I’ve been on Roblox since 2008. That means I’ve been on the platform for 11 years, and I liked Roblox. Today, I tolerate it, but you better believe me I’ve considered moving away from Roblox so many times that, if this is a thing with most other developers (which I think it is), Roblox should be worried.
I’ve yet to release a game, but let’s do the math on Robux versus £ (since I live in the UK). Here’s the basic option for buying Robux (with no sales or discounts - this is supposedly the basic rate):
We’ll round that up to £23, because us developers aren’t fooled by the 1 pence off trick. That leaves the buying ratio of £ to Robux at around 87 Robux per £1.
Now, getting the selling ratio of Robux to £ is a bit more involved (and dependent on the USD to £ exchange rate), but we’ll assume a reasonable scenario where £1 = 1.3 USD. DevEx rates currently state that 100,000 Robux = 350 USD, which using our exchange rate means 100,000 Robux = about £269. That means the selling ratio of Robux to £ is around £0.00269 per 1 Robux. Multiply by 87 and you get £0.23 per 87 Robux.
Read those numbers. When you buy Robux, it’s 87 Robux per £1. When you DevEx, you get £0.23 per 87 Robux. In other words, Roblox is keeping a luxurious 77% of the money just from Robux<->real currency conversions alone.
On top of that, let’s talk marketplace tax. Non paying developers can expect a measly 10% cut of their Robux transactions, so let’s go ahead and slice that DevEx number into tenths. Oh wait, you can’t DevEx without paying first, so we’ll slice that to zero. Nice one.
Let’s buy OBC then. I’ll keep track of the price for you.
Sorted, right? Nope - Roblox still takes 30% of your Robux, so get ready to multiply that DevEx by 0.7! Now, accounting for marketplace tax, when you DevEx, you get £0.16 per 87 Robux.
You are paying Roblox over £220 a year for the privilege of getting 16% of the money that players spend through your game.
But I’m not done yet. We didn’t factor in the costs of basic functions like uploading audio, adding video thumbnails, and running ads and sponsorships, to name a few things. For any alive game studio or independent developer, this is a constant money sink and given the already abysmal rates, only serves to sap more money out of an already pretty much empty bucket.
Roblox seems to be designed to take as much money from developers and players alike as possible, and it’s completely and wholly unacceptable. We are getting ripped off big time, and something needs to change -
or we will go elsewhere.