I was under the impression that the platform needed more discoverability for developers, not less. There should have been a planned solution for developers besides “expect 50% less impressions” before moving forward with this update.
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13-16 shouldn’t be an option in my opinion, this isn’t going to reach that much impressions for me, it’s supposed to be “13+” instead.
although since age ratings has come to roblox, some of my fav games have their concurrent heavily dropped.
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To be honest they should just sunset sponsored advertising because it’s really misleading to developers to offer them such a colossal money dump that provides them essentially no value. I genuinely got more out of just putting free VIP servers in my game and being promoted on that sort than running 100k R$ a month for 6 months on my older game.
Instead spend time providing clearer avenues for developers to have their games promoted through the algorithm or featured sections. This immediate change is not an acceptable approach as the developers you have been slowly depriving have not been given any knowledge of an effective alternative. It is dubious whether this change has been well thought out as it leaves many developers in the dust.
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This might be a dumb question, but why doesn’t ROBLOX just double the impression amount if it reaches half the audience??
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Because Roblox cannot control how many times people load a page.
I agree 100% that users under 13 should not be targeted by ads or even game sponsorships.
Except that these are the only effective ways to promote your game on the platform. Anyone that wants to develop a game targeting an audience <13 has pretty much no way of promoting it. There is nothing else being announced in lieu of this to give creators a way to expose their game further on the platform, and that is disappointing.
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That makes a lot more sense, thanks. Would it be possible to make the advert last for two days then?
Once again, Roblox pushes a change that wasn’t run by its developers at all. This effectively makes game discovery even worse than it already is. Sponsorships and Advertisements have been utilized by developers for OVER A DECADE to appeal to younger players and maximize profits; completely eliminating this system will lower developer revenue and make it harder to form a consistent player base. At the very least, a replacement should have been introduced alongside this removal to ensure that developers wouldn’t be affected by Roblox’s arbitrary and mindless decisions. Yet another example of Roblox being out of touch with its developers and community.
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Bad Update this update is make me feel frustrated? Why did this update blocking underage ads targeting? When my game average visit player is by underage player still useless update anyway, People can register Roblox and can choosing any age even the People is still underage they can choose it any age without parent permission and the update still doesn’t matter but useless and bad. Not happy or even excited to this update!
I spend over 20K Robux on sponsoring my game and my game is Tycoon most underage player is like Tycoon, Simulator or Obby, Oh cmon! What happend if 13+ player doesn’t like my game?
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I feel like there should have definitely been some research done with improving Game Discovery before such an impactful change was made. At least give us some insight on what the team is actively working on if you’re going to make an announcement about this.
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This is a terrible update… this completely cuts off 50-80% of the community from my games.
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Roblox doesn’t technically determine the impressions amount, it’s based on bids. Basically if your bid is lower than the average bid, there’s a lower chance a user will see your ad vs higher bidders
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Cutting off 50% of audience for sponsors + the ads system can’t be seen in app + terrible discovery that hasn’t been improved = disaster.
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Quite an interesting change. I think the idea is nice for the safety of the younger users but I would probably need to see it play out to formulate a solid opinion on it.
17+ option? Does that mean you can start to make the age recommendation 17+ for your games?
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Well, I guess I will just quit using all sort of advertisement at this point. If they were already getting less impressions because of other big companies participating on sponsors and developers with big budgets spending. I see no opportunity for me anymore, the ad system is overused and noting that now we will not be able to make sponsors show to kids we will get even less clicks and impressions.
Don’t expect me to spend 1M Robux or something crazy because I won’t.
Literally, this just gives me the feeling of quitting overall, but I just don’t because I am stuck in a loop myself. The only way to get the game out there right now is by the algorithm recommending it by a miracle or a YouTuber making a video in your game which is another miracle.
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I’m hoping there is some external/legal reason pushing Roblox to make this change, otherwise I don’t see why the company is going against everything it has said about improving game discovery.
As somebody who has attended the in-person developer’s conference, it was strongly emphasized that the company wants to improve game discoverability and make it easier for new games to gain traction. This is far more difficult when you’re preventing a large bulk (13>) of the platform’s audience from viewing new experiences.
Following this update, developers must hope a youtuber picks up on their game, Roblox’s algorithm (that we know nothing of) naturally puts the game on people’s front page sorts, or a game must gain traction from a 13+ audience via sponsors, when a game’s intended audience might not even fit that age range. Aside from these three factors, it is near impossible for 13> players to pick up on a new game naturally that was just released.
I understand getting rid of user ads on the webpage but sponsored experiences should not be changed in any way. There should be more transparency in regards to changes regarding sponsorships. It isn’t fair to play around with the system that us developers pour thousands of dollars in investments into, just to get results that are inconsistent with how it was before.
This goes against what the company has said about improving game discovery, entirely. This post doesn’t even give an in-depth explanation as to why the company is cutting game discovery in half. And how is telling us that we should “expect roughly half as much impressions” a solution or anywhere closer to improving discovery?
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This is an absolute disaster and a really poor decision from Roblox Staff. I’m not sure what you were thinking that could possibly justify removing players under 13 from being advertised to. That’s a MASSIVE portion of Roblox’s player base.
Small developers and those who make games for kids will suffer, myself included. I really hope Roblox backtracks on this decision, but considering Roblox’s record of making updates nobody wants and still refusing to remove them- I am not hopeful.
I really hope this doesn’t affect my bottom line and my ability to earn a living.
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I found this website:
Roblox User and Growth Stats 2022 (backlinko.com)
According to this website and some YouTubers (Kreekcraft, Koneko, etc) which I have watched they stated that like 45% - 55% of the users are less than 13. Now I don’t know how accurate that is, but either way it will have a huge impact. Even they said it:
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Advertising games to people under 13 shouldn’t be removed… To me its different to those spammy ads that advertise random stuff…
I probably will only make games targeting 13+ users…
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