This question has been bothering me for quite a while, and I haven’t found any authoritative answers.
To clarify at the beginning: I’m not asking about selling/reselling, I’m only interested in handing out avatar items free of charge, like Roblox does in most of their events.
When that topic came out, I deduced that “oh, it’s finally a thing” - that is, developers are allowed to hand out UGC strictly through experiences, whereas before only Roblox was able to do that. But I couldn’t find any further “how-to” at the time.
Later, I found a topic or a post stating (if I understood it correctly) that in order to do this the item must be marked as limited, and its creator must add an experience (or place) ID to a list of sale locations.
So these are my questions:
Is this correct?
Does this mean I would have to hire a UGC creator (or is this treated differently than the Marketplace)?
Then if those are both true:
Can the items be placed in a group that I own?
Is it required that I grant the UGC creator any special (group or place) permissions?
If at any point the UGC creator decides to put the item off sale, add a price to it, make it available elsewhere, or change it in any other way, is there anything preventing them from doing so?
Bonus question:
If everything above is “good”, is there a good place (except for posting on TalentHub) to look for UGC creators?
If possible, please provide foundations for your claims - statements coming from Roblox (Creator Hub, a post from a staff, etc.), or at least statements coming from UGC members.
Hope someone has something, the information on this seems really scarce (or I just missed some relevant announcements, and failed to find them on multiple occasions).
This probably isn’t the right category for this but I saw your reply on another post and will answer your questions.
Partially yes. You can sell a limited UGC item for free, but it doesn’t have to be in a game. It can just be for free on the website.
Yes - you have to find someone who’d upload it.
Yes
Yes, it’s something like create or manage assets or avatar items, or something along those lines.
Once an UGC item is made limited, it can’t be changed. Talking price, can’t be made un-limited, # of copies changing, name/desc etc, except for tags.
Afaik selling item slots violates the terms of service. This, and because the uploader takes on the responsibility of any items uploaded on their behalf (whether it violates general TOS or copyright), most UGC creators will not upload your item. So it’s very unlikely that you will find anyone who bites and uploads your item.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it a lot.
You are probably correct, I will ask moderation to move it to a more appropriate category where I can mark your reply as the solution.
Could you please clarify two things?
First:
I am only interested in giving out items in-game, after they are earned, like here for example:
Is it possible to do that without also having the item available for free on the website? So, free (minus having to work for them obviously), but distributed strictly in-game.
And second:
I am not interested in (as you put it) buying a slot for something that I have created or will create, that hasn’t even crossed my mind. I was thinking along the lines of communicating with a UGC creator to come to an agreement about what they would create (3 or 4 or 5 or however many items), agreeing on a price/arrangement, and having them upload it to a group of mine - or even their own catalog if desired, now that I know that it can’t be changed in a malicious way once uploaded.
Is that in accord with the terms of service?
And if yes, again, what would you say is a good way/place to look for a UGC creator?
I have received mixed responses from asking. Some say it is in violation of the TOS but others say it isn’t. It’s probably just something that Roblox doesn’t typically enforce, a sort of do it at your own risk thing. Take that with a grain of salt though as there are rumours of some UGC creators getting kicked for slot selling (what you’ve described constitutes slot selling to most people), they’re just rumours though, so they may or may not be true. But at the end of the day the uploader is ultimately responsible for whatever appears on their account. So even if you made the item, they’d be held responsible if the item somehow violated some term of service.
I don’t know of any good places to find an uploader because most UGC creators will not upload for others.
That’s odd to me, because it makes it sound like cooperation between UGC and game creators is discouraged in a sense. To make use of the fature while staying safe, UGC creators would have to get into development (baseline: management plus paying a team of developers), and developers would have to learn modeling and texturing (which is difficult), and then try to get into the UGC program (which is unlikely to happen).
And now that I checked, the “Crocs World Tycoon” that I mentioned is in fact owned by RookVanguard.
Not uploading an item that someone else created is completely reasonable, I get that part. But I don’t see why cooperating (while letting the UGC creator create what they want) to make use of the in-game feature should fall into the “slot selling” category. Perhaps Roblox will expound on this in the future.
There is another option for me (and other developers) I suppose, and that is yielding ownership of my upcoming game (or group) to a UGC creator. That’s not desirable for obvious reasons, it’s only good if you have someone that you know well.
So in either case, to make use of this feature, someone has to either put in a lot of additional effort (maybe even money), or take a big risk.
Hopefully that’s just what it sounds like, and not how it actually is. Thank you again for taking the time, and even checking with others, it was very helpful.