Subscriptions within experiences: Now available for users to purchase

[rockythecorgi68]

Hey Developers,

You can now activate subscriptions for sale within your experiences! Subscriptions offer a new potential way to earn from your experience through subscription-based offerings and business models. They also can help you build recurring relationships with your audience, strengthening engagement while benefiting your users.

And ICYMI - we are providing extra benefits for those who add subscriptions before the holiday season!

If you create an active subscription by December 15, the platform fee will be reduced to 15% (usually 30%) on all subscriptions purchased and renewed through March 15, 2024. Read more here.

Creation & Tools

Since we launched the ability to create subscriptions in September, you can now put your subscriptions up for sale. Creators will be able to access these additional tools:

• Activate: Created subscriptions are made available for sale by activating subscriptions in the Creator Dashboard. You can activate multiple subscriptions for sale per experience. However, at this time, you cannot bundle subscriptions across multiple experiences.

  

• Manage: Cancel or delete subscriptions that are not gaining traction

• Learn: Understand the performance of your subscriptions via a new Subscriptions page under Creator Analytics and track payouts from subscriptions in Transactions reporting.

  

• Earn: Earn Robux based on the base web price of the subscription with the same cut as experience products today. You may have the opportunity to earn more from retained subscribers. For more information about earnings, please visit our documentation.

User Experience

Building a positive user experience is important for the success of your subscription.

Users will be able to learn more about subscriptions in the Help Center, and here are some additional details:

Discovery: Users will be able to find subscriptions on the Discover page through a limited-time sort that features experiences with subscriptions. This sort will go live later this week.

Purchase: Users will be able to purchase subscriptions in their local currency on desktop or mobile web, as well as via the Roblox app on Apple and Google. Currently, purchasing subscriptions on other platforms (e.g. consoles) is not supported.

Subscriptions are not available for purchase in: Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Vietnam

Management: Users will be able to manage all subscriptions in one place in a new Subscriptions tab in their Roblox account settings. Subscribers via Apple and Google will be able to manage via their App Store settings if they choose to do so. More information can be found in the Help Center.

Resources

Be sure to check out the following links to learn how to implement subscriptions and engage your users in new and exciting ways!

• Tools
• API documentation
• Design guides
• Videos

We can’t wait to see what you create so tag us on X/Twitter @Roblox in all your subscription content!

Thank you.

[trtman33]

Nice to see this feature out! Sad that it is not with Robux, also sad how many countries are not supported.

First time ever being the first one to reply to a announcement!

[ObylxV5 (jaleese)]

This seems to be a very good update except for one thing. You set a price in USD and a player will pay in USD, but the developer of the experience will only recieve robux instead of the usd spent resulting in the actual amount being far less. Per say, you sold a subscription for 4.99 amd someone buys it, instead of recieving $4 that could be cashed out, you would recieve roughly 500 robux which would is i believe $1.50 in dev ex rates? This basically means roblox takes $3.50 and you recieve $1.50 ish which is about a 67% tax? (roughly). should be able to cash the direct cash out instead of offering a subscription sold in usd and you get paid im robux.

[2xA_Imagineer95 (2xA)]

Great idea, but terrible made… I won’t be using this, personally.

Players are less likely to buy subscriptions over Premium because you don’t get site wide benefits. Not to mention that the current Premium service can give the exact same benefits in-game if developers choose. People say this is going to change the economy, and I think it might be for the worse. One of the main draws to Premium was potentially getting benefits in tons of games. Now, it’s gonna cost you more than Premium to get the exact same benefits in all of the games you play, as some devs want nothing but money. As an insult to injury, you only get benefits in one game now, too. People are less likely to buy these subscriptions because they’re paying more for less, and people are also less likely to buy Premium because it now has fewer benefits. It’s a lose-lose situation for both Roblox and us devs.

As a side note, I want to point out that the lower tax on subscriptions made before the holiday season feels scammy. Why can’t this be a permanent thing?

[ObylxV5 (jaleese)]

Should offer both payment options, robux OR usd and the developer will receive that payment rather than only robux, shows Roblox making more then the people that make there platform what it is…

[rodeldev (rodel)]

Once again, LATAM, one of the most important regions not taken into account

[TheMicropixelGroup (Holder)]

true, it should be also purchaseable with Robux, this is kinda not cool to pay with Real money every month.

[FloofyNezzled]

Not to be pessimistic, but this just feels like another way for predatory devs to exploit their playerbase.

[Bulldo344 (LawMixer)]

I’ve commented on boatbomber’s subscription feature request, of my thoughts, and I’ll put a link here as well, so y’all can view it:

Subscription APIs are too obtuse

I do agree with all of the remarks that boatbomber has to say. Though I do want to point out my use-case and maybe this will help guide y’all along. The current functions don’t return whether or not they are subscribed, on the grace period, or not subscribed. To combat this issue, I would suggest using like an enum like boatbomer said or just adding it into payment history. Maybe have Payment history function return if they are subscribed or not subscribed? Communicating externally with an…

[spacecr4zygamer (Hycarius)]

Pretty cool addition, it eases a lot the process of making subscription things but I do find it quite sad that there’s no option for Robux payment, I understand the point with it being automatically paid. But this heavily limits on how creators on this platform can use it on other games, as having to DevEx it to then pay a subscription is probably a way lower rate aswell more inconvenient.
If there was a Robux option to pay there could be reminders or notification if a subscription cant renew soon because not enough funds are available and also instead of deleting the subscription just disable it like a VIP server for you to be able to easily see and turn back on when you got new Robux. Or instead add a way to select a monthly Robux rate like premium but without the Premium…? Just an idea.

Enough about the payment I’m simply happy to see a reliable way of making Subscriptions without having to do product and datastore shenanigans.

[discodorothy]

Hey, Rodel! We will expand to more locations soon, so stay tuned!

[ImAvafe (Avafe)]

I’m still looking forward to being able to sell subscriptions in 3rd-party experiences. I think it’d be really applicable for tools like HD Admin and others, and personally that’s what I’m going to use it for.

[coolmapj (Tails)]

lol this implementation of subscriptions gives developers nearly no benefit. whoever cooked this concoction should be fired

[2xA_Imagineer95 (2xA)]

Personally, I’d keep the 15% tax rate to make this (arguably useless) update slightly more appealing. Hope you’re taking notes, Roblox!

[Misterx113]

@trtman33

Sad that it is not with Robux

I have mixed feelings, it’s stupid that you still have to pay with real money and not with robux, but on the other hand it shows kids the real value and moves away from microtransactions.

[rodeldev (rodel)]

Out of curiosity, why is the reason behind blocking this feature in these countries? What do they have in common?

[Abcreator]

Still not a fan of how the API is designed to only allow the checking of subscriptions for users currently in the server. Heavily limits some of my use-cases and entirely blocks my use-case of having a “VIP” icon on a global leaderboard for subscribed players.

Also, would really like the ability to check exactly how long a player has been subscribed for (in case a player subscribes for longer than a year)

[CrispyBrix]

Not allowing me to use Robux makes this feature not very useful for me. I feel like most audiences here are far more likely to spend Robux than they are real dollars. Even if the former would be more expensive for them.

But a good start, I hope more options with this later.

[TheMicropixelGroup (Holder)]

Will This Supported on Mobile?