Hi trtman33! Our subscription service charges in real-world currency to support automatic renewals across platforms. This should enhance subscriber retention and ensure more predictable revenue. Without an underlying payment method, it is difficult for users to maintain their subscription as they have to manually top up their Robux balance. We offer payouts in Robux to enable creators to comprehensively evaluate monetization across in-experience revenue streams without the need for currency conversions.
Pretty disappointing that this seems to be USD only.
I have around ÂŁ50 worth of Robux in my account and I donât want to have to funnel more money into Roblox just for a subscription, I wish that I had the option to use Robux, even if itâs like 2.5x more expensive.
If subscriptions gave me Robux at or near the DevEx rate, I would use the feature. If a user purchases a $9.99/mo subscription on mobile, I get $1.71 of that after the 30% Roblox cut, the 30% Apple/Google cut, and the 65% DevEx cut. For example, if Roblox gave Apple/Google their 30% cut, took 30% of whatâs left, and gave me the rest, I would be happy. That would mean a $9.99 subscription would leave me with 1398 Robux or $4.89.
While the idea is good, I canât find myself ever using this. Getting players to spend real money for me to get a rough cut in robux is really morbid. If I ever do consider subscription based systems, Iâd use dev products similar to how Bloxburg has done their neighbourhoods or many other games have done their VIP subscriptions. Not only are robux transactions significantly more common but I would have much more control and oversight as well.
I havenât kept up with the news on subscriptions - where is the payment for developers mentioned? That canât be right. Thereâs no way they hand us something like this with a smile on their faces.
I have a game that could definitely benefit from this as I regularly pay my own real money to use APIs to offer in-game features, so it would make that project a lot more viable long-term if I could offer less expensive but monthly subscriptions instead of having players pay for a one-time expensive game pass.
But the implementation here is just⌠bizarre.
Why can players not pay in Robux? Thatâs too weird of a move to just not explain it in the original post. There would be no need to region-lock this feature if you could just use Robux.
This also massively reduces the likelihood of people actually buying a subscription for a game.
If youâre a parent and you already pay $10-$20 a month to give your kid Robux, you would not be happy to learn that those Robux canât go towards one of these new subscriptions and that youâd instead have to spend an additional $5 a month for a specific game on Roblox. That would undermine the reason to buy Robux or Roblox Premium in the first place. And as a developer who doesnât really need to buy Robux, Iâd personally be very willing to buy a subscription from another developerâs game that I like if I could just pay a few hundred Robux to do it, but not if I have to reach for my wallet in real life to do it.
There are so many things wrong with the implementation of this that the reduced cut of 30%->15% should really be permanent to make up for the incredibly weird and counterproductive decisions that were made here.
Everything is cool but the feature should be changed a little.
1. The Criteria:
Games that are new or was moderated by mistake or stupid reason wonât be able to make subscriptions, itâs completly useless thing and it should be deleted.
2. Subscription Price:
Developers should have full control of subscription Price. Some Developers would like to make, e.g. Premium Season Pass for only 200 Robux, not 499 (0.01$ â 1 Robux as I know) for certain of time, and there is another thing, Subscription Duration
3. Subscription Duration
Developers also should have full control of Subscription Duration. We can use the Premium Season Pass idea, some developers would like to make it for over 30 days (for example: Jailbreak). The Subscription Duration should be in days, for example:
As a consumer, the lack of ability of being able to pay with my robux ballance is dissapointing. I already have most of my funds in robux, and paying with fiat currency just isnt worth it.
Respectfully, this is an inadequate explanation. Not allowing Robux as a method of payment creates a major barrier to buying a subscription in the first place and makes it much less likely that a parent (or adult player with their own money) would be interested in renewing a subscription. This is bad for players and bad for developersâ profits.
VIP Servers are already a good example of how a recurring monthly subscription for Robux is possible on Roblox. Itâs been done successfully before. Some developers, myself included, even offer additional perks to players in VIP servers, making them double as a subscription for premium features, emulating what this new feature will do. Why is this different?
If Roblox will charge the player real money, they should pay the developer in real money, too. Take the 15-30% cut and direct deposit the rest into the checking account in the DevEx portal. Paying us in Robux just allows Roblox to double-dip by taking the 30% cut first and then multiply our profits by 0.0035 due to DevEx rates.
Itâs converted to Robux and deposited into your Roblox account.
Slightly off-topic, but something about the sentence âwe offer payouts in Robux to enable creators to comprehensively evaluate monetization across in-experience revenue streams without the need for currency conversionsâ really bothers me. Too much corporate jargon. Roblox should really try to avoid corporate PR speak in announcement threads in the future. I canât speak for everyone, but for me itâs a big red flag that makes me distrust whoever uses it.
For subscriptions to be useful, the payouts need to either be in USD or DevEx-adjusted. Compensating for DevEx may cause problems since then you could spend the Robux in other games. All revenue from my game needs to end up in USD to be useful to me, so allowing me to be paid in USD directly would be the optimal solution.
So, what happened to subscriptions being exclusively for streaming services?
I wouldnât say itâs a bad feature, I could see this being used for stuff like season passes, VIP in club and hangout games and whatnot.
But how on earth are you going to prevent this getting abused to hell with all the greedy cash grab and pay-2-win games out there?
Seriously, how?
I would not be surprised if someone started using this system to essentially put weapons, perks and items in a game behind a paywall for which you must pay monthly or you lose all your items and skins that were tied to your subscription.
My greatest concern for this feature is predatory monetization models and no longer being able to own what you paid for.
Pay-2-win already has been a problem since the beginning of times I guess but now devs will ALSO be able to implement âtemporary ownershipâ and other methods to essentially suck the money out of people their wallets.
And what happens when someone forgot they had a subscription?
Does it just keep subtracting money from their bank accounts? Will they get a reminder through email that they still have an ongoing subscription?
Iâm a strong believer that subscriptions should only be utilized for streaming and VIP services.
But if you want to use it, I guess you can.
You gotta ask yourself though, do you REALLY want to use this feature?
Subscriptions and loot boxes are already not allowed in some countries so it honestly seems like a waste of time and resources to implement this AND youâll lose out on players whoâs respective countries ban such monetization methods.
Iâm an rather optimistic person and I could imagine some cool usecases for it, but it does not help much to know that Roblox already has a subscription service (Premium, previously known as Buildersclub) and the fact that subscriptions are very abusable and predatory.
I sincerely hope they thought this one out.
I have mixed feelings about it.
Premium is a much more better system than this and letting developers make their own subscription would take away from Premium. Instead of paying for only one subscription which lets you have access to a huge variety of benefits, now you need to pay for 500 different subscriptions for benefits to their own game. Subscriptions would likely be used by predatory developers since I canât think of much of a reason why a developer would need a subscription for their game.
