I don’t think you understand fully how it all works in the big picture. At first glance, I agree, it seems unfair until you think it through. You can literally make a cube in blender and slap a texture on it and upload it as UGC, which I have seen many times. In total this effort cost that UGC creator minutes of time. In contrast, making a successful game and the community surrounding it takes months and even years.
I implore you to take a look around in the real world where authors, musicians, and inventors make as little as 10-20% of the revenue from sales. However, without a meaningful distribution network and a way to get the products in front of customers, they make nothing.
30% of 1000 sales > 100% of 100 sales
If a UGC item is on sale for 100 Robux
30% of 1000 sales = 30,000 Robux
even if you got 100% of the sale price, which you don’t.
100% of 100 sales = 10,000 Robux
In the end, it’s all about exposure, the more your items are exposed the more it benefits you. This will be even more important as the UGC program is opened up to everyone and the current UGC creators lose their advantage over regular Roblox players and flood the marketplace with millions of items. How are players going to find your UGC then when it is a literal drop in an ocean? This is why if we all work together to promote the sales of UGC in experiences that relate to the content it will help both the experience creators and UGC creators.
This is why Roblox is addressing this now, before the flood.
It only punishes creators who work hard and get paid barely anything.
(I can’t literally finish a single game due to constant burnouts (i have to work alone, as always) nor being able to find a single studio to work in, so UGC is my only source of income. Alongside having to deal with sales constantly falling + demotivation caused by constant updates that make working conditions on here harder)
Imagine having to share more than what you earn with someone you don’t even know, even though you literally make the items yourself and you depend on them to make income.
Developers get to live in luxuries meanwhile you are left in the dirt because “we don’t give a thing about you, there are 343874837 other new creators that will appear on public release get lost roflmao”
Exposure is worthless, nobody knows i do UGC even though im verified on the website itself.
Even if UGC is “low skill” (which I wouldn’t agree with) that doesn’t mean that it is fair or makes any sense that the item creator gets less than the game that simply prompts the purchase.
Modeling an item is a lot more work than scripting a purchase prompt.
I do agree with this, UGC creators (mostly) spend alot of time on their work, and experiences being placed into the Marketplace pushing their work down and out of the way just doesn’t seem fair at all. The Marketplace should be exclusively for shirts, pants, accesories, etc instead of games which have their own tab already, being the Discover tab.
With all due respect, shopping experiences have very little impact on the sales of UGC items. We do not need you to sell our items in your experiences. Roblox does all of the work to showcase our items in the marketplace. Less than 10% of all UGC sales for most UGC Creators are made in an experience. Most of those sales being made in Catalog Avatar Creator. I find it very disrespectful to imply that we need you to be successful.
You could slap a baseplate in an experience and call it a game too. That doesn’t mean people will interact with it. Real UGC Creators pour hours of time into creating each of their items.
Experiences do take a lot of time to create, but they are not comparable to UGC items. You can only buy a UGC item one time. You can interact with an experience multiple times. Games are much more profitable based on the time you put in compared to UGC items.
Comparing more abusive industries to UGC does not make a compelling argument from your side. This is not the real world, this is a digital storefront. There is unlimited space and no competition for shelving. Better examples would be Youtube or Twitch, who give their creators 50% or more of the revenue they generate. This is much higher than the 10% given to UGC Creators.
By the way, arguing that exposure is important under a thread about Roblox taking away that exposure is pretty ironic.
Out of curiosity, are you suggesting that people buy UGC in base plate games? By the way, your counter argument is literally absurd, they are not taking away space, they are adding them inline, just scroll past them and don’t click on them.
No, trying to make you realize how dumb it sounds to imply that a cube can make a thousands of dollars. Yes, they are taking away space. They are adding games where there are currently items. Would you like it if they added accessories to the home and discover pages? I doubt it.
Thanks for educating me on how capitalism and marketing works bud. Sounds like you got it all figured out. I wish you the best of luck with your UGC and Development endeavors!
I apologize that my comments triggerd you, it was not my intention. I appreciate your opinions you so liberally share, I will keep them in mind. Not to worry though, I don’t think we have eaten into your profits. Looking at our sales data, out of the millions of UGC items we have sold, I dont think we have sold any of your UGC yet. We do however work directly with some great UGC creators and they have been very happy and supportive working with us. Also, can you pass me a link to the source of the statistical data showing that “less than 10% of all UGC sales” come from in experience purchases. I would love review that data.
Yeah, because Roblox takes the 40% from us if you don’t. That’s why this needs to change. I have nothing against shopping experiences, but I strongly believe they shouldn’t get a higher percentage than actual creators.
This is my personal sales data so I am afraid I cannot share.
Yea that does sound dumb. I guess their intention was that UGC creators would make UGC items specifically for games but if a game uses a UGC item without consent then its problematic
As experiences move into the marketplace … perhaps it is time to re-asses the percentage split? Experiences getting 40% and those who make the item getting 30% is a bit off.
Even just going to 35/35 would be a huge improvement.
Cool update I guess - it’ll improve the user experience. But the revenue share model for UGC creators is still unfair. Especially considering Roblox considers itself an affiliate when avatar items are purchased from the website. At least this change helps move that money away from Roblox and into the community.
No offence and not to come across as rude or ignorant, but if so many of your UGC sales are being made on the website, then why would the request need to necessarily be to lower the affiliate percentage? It seems like the easier request to solve would be to remove the affiliate percentage for sales made on the website.
In my personal opinion, sales that occur in experience most likely would have not occurred at all if the experience were to not exist, so Roblox encouraging creators to implement UGC selling into their experiences is a good thing, any decreasing of the current rate would be a discouragement of that. On the other hand, I don’t agree that 70% of all website sales are taken from UGC creators since that is just Roblox taking 2 commissions while cutting down on that fee isn’t going to cause any creator on the platform to suffer loss of income.
This isn’t a fair comparison imo. First of all, developers are already competing in a saturated market, so making public UGC look like a massive disadvantage to UGC creators over experience developers is unfair imo. Sure, the update will affect UGC creators, but it has already affected developers since the start of the platform, so assuming developers have the ‘luxury life’ isn’t so true to that.
Second of all, if your point was to state that massive changes make your life annoying as a UGC creator, developers are no different. Example
Yes, this update was reverted, but many others weren’t.
I personally think that the affiliate percentage is a bit too high for UGC. In comparison, 2D clothing and gamepasses give a 10% commission and you get the full amount when it is sold in the marketplace. Roblox has solved this problem years ago, they specifically designed UGC to screw over creators.
The problem with that, is that we have been asking for this for years. The marketplace is Roblox’s most profitable form of revenue and they aren’t going to give it away that easily. Switching the affiliate and creator cuts is the smallest ask we could make, and even that is unrealistic.