has the ability to open your own games from the website, so what about adding a “View Demo” button to Paid Models pages? All this button would do is open the asset in Roblox Studios, by itself, in a View Only Mode. In this mode, you can’t publish or save any changes, but it will allow users to view the asset before purchasing it - eliminating the worry of purchasing something which you won’t be happy with.
This falls apart slightly for scripts, with the risk of copying and pasting, or screenshoting and reproducing, but I doubt it would be much trouble to disable copy and paste for script frames of scripts with the “paid” flag on, or in “View Demo” mode. As for screenshotting and reproducing scripts, there is really no way to prevent this, but it’s honestly a lot of trouble that not many people are going to bother to try, so I consider that an acceptable risk.
Another note on scripts -
Yes, it is possible that users could reproduce your code from reading and re-typing, however to a large extent this won’t be a problem. What we are trying to prevent is the copying and re-sale of existing original content. Copying in this fashion is more likely to be done by someone who wants to use said script in their game - and that’s not a huge problem. The percentage of people who will bother to copy and paste content will be small enough anyways, that the percentage of those who would want to re-sell it would be even smaller. I know that’s playing odds, and so I’ll offer another alternative:
A simple alternative to all of this trouble with scripts would be to simply let the developer CHOOSE whether to allow a Demo of it or not. Their decision. They can choose to play the odds or not.
OR
You can take the other - although slightly less practical - route of having users publishing scripts provide a “Demo Environment Place” which would open in Studio in the same way “View Demo” would, but instead provide a clear example of the script’s effects. In this mode users could execute scripts with Play Solo etc, but not read them from Workspace. If the uploader does not provide such a demo place, then Demo is auto set to false.
Anyway, so far I’ve brought up:
A Fee for uploading Paid Models (NOT Free Models)
A “Paid” flag on Models and scripts which prevents duplication and republishing
Blocked copy-paste function for paid scripts/models
Reporting system
All of these factors prohibit and to a large extent prevent the spread of copies of paid models, which is one of the largest issues with the paid models idea I’ve seen in this forum. They ensure originality and prevent theft.
Furthermore, paid models will let developers share content with the community that they otherwise might not have. When developing a game, developers put a lot of hard work into what they create. Giving it away for free might not be that appealing. But the paid option would allow them to make a profit off of sharing their hard work, while benefitting the community with more high quality work to learn from, resulting in more high quality content and games over time. Honestly, the odds that this will be implemented are fairly slim, since it would be a rather large undertaking and the Roblox team is quite busy, but I really do think that this solution is workable, and that paid models would benefit the community overall if implemented.
I’m interested to see what you guys think about this.
Thanks for reading,
Dev.
Properties can be changed.