The fact that we’re unable to market our games to kids 13< on a platform with a large 13< audience is just unbelievable.
There goes my upcoming game down the trash bin, a game focused on the younger audience.
Edit: I guess that in the future the only logical thing on Roblox is to create games meant for 13>.
There is a huge difference between what an 8-year-old and a 13> year old like to play on Roblox in many cases.
Nobody purposfully does that bruh.
Thank you, Roblox! This update is awesome, finally, scam ads will stop reaching innocent kids. I also think this might help suppress child-targeting games on the platform. Very interested to see how this works. Overall, love the update.
Edit: So many replies are negative because developers are targeting younger audiences to profit off of. Games that are targeting older audiences are now taking the upper hand, which is what (I think) everyone wanted.
Blocking ads from users under 13, the easiest Roblox demographic to scam, is a huge thorn in our sides but it’s the right thing to do.
Morality and legality over money, tough luck.
Good update for parents, bittersweet for developers.
Totally agree with this reply,
Even when I was a kid, I would sometimes click on sponsored icons to discover new games to play. I can understand some ads can be misleading or not suitable for children, but again, that’s also a moderation issue. I simply do not understand why the sponsors, who already have suffered recently, are being removed from basically half the player-base tho as it is simply an icon/game title. All of that while Roblox is working to add third party ads to games from real companies?
Then again, if this is a legal issue, the only information we get is as follow;
I think this is a big change that lacks information and wasn’t really thought through. If at least developers working on games with that target audience would have been warned before or at least have a backup plan to improve discovery.
Here I am wondering why “17+” is suddenly an option, I thought that wasn’t allowed?
Although I’m not complaining, I think it’s pretty cool we get this option finally.
I suppose it’s for advertising games (like horror games) to an older audience?
This update to ads is going to kill off A LOT of games, and where I can understand Roblox’s point of view, this is going to change the platform forever, in a bad way.
Reaching Younger Audiences
We all understand that reaching the younger portion of Roblox’s players isn’t going to possible anymore unless you already have an established playerbase, or you utilize off-platform marketing such as influencers.
The Cost Of Advertising
This is my primary concern. As any other digital marketing platform would, this is going to make advertising a great deal more expensive. The audience sizes for both sponsors and user ads will be limited for everyone, which means the cost per click is going to tremendously increase because everyone is competing so much harder for a smaller audience size.
Low budget devs are already being eaten up in the current market, however with this change it is going to be near impossible for low budget developers to succeed in the ad space because all the big sharks are competing for the same impressions, which just happened to get cut in half.
Unfortunately with this change, Roblox sends a very clear message: The platform is no longer for individual and talented teenagers with a dream of developing. It’s a platform for corporations and the established adult world.
From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry to anyone who is having their dreams of succeeding on Roblox crushed by this change.
Rather than returning the option to target U13, why don’t we get the ability to target all age demographics if our games are deemed family friendly.
Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that Roblox doesn’t care about tiny creators because they "don’t make as much as the larger games."
Additionally, the fact that Roblox faces virtually no competition allows them to provide these poor updates without fear of losing users to competing platforms.
If this sponsor upgrade resulted from a rule or someone taking action against Roblox, then well, I think I get that.
However, I won’t spend 40.000 robux for only half of the impressions!
And since we aren’t their main source of revenue, I wager that Roblox will soon make things much worse for smaller creators.
Roblox should reconsider this, but if not, I dunno man.
It’s already felt like the rate at which I need to spend my Robux just to get players has increased since I first started advertising back in 2021, but this has just solidified that it’s objectively getting worse. I’m genuinely debating giving up at this point and migrating to another platform, it’s that bad now.
I can see why you’d do something like this, as it could theoretically help more mature games grow and also stop predatory ads from targeting kids. But ads and sponsors are literally unsustainable at this point. Heck, I think they were unsustainable before, as I literally had to spend over R$5,000 just to get one of my games to over 1k visits. That’s already a ridiculous amount I’ve had to haul out and you decide to make it even worse on us?
I mean it when I say that literally any tiny change could improve the situation we’re in now. Here’s some examples:
I am so tired of this poor decision making at this point.
I think the age-related information for games should decide who can see ads for the game, e.g if the game has ‘Violence (Mild/Infrequent)’ for example, the ads for that game should only be seen by 13+ and/or 17+, but if it is rated ‘Suitable for everyone’ then the ads should be seen by everyone despite their age.
If a creator currently has or is going to be releasing a game in the future targeted at those under 13 then it will be more difficult for it to gain traction unless that creator has other ways of advertising that are reliable.
There is probably some legal reason they’re doing this, but I hope this makes uncreative clicker simulators less popular. It’s always sad to see an experience with hours of work and effort being dwarfed in popularity to a low-effort clicker sim played by 10 year old children
This matter could have been addressed in two main ways.
Option 1 - No Transparency
Option 2 - Transparency
I guarantee you that being transparent would have been far more productive, resulting in better solutions, while maintaining the respect of the community.
This is truly unjust. Small devs like myself no longer have a voice in reaching the grand audience. Cutting off half the platform is a way to easily make someone who worked hard on an Experience throw in the towel. Bad move Roblox.
As a small developer who just began sponsoring a couple weeks ago, this news hurts me quite a bit. I understand the reasoning behind it, but <13 sponsors accounted for over half of my visits during this timeframe. This will make it much harder to get my game off the ground.
recipe for disaster honestly, sponsors will get less impressions
This is only going to drive away talented people & corporations.
The moment you tell a business looking to come to Roblox, that it’s practically impossible to reach under <13 audiences, they’ll just go advertise elsewhere. Roblox is taking one step forward, while taking 100 steps backwards.
User ads makes sense, removing sponsored games for under 13’s doesn’t
I understand the reasoning behind removing ads from those under 13. However, I don’t see there to be a way for a game to get their game recognized when starting up if it is a game for kids. How am I supposed to get my game geared towards people under 13 to play it if I can no longer advertise said game? Just seems silly as a game geared towards kids cannot advertise so that kids can play it.
Would there be an alternative for new games geared towards those under 13 to get recommended considering ads will no longer be a think we can use?