The algorithm change seems to be benefitting new games with high CTRs and hurting games with high playtimes. which means the actual change is probably just more focus on CTRs and less on playtime, because new games are going to have more first time players, which usually is going to mean lower playtimes. while its great were getting some new games and not the same stuff we’ve had for years (eg Pet Sim X) there are probably better ways of doing it. id actually say my recommendations have gotten better but then again I don’t play simulators and that’s exactly the sort of game a decrease in importance for playtime would effect
ROBLOX’s algorithm is all over the place. Back in May, my game really blew up, hitting a high of 3,000 CCUs one day in May.
Then ROBLOX screwed us with this issue, and the effects of it (like the approval rating going down by at least 5%) have not been able to be reversed, and we have not hit the algorithm since…
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This has been my conclusion as well.
In Roblox’s response by @ivy_poisond, they did mention
- Relevance of the experience and its metadata (i.e. images, title, and descriptions) to the user (impressions to plays).
“Impressions to plays” implies CTR. That just means click-bait games will receive more promotion.
It appears this has more weight in the algorithm than Engagement.
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One of the things I hate about these algorithm changes is that Roblox is promoting awful games to the front page. It used to be normal and good games like, Adopt me, Bloxburg, and simulators. Now most of it is escape skibidi toilet, backrooms with granny and ban hammer, and other random meme games. I know Roblox probably won’t take much action to fix this, just based on what they usually do about problems, but I hope this situation gets better at some point.
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nothing has improved and after Feb 2023 my 4+ games got died and were silently forgotten…
Crazy. I think this image speaks for itself and all the developers out there that aren’t on Roblox to suck dry kids out of their parents money.
Source
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I’m not sure, but it depends on several factors. Is your game on trend, does it have a word that has been around the world, does it have a word that is on trend, and does it show up on search systems by certain words?
Our game, one of if not the most visited difficulty chart of all time has had its daily active users count cut literally in third. We used to average over 60,000 DAU and now we’re down to 20,000 for seemingly no reason starting about a week ago. We used to never dip below 200-300 ccu and now we often dip below 100. This is very worrisome when we rely on the game to generate a decent portion of our income. Yikes.
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I was fortunate enough to have a Youtuber play my game randomly, so I’ve doubled my DAU for the past week, but before that I was in the same situation.
We can’t let this thread be ignored.
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I just don’t get why Roblox has to promote the same old games on the front page all the time, like wouldn’t it make more sense to have some sort of cycle of games? Or maybe even make it so that a game can only appear on the front page once? That could probably increase monetization. That way Roblox could still rack in the big bucks while actually promoting good games.
I also don’t know why Roblox thought it was a good idea to base game promotion around CTR and not engagement. That practice resulted in a bunch of scam/“copy and paste” games on Roblox. Wouldn’t it be better to promote a game that has good CTR, but OUTSTANDING engagement? Doesn’t Roblox want the players to be in games longer so that they’d have a higher chance of buying something? This unfortunately can’t be the case because Roblox is like “I WANT MONEY NOW WAAAAH!!!” and doesn’t care about engagement at all. This is why clickbait, P2W or “putting every single dev product/gamepass in your face” games are getting all the promotion regardless of quality.
For now, we can all just hope for a better algorithm or resort to making trendy games, because hey, at least those types of games can get some more impressions, right?
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My game was doing alright for my standereds as a rather new developer, however after the game started to not appear on searches my MAU for this month is 52. Which is absolutly disgraceful! I really want this to be fixed.
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After reading this thread, I decided to create a game with a simple core loop that could get some attention. It was also kind of an experiment to see which statistics really matter. A few days after I tested the game on my phone (where I have a different account) to see if everything worked (and tested updates, so I joined multiple times), impressions blew up from 32 to around 2700! I really didn’t expect that, but at least it shows that CVR really matters because the Experience Detail CVR was at 100%
After a few days, the impressions died again, but interestingly, after more days, they blew up again for some reason to 4800!! It might be because the CVR was higher with a smaller amount of impressions, although nobody actually bought anything, so I really don’t know how much monetization matters.
I decided to make this experiment because these “improvements” killed my previous game.
And one more thing…
We can’t let this thread be ignored. This needs to be fixed.
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I think the search algorithms number 1 thing that makes games appear higher on the search list is games with higher spending rates per player. I think this is one of the main reason bad quality cash grab games are seen so often. If this is true then this proves that Roblox does not care for it’s developers.
Bumping this up
Since 2011 I have also seen game discovery plummet to the lowest of lows, it is simply unbelievable that Roblox refuses to respond or even acknowledge extreme issues that plague the platform directly. They receive tremendous outcry from developers and the public about the significance of the issue and all they do is ignore and wait for it all to slowly fade away. They did this with the audio update (I have not given up), and they will continue to do the same with this time. I’m getting really tired of it. It’s such a shame to see so many developers who make a living off Roblox, who generate income for the platform, and who built nearly all the playable content on the platform, to be consistently blindsided by the company. There is no way they do not yet know these issues exist, they seemingly choose to ignore it and wait for it to blow over.
Do not ignore this issue
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They do know this issue exist, and they are doing it on purpose aswell, you know why? It’s because it will force more people to advertise their games and Roblox gets more money.
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School is back for most people, so having a lower CCU is expected right now.
… but not this massive of a drop in impressions. Specially compared to other games.
(Impressions)
(CCU / Player Count)
After the algorithm changes killed our game Site 006 Roleplay back in March / April, we have been relying on SCP: Roleplay to make a living and pay our employees.
On Monday, our Retention values took a big hit since our playerbase began school and couldn’t get on. This resolved itself in the following days, and is now back to a stable value close to what it was before Monday.
However, the algorithm has not reflected on this.
We’re taking a massive hit on the algorithm for no good reason. A lower CCU and retention is expected when people are going to school, but we shouldn’t be even more penalized because of that.
And here’s Flag Wars, a similar game in earnings, for comparison:
Note how in SCP: Roleplay’s graph the visits are continuously descending regardless of the date.
Roblox’s CCU as a whole is down this month, yes, but it does not justify such a drastic cut in impressions.
SCP: Roleplay’s impressions have decreased by 3x, a very dangerous drop in new player counts.
This is a game that has almost never hit below 2k in 3 years time, and is now for the first time having that happen to it, despite the metrics being the best they’ve ever been.
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Been keeping a close eye on this thread since it was first made. Roblox’s efforts to intentionally and utterly destroy game discovery and promotion are absolutely disgusting and disheartening. I love Roblox and everything that it has to offer. I don’t know where I would be today had I not found out about Roblox. I’ve been attempting to grow my experience since late February this year. With over 2M+ 
spent on User Ads and Sponsored Ads I’d expect to have a player-base by now, but nope! Is Roblox shadow-banning us? I can’t keep up anymore… Spent quite a bit on User Ads and Sponsored Ads last month especially, but no luck. Am I not spending enough? What is the point of creating experiences on Roblox if they won’t promote it.
Edited to fix image.
After my weekly updates failed, I was devastated like many other creators on the platform were at a similar time. I began to release updates less frequently. Now it seems like I need that initial kick again… The removal of the friends sort was absolutely detrimental to that. I cannot see my experience icon without having played it. I cannot see my experience at all unless a friend with joins on is actively playing it.
We need to remain constructive and positive through these challenging times. Roblox is changing, and it’s probably for the better. However, that gives them no excuse to leave us in the complete dark on this.
We need answers.
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Surprised relatively few people have noticed there was a change again a few weeks ago that has just been nuking my player counts and the CCUs of some other popular games I looked up.
I’m not talking about summer being over, yes that will depress CCU, but my CCU now are well over 75% down on my CCU in April and May when everyone was in school.
The collapse has been dramatic. In April the combined CCU of my games at peak time was about 2-3k. Now it’s 500. It could force me off the platform which is a kick in the teeth when in the last few weeks several very low quality games have been picking up serious algorithmic promotion. The entire website now is just a clickbait frenzy.
It’s relatively obvious that Roblox adjusted the algorithm before because it wanted to look good to investors; by spreading the players to more games they can claim there are more games that are hitting an arbitrary MAU or USD revenue. The problem is they’re not diverting CCU from top games that clearly have way too many players for their quality, but they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul - mid level devs are being wiped out just so little Timmy can have 100 MAU on his game.
I’m not sure what metrics Roblox are using to determine algorithm promotion. The ones earlier in this thread clearly aren’t the full picture. I make what I’d like to think are high quality obby games where we aren’t spamming gamepasses and are focussed on a good experience. This puts me in a unique position to look at how the algorithm affects 6 of them - they are all fundamentally obbies so it’s the metrics that make the difference… except the metrics of the ones with lower CCU are better. For example I have an obby that has higher stats in every single metric thats available to us and yet get 20% the CCU of ones with objectively worse metrics.
Devs that make games in different genres and with significantly different experiences/mechanics aren’t afforded this insight that I can get through like-for-like comparison with my own games. Maybe Roblox hasn’t had this insight either so if any staff member wants to reach out to discuss this in more detail, I would be happy to.
Whichever metrics it is using are clearly not helpful to the company which is reporting mounting financial losses. Maybe try to promote games that are beneficial to the company and not ones that are just clickbait. I hope they are factoring in the LTV of users who play cashgrabs all day - I’d hypothesise that these users are not very valuable because they eventually quit because they think there is nothing of value on Roblox - is the algorithm factoring this in?
When reward on Roblox is so detatched from effort, it is going to disillusion a huge chunk of the developers. Without major change most of the middle-classes of Roblox dev will be forced out. Little Timmy will always try and make something as will the predatory studios, but the middle-devs who have enjoyed relative success in their careers will be squeezed out, and that will be terrible for the future outlook of Roblox.
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YouTubers/off-ROBLOX social media are almost the only way to go about advertising, and being successful. The ROBLOX in-house advertising/sponsorship scheme has a horrible ROI, and even if didn’t it seems to be dominated by games who have big money behind them (think GameFam) that overtake the advertising system.
When my game reached its peak of 3,000 CCUs, it was just after a major Brazilian YouTuber made a video on it. I’ve been struggling to find a new YouTuber since, and spending 10-20k R$ a day over a weekend on sponsorships barely nudges the CCU count. It’s beyond frustrating.
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Because ROBLOX is a private company that needs revenue. Especially now, given that their earnings weren’t as high as predicted. An investor group called me about a month ago about if I was interested in doing a quick phone call about ROBLOX right before the earnings call came out. It came out, and that investor group called me the next day to tell me they were “moving in a different direction.”
Realistically speaking, cheap simple clickbait games get kids’ attention and get them to play these games. They then spend money on those games, more money than on other much more well made games. The Skibidi Toilet nonsense has pissed me off to no end, but from ROBLOX’s perspective, that is an easy way for kids to spend robux, which means they will make more.
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