Testing shopping experiences in Marketplace

Updates Announcements
#1

Hi Creators,

Since allowing creators the ability to create items and sell them either in Marketplace or experiences, we’ve seen exciting growth and interest in shopping experiences that are dedicated to selling avatar items.

Starting today in the Roblox Universal App, we will test including shopping experiences in Marketplace to drive more discovery of these experiences and the avatar items they sell. Marketplace is where you can buy, sell, and trade virtual items such as avatar bodies, heads, clothing, and accessories, and with this test you may also see experiences.

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Images from left to right: Marketplace, Shopping Experiences row in Marketplace, expanded view of Shopping Experiences when you click on a shopping experience.

As a reminder, tests are an opportunity to learn quickly and iterate our product and features to improve Roblox for our community. A limited number of users selected at random will have access to tests. Given this, not all tests may launch but if they do, we will share updates with you.

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments.

Thank you!

158 Likes
Discover outfits in Marketplace [Test]
#2

This topic was automatically opened after 9 minutes.

#3

I am having difficulty understanding this, as that is very important space, now getting taken away from UGC creators, who already get the smallest cut of UGC transactions…

This is once again giving more towards these games that sell our items and get a larger cut… Bad move…

87 Likes
#4

why is the marketplace being used to promote experiences instead of our ugc?

there is very limited space on the marketplace, and an ever-growing amount of UGC (growing exponentially fast with no upload caps in place + the program becoming public soon)

it’s already a battle to get your ugc seen amongst the sea of accessories and this update comes at the expense of marketplace creators for the gain of experience creators (yet again)

and this thread (once again) does not explain why experiences continue to get a larger revenue share of our own UGC sales (affiliates get 40% while the creator of the item only gets 30%)

100 Likes
#5

This is a really cool feature, can’t wait to test it!

Is there a chance of having scam/spam games listed?

28 Likes
#6

Man, please let us put the marketplace stuff aside for a little while and concentrate on some important issues that the community truly needs.

There have been three or more posts in the previous four to five weeks or so (sorry if I am wrong about the dates) about UGC-related topics, and while I don’t really understand most of it, this could be beneficial, but there is still too much emphasis on it.

31 Likes
#7

Marketplace is where you can buy, sell, and trade virtual items such as avatar bodies, heads, clothing, and accessories, and with this test you may also see experiences.

The marketplace does not allow for trading, only trades that are able to be completed are from the trade page.
Along with that you are unable to trade bodies, heads, or clothing (and only accessories that are created by Roblox themselves.)

Is there some sort of change other than the experiences being shown happening as well?

24 Likes
#8

Instead of promoting shopping experiences through the marketplace, features of such experiences should be observed and considered to be utilized in the marketplace. See what they have that you don’t that you think would improve the marketplace UX.

For instance, some experiences suggest outfits for you to try on and purchase or allow you to view, try on and purchase outfits other users have saved while some other experiences allow you to try accessories on without taking another accessory of the same type off of your avatar. These are just a few of some great features that can be discovered from shopping experiences and can be considered to be implemented on the marketplace page or maybe also/alternatively the avatar page as well.

Ultimately, this decision was quite unnecessary and I’m not so happy about it. The avatar shops sort on the Roblox discover page and homepage should be the only places to discover those experiences. The update can be received by some others like me as being an irritating advertisement push. Because while shopping on the marketplace, I am not interested at all in discovering shopping experiences, if I wanted to shop through an experience, I would have used an experience before deciding to take a trip to the marketplace. I find shopping through the marketplace page a better experience than shopping through experiences, so I almost always use it. The advertisements will unnecessarily bloat marketplace space, and I don’t want to view things that I am not interested in. It’s just a matter of preference, and I don’t want to see what I don’t prefer.

If you are determined to push forward these advertisements, please consider implementing the ability to disable them. I just want to see avatar items, not experiences.

32 Likes
Discover outfits in Marketplace [Test]
#9

I don’t know how to feel about precious space in the marketplace being taken away by experiences. There are already two locations for experiences, home and discover. Adding experiences to the marketplace tab takes away discoverability from UGC Creators (Who are already struggling with oversaturation).

UGC Creators also still earn less from their own items than experience creators. What’s up with that?

19 Likes
#10

For experiences to get a larger revenue share than the person who created the UGC creator is wrong. Now advertising them on the marketplace is crazier. I suggested having the togglable option, not to allow UGC to be purchased in experiences unless it is whitelisted.

21 Likes
#11

How do i get my store to appear in there? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

24 Likes
#13

I both agree and disagree with this sentiment.

Yes, it will take away slots that could be used for the recommended, it will also open up for visibility for places like home stores or mall experiences which are made to advertise an entire a ugc creator or a group of creators items. This will also allow for more revenue to be generated in passes, premium payouts, and in experience sales.

I think the best workaround honestly would be having a shopping category featured on discover/home page, or featuring these experiences in less intrusive ways like at the bottom of the recommended tab as that only shows a select amount of items currently.

16 Likes
#14

There are a few problems with this:

  1. A majority of UGC Creators do not have a homestore or any experiences to sell their items. These experiences do not receive any players so they are not worth the time or effort to create. This means that actual UGC Creators are harmed by this update and experience developers gain at their expense.

  2. You are assuming that this new sort will feature smaller experiences including creator homestores that help benefit UGC Creators. Unfortunately, Roblox will be pushing the same experiences they do on the home and discover tabs which aren’t created by actual UGC Creators.

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18 Likes
#15

This is the question I want answered. Why is the creator doing the hard work getting the short end of the stick?

I think showing these experiences here makes sense; good UGC will rise to the top in these experiences and drive further discovery. It does however open avenues to corruptive practices, e.g. paying off experience developers to hoist your UGC above others.

17 Likes
#16

Roblox has always lacked core integration of shopping based experiences that bring crucial social play. This elevates the abilities for on and off-site brands/creators to share content collectives that otherwise would be awash in the grand wave of UGC.

One problem with this is that it’s another layer of obfuscation for the regular UGC creator, if they want to maximize sales they now would have to at some stage bargain with shop creators to improve recommendation for their items.
Which will just be a pain, because the majority of games that pass the 5th slot on a sort like this will be minmaxxing; quick and lazy maps that just dump the most popular clothing from marketplace for y2k/emo/goth/anime etc. The current set of lower end experiences in this category are basically like this already.

This is a positive change as long as the curation of games and items is pertinent and refreshing to the user, it’s important to know as a developer or creator how do experiences in this recommended list get chosen for users, is it just based on concurrent users?

11 Likes
#17

Yep. Great for them, I bet.

Exactly! It’s the marketplace not the home page.There’s now even less space for UGC creators, and more space for lower effort Experience Marketplaces (no offense)

Yeah, there are definitely more pressing matters than the Catalog. :melting_face:

Agreed…
Why is there a ‘need’ for all these new catalog updates, but not for things like refining (or more harshly put, genuinely trying to make better of) the search engine, getting newer experiences prioritized (at least) closer to sponsored experiences or popular experiences? While I do see genuinely good updates from Roblox every so often, I have noticed less important or fortunate updates.

mb for the long reply

9 Likes
#19

I like the general idea, but not which type of shopping experiences you’re promoting. Alternative-marketplace experiences are neat, but in this instance, they should not be given prominence over the homestores of individual creators and groups creating your UGC in the first place.

If you want to go down this path, it really should be showcasing shopping experiences of the UGC creators themselves, as to support the creators actually making the content on the marketplace. This also would aid the issue others have brought up of that this is further space being taken away from them, as if it was showcasing their stores, this wouldn’t be (as much of) an issue. Especially with the 40% to the sell location leaving us with only 30% - wouldn’t it make more sense encourage people to go to our stores so that we get that additional 40% (for 70% profit) for them buying our items?

Additionally, it seems a little strange to use generalised experiences that essentially serve as alternatives to the marketplace, especially if you want users to use the actual Marketplace. Individual/company stores selling only their own UGC seems like it’d make a lot more sense.

9 Likes
#20

This change feels like an admission of defeat. Part of the reason why so many players flock to shopping games is because of the difficulty navigating through Roblox’s own Marketplace.

Seeing this post, I wanted to know how hard it’d be for a new customer to find more of my items on Roblox’s Android app. Simple enough, right? Browse the Marketplace, and there’s a cute set of Comfy Example Earmuffs! Maybe they’ve also made a Warm Example Scarf to match!

  • Open the Details panel of the item
  • Tap the Creator link, loading to their UGC Group
  • Tap the Store tab
  • Tap See All

I’m at the Marketplace home page.

  • Tap Roblox’s back button

I’m not at the Comfy Example Earmuffs. I’m at the Home page, the page I was on before visiting the Marketplace.

  • Tap the bottom right menu
  • Tap the Marketplace button
  • Search “Earmuffs”
  • Scroll past dozens of items named “Earmuffs” until I find the Comfy Example Earmuffs
  • Open the Details panel again

Back at the Comfy Example Earmuffs, there’s a direct link in the description to the group’s store page!

  • Tap the link
  • Tap the link
  • Tap… Tap the link?

It’s not a hyperlink. It won’t do anything. Links in item descriptions don’t work in the Android app.

  • Tap the Creator to open their UGC Group again
  • Hold a tap to select and copy their Group name, DoctorExampleNameHere
  • Exit out of the Group view
  • Exit out of the Details panel
  • Open the Filters panel
  • Paste their group’s name under the Creator field
  • Apply

We’re finally here! We’re at their store! We’re at… Their old store. Classic clothing, maybe a few old hats from before creators could upload UGC to groups. If the group name is the same as someone’s username, the Creator Filter will only show uploads from the user…

…Unless you put a space directly after the group name, and then, at long last, there it is. Comfy Example Earmuffs, and oh, oh! Look, Knit Example Cap! And it only took over a dozen steps and a counterintuitive workaround to get here!

With how heavily Roblox is pushing for shopping experiences, it’s a little ironic that the one which consistently pulls thousands of players, the one which has hundreds of UGC creators setting up stores in-game, the one which was given this year’s Innovation Award for Best Use of Fashion, is Catalog Avatar Creator. At its heart an overhauled version of the catalog we have today.

If you find an item you like, you can open the details panel, and tap the creator’s name to see more of their work.

15 Likes
#21

It’s simple. If I’m using the catalog instead of a shopping game, I don’t want to see them. Not sure why games are being put in the catalog when theres an entire page dedicated to them, plus the absolute abomination you made the Home page to advertise these games even more.

6 Likes
#22

Wow, more advertising for cash-grab games. I know you take us for idiots, Roblox, but we really aren’t. You’re digging yourself into a hole and some day soon, you’re gonna regret it…

I also think it’s just funny that the catalog is so broken and outdated that you needed to promote other catalogs to fix it.

5 Likes