The abilities of developers are once again cut down while there’s a crushing lack of alternative. Not having good alternatives ready but continuing to remove control out of the hands of developers, I can’t even pretend to be shocked anymore. Discoverability is already utter nonsense and doesn’t allow many newer experiences to stand out without back-breaking financing or even foregoing morals and ethics for deceptive practices just to have a small crumb of the pie that all top developers get and continue to get.
I’m exhausted. Roblox product team’s decisions are exhausting.
Very frustrated with this update! I am aware that historically speaking, ads targeted to people from 13-16 have substantially higher bonuses than ads to players who are younger, but this hinders the performance of many games and makes the already cluttered ad auction system even worse. This is going to substantially decrease ctr, and I’ve seen a 10-20% loss of ctr from this update! Not excited.
I completely disagree with this course of action, and it sucks, it really does.
I just finished my game (which happens to be a simulator) and it’s completely geared towards a younger audience. How am I supposed to reach my target audience if there are no tools at my disposal to do so?
It’s heartbreaking as we just finished the game a few days ago and were going to release ads in a couple days, but now that’s virtually impossible.
Now the only thing we can stick to is YouTubers, etc. But they won’t even want to play our game as it already has a low player count.
I really hope they change this, especially after the many of hours I’ve spent creating my new game.
This is very tough to decide on. On one hand, it’s a really good change, as it takes out a lot of those clickbait ads and those ads shouldn’t be shoved into that demographic’s face. On the other hand, It’s not good. It will cripple ads and they will bring in WAY less traffic. Not to mention that sponsored ads don’t work either. As of yet, I’m undecided whether this is good or not.
This is update is just outrageous and it just doesn’t make any sense. Roblox said that they will try to make games discoverability better but this is just making it way worse for smaller developers and games. Especially games for younger audiences like tycoons, obby, simulators, etc. How are they going to reach out to players under the age of 13 now?
Not everyone can afford to pay youtubers to advertise their game and not every youtuber would make a video on your game. If it’s for legal reason then for ads banners, it makes sense, since people can display other stuff that is not related to the game or clickbait. For sponsors, it’s just a game icon and game title, which is a lot safer for <13 users compares to ads banners. This is just absurd and I hope you guys will revert this update. A lot of developers will be affected, their revenue will obviously decrease by a good bit. Their current projects or future plans that target the <13 audiences are pretty much ruined now.
This update is basically going to make it difficult for games that are intended for <13 audiences.
New games targeted at <13 audiences would theoretically be most affected by this since they would have to create a player base from ground up.
Existing games could be affected by an extent if they rely on heavily on advertising to keep their game active, although newer <13 players would be difficult to advertise to as well.
There’s still a big part of players that are <13 and I don’t believe this is the right time to make this decision. Perhaps if this decision was made if an overwhelming majority of players were 13+ then it would be understandable.
Unlike other platforms, Roblox has always been a platform allowing players with a range of age groups to play games that are intended for each of that audience or everyone as a whole.
This is one of the worst changes for developers, it’s now way more difficult to promote games and not just for <13 people. It used to be a large chunk of sponsors went to <13, now the entirety of sponsors are going to 13+, so sponsors are far more saturated than they were before, not to mention any game thats targeted towards kids basically just being pointless now.
I’m assuming this was for legal reasons but there was 1) no explanation on why this change had to be made, 2) no plan in place to compensate for the giant discovery hit, 3) this change was done completely randomly (0 warning), I’m having to scrap a project that we’ve worked on for multiple months because theres simply no way to market it and it was targeted towards <13, if there was some heads up we would have had the chance to give it up then, and if instead it was a warning now, that would at least allow some time to try and reach a sort.
If this change was 100% necessary, there should have been a explanation with ATLEAST a month warning on top of new discovery options. This update is the most damaging change I’ve experienced in the 12 years I’ve been on the platform, never has discovery been as difficult as it is now.
I myself am currently making an Obby - and as most of you know, over 50% of the obby-players are <13! So, now I basically have no option to reach this audience!
What was Roblox thinking when doing this update? - they should have at least provided an alternative way to reach this now isolated audience, or should have just given us an explanation on why this update was necessary!
I do not know how to feel about this. How are game developers benefiting from this in any way?
With all due respect, such major change should’ve been done as a result of a negative impact or a critical problem. But I cannot think of any logical answer to why prohibit a huge part of the player base on Roblox from seeing Advertisements which are mostly appropriate and PG?
I hope in the future such decision is reconsidered.
This update is so bad especially for developers. Games are gonna be less discoverable as around 50% of the platform is <13. It will be a lot harder to make games discoverable. Overall really bad update for developers advertising their games.
Horrible move by Roblox. I understand it’s for security/legal reasons however making it so only well established games get access to a huge portion of players under 13 and newer developers trying to make a good game and earn profit almost impossible to gain players/sustain a game.
Back when my game was profitable I was spending 10k Robux on ads daily. I was only able to receive about 20 - 30 concurrent players. I can only imagine how hard discoverability is going to be now when I release my new project.
