But even if this is real data, the -13 community is one of the most important on the platform! They are the easiest players to attract through sponsors, and not a teenager/adult who will probably only play trending games or that some youtuber is recording!
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No one is saying that the <13 community isn’t important. Also, are you sure about that last claim? That seems like an empirical claim, which may or may not be true, but you aren’t currently pointing to anything that actually supports that (beyond your own experiences).
The reason that ad audiences have changed is because the writing is on the wall with this kind of stuff. It’s better for Roblox to pull the plug on their own terms vice waiting for external regulation or arbitration to force the platform in another direction (ex: take a look at the huge PR disaster that generated from Facebook’s whistleblower in late 2021 and the surrounding context of many governing bodies deliberating on to what extent new regulations will be placed).
This update was not as simple as ‘let’s remove ads because the <13 community isn’t important/isn’t worth the attention/developers don’t need to reach them’.
This hurts my game since over 50% of my players are under 13… I have a feeling this update is also messing with the discovery algorithm as well. There was a direct drop in my game for new visitors and daily active players right after October 24 that lasted until now, even though I didn’t do ads. The game should not be affected. [🎃CODES] Digimon Masters - Roblox
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First, using what you said at the beginning, I also didn’t say that this was a simple update and just because “-13 is not important”, much so that I quoted the law what influenced roblox to do this Reply 259 - And I say it again, why do we all have to take the blame for a law that was applied only in Europe?!
And answering your statement, NO, this was not based on my “own experiences”, but rather obvious facts and things, plus older players like to keep their robux more than spend it on just one experience like younger player!
And man, what does Facebook have in commom with Roblox? Roblox is a gaming platform and not a social media, BRUH…
1 Like
I like this change. I think the real problem is that we do not get any real alternative.
Less scamming
Most of the ads are scams or ads for low effort predatory games, that are designed to earn bucks quickly for the so called “devs”. Besides, once you click, or even worse, play such game, you are bombarded with even more ads and game pass purchase pop up each minute.
I am really happy that those obviously scammy ads are gone for minors, even if it hurts legit devs a bit. This change will hopefully act against that first click that takes kids into predatory game rabbit hole.
It’s not the end of the world
Website ads were not showing on mobile, what majority of younger audience was on. So this will not have as big of an impact as some people claim here.
Besides advertising can be anything, flashy game icon, game thumbnails and promo videos, game description. You can advertise game passes and products on the game website and within the game. You can also advertise in other games and outside of the platform.
If your game is good, you only need to advertise during the launch period. If your game depends on constant ad support, maybe its time to go back to the drawing board or start a new project? I stopped buying ads ages ago.
Alternative?
I would really like if Roblox main page algorithm threw some underdog games now and then. Playing it safe with already established titles hurts not only new devs but is also against competition, that is the driving force behind happy customers. No competition - no improvements to the old, rusty titles.
I think redesigned sponsored section, with some kind of approval system would be nice. I am, for one, ready to pay more for such thing.
My MAU is beginning to suffer significantly after this:
Notice the massive decline beginning after October 24th (note the blue line).
We’re almost a month in after this announced update and our analytics are beginning to visualize the effects.
The simple fact is that this absolute shutdown of developers reaching a younger audience that their experience was catered to is killing games.
I would much rather prefer locking <13 accounts from purchasing dev products/gamepasses above a certain robux amount than stripping away the only tools a developer has to reach out to a potential audience.
You’re going to see a LOT of established games over the next few months be discontinued due to lack of growth (decline actually)/retention rates/etc.
Is it even worth making games for a younger audience if there is literally zero way to show it to them? Am I going to have to use a middleman content creator role simply to show users my experience I made for them?
This change makes little logical sense to me and I believe there are better ways to tackle it from a moral standpoint. Again, I’d be fine with <13 being unable to purchase any form of microtransaction. That’s fine! But to completely strip my ability to advertise my game to my intended audience is going to kill so many games, put many developers’ time and money to waste, and have an overall negative effect on the platform.
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My MAU has shown similar results. You can see the massive drop-off starting at 10/24
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The effects of this are enormous. Within a month my experience went from 428k MAU to 199k. That’s a 229K drop! That’s a 53% decrease in MAU in a month.
EDIT 2: 11/19/2022, it’s now dropped from 428k MAU to 179k MAU, a 58.2% decrease…
This is so worrying to me.
I didn’t expect a month ago that I’d be having to make the decision to cut losses and move onto developing a new experience catered to an audience I can actually promote to.
Has the loss in players even bottomed out yet? I just can’t fathom that Roblox considers this such a small change added at the latter-half of this post yet it puts thousands of developers who rely on Roblox at risk with their job.
If this was a change based on morality against promoting to kids - there were other ways to approach this. Prevent children from purchasing dev-products/gamepasses. Removing non-personalized ads to block half the player base from developers doesn’t do anything but hurt developers. As someone stated before, what is the difference between seeing a standard game icon and a sponsored one, both generated through the algorithm?
I agree 100% that children need to be protected from exploitation. I find that ‘exploitation’ factor to be more prevalent in micro-transactions and gambling functionalities rather than non-personalized ads from a solo developer/small team that is trying to ship their first game and wants an audience.
Utilizing content creators should be an option, not the intended way to do things. From a financial standpoint, why should I, a solo developer, now have to take more money out of my wallet to pay a content creator to cover my game when said income of mine is now likely to be halved due to an immediate & unexpected change from Roblox, which has also been the precedent since the creation of advertisements on Roblox?
We need solutions or alternatives from Roblox - fast. Not: “experiment and see if things work out. If not, sorry.”
Games & studios will not survive in the coming months if no further change is made. Job security for many are at risk with this.
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Beautifully said- couldn’t have put it better myself. This update is laughable. “Let’s try to keep our shareholders happy by claiming to be against child exploitation, but we’ll still allow them to gamble away robux in our front-page games.”
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I agree with you here, what is horrifying to think about is all the people that will be forced off of Roblox because of this.
I am in touch with many developers, and there’s many that fear for their jobs here on Roblox. For some, it’s their only source of income.
Me and so many others sincerely hope Roblox makes a statement, listens to us and takes proactive step to help mitigate the damages they have caused.
Our financial stability is at risk!
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I agree. I just released a new tycoon game(tycoons get usually around half or more players under 13 based on my more popular tycoon; space tycoon) This new game has almost 0 players under 13 and has cut my game growth in half! I have 0.0 way to get this game out to my targeted audience and I am paying a fortune to get it to mostly 18+ users through the ad system…
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I agree with the part where you say roblox should improve the homepage algorithm and show more new games to attract players, but I totally disagree with your first statement!
“Most of the ads are scams or ads for low effort predatory games”
First, where did you get this data? Have you ever witnessed or seen a significant amount of sponsor scammers instead of other developers spending tons of robux to try to show more of their work and effort?
“You can advertise game passes and products on the game website and within the game. You can also advertise in other games and outside of the platform.”
I found your speech very arrogant, as if it were easy for us to partner with other games or even PAY YOUTUBERS to record in our games (which for who tried todo that with them, most don’t charge less than 50k - depending on the number of subscribers), which is a real unreality for small developers!
“I am, for one, ready to pay more for such thing.”
Lmao?? After that speech I reaffirm that the way you argued was totally arrogant, as if you were devaluing small developers who don’t have a good amount of robux to invest in their creations!
I took a look at your profile, and I found only 1 experience of yours, with 10 million visits and 170 simultaneous players, I can’t say, but you probably still haven’t spent robux with sponsor after this change, when your game get drop in number of players (which is normal happen after a while), I hope you come back here to show us what you did to revive your game (and seems to be a developer on roblox for 2-3 years, still must not know how hard it is to make new experiences work out).
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I clicked on first ten skyscrapper ads. (I kept clicking when I got the same ad) I got:
- murder mystery knockoff - basically a scam game
- Vesteria (good game)
- Aldershot Garrison (before being able to play I got already 3 purchase ‘opportunities’)
- sitting simulator (more dislikes than likes)
- Booga Booga (good game)
- Earn and Donate (while good game, but the abstraction may be lost on some minors)
- Fighting Simulator (good game)
- stupid idiot cafe (more dislikes than likes)
- two clothes shops
So yes, while maybe not majority on this occasion, I consider this a significant amount of scammers. Majority of those games are unsuitable for minors.
But since I got kids on my own, I agree I may be subjective on this topic.
Edit: I am more of a hobby developer, I cannot put myself in a position of a person that has their livelihood dependent on the platform. I do apologise if I offended anyone.
However my statement still stands. If your game requires constant ad life support after initial launch and outside of major update campaigns, no amount of sponsoring will permanently boost your numbers.
1 Like
After releasing another tycoon, and advertising/sponsoring too the public with 100s of thousands of robux on all platforms, these are roughly my results. I have almost everyone as an 18+ player in a TYCOON game.(which is usually intended for a younger audience) The only way I can get this game popular is with YouTube influencers as sponsoring and advertising are costly and no longer viable options. Not only is getting on one of the discover pages which gives you free advertising 24/7 nearly impossible, the second it falls off one of the top pages on discover, you are doomed. As you will lose access to all your players. Discovery NEEDS to be improved and should be a top priority. Removing all access to players under 13 is a HUGE step back. I will be quitting development on my smaller games as it is now near impossible to get them younger players. Hopefully we get a response eventually.
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and do you think contacting youtubers is an easy task ?, after all the scripting and modeling and all that hard work yet we have to beg youtubers to notice us ? is this how developers look like in roblox ?
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i think you cealrly didn’t read the post well
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Contacting influencers isn’t really the hard part.
When you make an advertisement, you yourself are solely responsible for what message you want to convey to your potential players, you are in-charge of the message, how often it is seen etc.
If you do manage to get an influencer on board, you best believe you will be charged at least $1,000 (if it’s from an influencer with a reasonably large audience).
After that, you are 100% reliant on the influencer. Are they going to be on-point with their social media post? Are they going to present your game in a way that you want? Is their audience going to be interested? Is their viewership even applicable to your game?
I’d say to most people making U13 games isn’t optional anymore, only the big titles and large capital studios can really afford to reach the U13 users on Roblox, nowadays 13+ is the way to go if you want a chance.
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I’ve lost over 3m-5m monthly visits from this change, lost the ability to launch my games too. This change has ruined the way I develop and market games, and has pushed me into paying $2500 PER VIDEO for youtubers…
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Can’t sponsor without spending large amounts. I use to get ~50 concurrent players with <4000 robux, and now I have put 3 sponsors reaching a total of 15k+ robux to get me about ~35 concurrent players. I do have the money to advertise, however, it is nearly pointless. I do not want to pay thousands of dollars to have a youtuber make a video on my game.
If this isn’t going to be reverted or changed, sponsors should at least be buffed to where the cost is lower & impressions/plays are increased.
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The cons completely outweighs the pros on this update, every legitimate developer on the platform who has to spend robux on ads knows that this is a terrible update. “But since I got kids on my own, I agree I may be subjective on this topic.” Your completely biased is what your trying to say. There are other ways to reduce scamming with it comes to roblox ads, SIMPLY INCREASE The Strictness of the requirements for ads for ads aimed for players <13. Ads aimed toward <13 can be subjected to increased scrutiny prior to it being allowed to be placed to be advertised.
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