Transparency and RDC: DevRel needs to do better

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#1

Before going into this, please understand the human behind this. I deeply respect the work DevRel does for us and I hope it to be a point of making things better for everyone and not an attack on any person or team.

This is likely to be a popular topic so for my sake; please be kind, respectful, and on topic.

As a Roblox developer in Europe, it is currently too hard to make reasonable plans for RDC. It’s less than two months away and the last we publicly heard about RDC was in April. This does not give time for all the international developers who need to fly in for RDC.

There are no doubt some massive devs who are unable to cross now because of how close it is, I’m aware of those in Indonesia who just can’t travel now, it’s too late.

I understand the inherent problems with the yearly planning an event like RDC and that you don’t want to disappoint by saying something and then being forced to delay, but we’re at the stage where your lack of word is causing massive problems for your developers. Most of who are university students and are debating between this and freshers week at college/university because of the time you picked.

At this stage DevRel needs to be honest with what’s going on now and in the future, when all you have is rumours you’ve created a worse problem than being honest with the community.

Some of your core values are “Respect the community” and “take the long view”, this kind of silence is not respectful and harms developers who see the planning as a joke and they just don’t bother coming back, or add it to the list for all the reasons they choose not to develop here again.

In the immediate, DevRel needs to be honest with what’s going on with this RDC.

In the longer term, create an incident report which looks at this problem and the historic problem, and try to resolve it. I hope you find some great new hires with the two new roles, but in the immediate it needs some disclosure and some transparency.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because it allows me to keep developing and not worry about RDC. Maybe I got my tickets 3 months ahead, flights and hotels all booked. I just get back to do what we all want to do, be developers. Thanks all for reading this.

139 Likes
#5

Personally, I am really disappointed in DevRel. Historically, information of RDC and tickets were out 3-4 months ahead of RDC. This year, we are within 2 months of the planned date of RDC during a time when airline tickets are growing fast in price, especially internationally, and options are decreasing. It also happens to be when a lot of schools are in session. If you are a student or are international, RDC is really hard to justify this year. I am in the United States and graduated with a full-time job - an ideal condition - and RDC is still hard for me to justify.

We haven’t been told the venue, the hotel, or anything about the schedule for RDC. Everything I have heard since April about RDC has been rumors, and a bunch of them have been disproven. The only things on my timeline on Twitter for the past month has been speculation. I have even joined in the speculations by predicting RDC in-person isn’t happening and will be online only. In the past, if I took to Twitter, someone in DevRel would calm me down and prove that things aren’t as bad as I am predicting. That didn’t happen this time. With the silence from DevRel, what do they expect us to think if all we can do is speculate, and our speculation is very negative?

Beyond RDC, DevRel has been disappointing for me with other programs, NDA and non-NDA. Getting responses from DevRel in the programs has been slow to non-existent. I’ve stopped my plugin development and VR development feedback entirely because of this. Why should I spend the time to write a feedback post for one of these programs if it won’t even get acknowledged?

If there has been anything that has been bugging me for the past few years, it is a simple question that I have for DevRel: Why should I continue with Roblox? I have the primary third-party implementation for VR on Roblox, and my questions to certain staff members through DevRel were never answered. Why should I continue to maintain that if Roblox won’t provide me the tools for it to be sustainable? Why should I shoot for the moon with my projects if they end up being for nothing? Why should I spend >$1,000 for an RDC that I know nothing about? Why should I take your advice and apply for Roblox jobs and opportunities again if you guys have delivered me 9 rejections with only 1 containing any bit of feedback? My time is finite. Why should I be giving it up to Roblox to build up the Roblox “metaverse”?

63 Likes
#7

I’ve always wanted to do RDC in person. This year felt like the perfect opportunity because of the exciting changes (in-person Bloxys!) and the fact that I finished college (high school) in the UK. I have been planning the trip for over a year, but Roblox’s total lack of communication has jeopardised my plans completely.

Since April, we’ve had absolutely no word about location, hotels, or invites. This lack of communication has made it impossible for me to safely purchase plane and hotel tickets without the risk of being unable to go. Heck, we don’t even know where the venue is to purchase hotel tickets anyway!

I start university here in the UK exactly one week after RDC weekend. I understood why the event was delayed until mid-September last year, but again? Surely Roblox understands that this new date is inconvenient at best for the majority of people who RDC targets? It was difficult for me to justify flying out of the US for this event when we first got the save the date, but the situation now makes it near impossible.

I understand that the people running and planning this event are human, and it is stressful. I get that. But, why can’t basic things like venue or hotels (is one going to be provided by Roblox this year?) be communicated? Basic information like this would make everybody’s life easier in planning for this event.

All-in-all, I wish everybody that is going in person a fantastic time. Hopefully, Roblox will do a better job next year, and maybe I’ll see you there. :slightly_smiling_face:

39 Likes
#8

I’d like to throw my full weight behind this post as a two-time RDC gamejam award winner. To say that this has been handled poorly is an understatement, and it feels like the event organisers here have completely dropped the ball with regards to timeliness and have violated their social contract with the community to be responsible.

It is completely unacceptable for a top-performing, multi-billion company with a large employed base and global developer community to organise an event so sloppily that it puts unnecessary monetary and geographic restrictions on attendees.

40 Likes
#9

Not only are airline prices reaching crazy high prices, I’m sure a lot of people, like myself, have expired passports and haven’t renewed because of covid. It takes 6 or more weeks to get a new passport, and I didn’t want to renew my passport if I wasn’t invited, as it’d be a year of wasted passport. My on going fear is that RDC will be small this year (a entire day less than previous years) and based on recent Roblox changes, imagine it may not be a thing next year

10 Likes
#10

I never went to RDC 2021 since it was during a university semester, but I recall RDC 2020 was super packed schedule-wise. Between the Gamejam, icebreakers, keynotes, Q&A, presentations, etc., I found myself going from one thing to the next all day long. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not sure how they’ll fit all of this in a two-day event. Considering they want to merge the Bloxy Awards. I’m guessing the plan is to terminate Game Jam, which has always been the highlight of RDC.

The Roblox developer community is very fond of RDC. It’s sad to see it go down the same path as star creators and Roblox toys. For many of us, it was always the highlight of the year. One of the things that inspired me to develop was watching the RDC Gamejam presentations back in 2018 and 2019. I loved everything about them. The music, the friendly atmosphere, and talented developers. It’s unfortunate that the younger developer community may not experience the same sense of inspiration that I had.

10 Likes
#12

Just my 2c but you should always have a valid passport in case of emergencies so you can quickly fly and identify yourself abroad as needed. I checked and most countries the validity is at 10 years, so that should not be dissuading you from always having a valid passport: Passport validity - Wikipedia

14 Likes
#13

Before I divulge into the things I think could be improved, I do want to acknowledge the effort that DevRel have put in behind the scenes, even though the work hasn’t necessarily been seen, I wouldn’t be surprised (or I’d hope) that alot of work has been put into making this event happen this far, so I don’t want make a post or reply that comes off as trampling on that work or coming off ungrateful.

That aside, it is quite a large issue that information about the venue, and the lack of communication in main channels (main channels being DevRel twitter or the DevForums) about RDC has been limited to a thread or so that was made in April. (3 months ago). Although this isn’t going to dramatically affect me personally (I’ve been waiting to go to in-person RDC for nearly 3 years due to covid lol), what is going to have a huge effect on my experience is the amount of planning and short-term notice I have to organise flights, accommodation and other living costs while I’m in the country. (and this is something that other travelling developers who are staying longer than the duration of RDC will also have to face). The closer it gets to the event date, the more unlikely and more expensive it’ll be for some international developers to even get to the event in the first place.

What doesn’t help this lack of information is that the culture of RDC involves alot of developers getting anxious about getting invited in the first place. So as the clock ticks further along and we get closer to the final event, with very few updates, you tend to get a whole bunch of developers who get stressed out because they don’t know if they’re going, or even if the event is happening. Infact, this is something that spread out of control over twitter last week, and luckily a DevRel staff member actually extinguished the situation before it got too big. It’d be wrong to ignore though that speculation over the events wouldn’t catch on as much/ become that big of an issue if there was more communication to start with.

This is obviously not even considering the impact that COVID will have on developers travelling across the world, and although it is out of Roblox’s control whether people can or can’t go, it’s definitely helpful to have this information in advance, so developers who are able to go in certain circumstances can adjust accordingly.

Again, I don’t want to undermine the work behind the scenes. I know DevRel are working pretty hard on the event and I want to acknowledge that. I hope to receive more information soon. Hopefully this thread will not go unnoticed.

10 Likes
#14

I had a passport from 2008-2018, and then obvs after that covid hit. I have no reason to fly anywhere in the world. my whole family lives in 1 place. It’s just a waste of money imo to have one without the intention of actually going somewhere. If I were to renew my passport when it expired, 4-5 years of it would have been wasted as I haven’t travelled since 2018. Not everyone can afford to just throw money into something that they aren’t gonna use for 5 years. Most countries also require you to have proof of travel before acquiring a passport.

4 Likes
#15

It’s just incredibly unprofessional. It’s another example of developers on the platform not being treated as they should. We are the ones driving revenue on Roblox and it constantly feels like we’re being treated like children.

Incredibly disappointing, and another example of Roblox acting like absolute amateurs compared to their competitors. I’d be all for putting together an open letter voicing concerns from the developer community about the general lack of transparency and consultation Roblox provides us.

I know we’re remaining civil here towards the devrel team, but we absolutely do not appreciate the way you are treating your best asset, us. Do better.

9 Likes
#16

Hey @railworks2, thanks for always being a strong voice for the community. We’re evolving the vision for RDC this year and it took us a little longer than we’d hoped to get everything finalized and ready to share with everyone.

I just checked with the team and confirmed that we are planning to send out invitations next week! They’ll be sent in waves, so hang in there for a few days if you see invitations go out but weren’t part of the first wave or two. The email and event site should include all the information you need to plan to attend this year’s RDC. I also escalated everyone’s feedback here around timing and will push for us to be more timely and transparent going forward.

Thank you again and I hope to see you all at RDC!

73 Likes
#17

Hi @Kairomatic! Are there any updates on improving transparency with this? There are still waves of in-person invites going out, and these waves are not being communicated! Furthermore, people are getting invites less than a month before the conference. How are folks supposed to attend with less than a month of notice? Getting plane tickets, booking hotels, and all of the other logistics are borderline impossible with such a short timeframe.

12 Likes
#18

I understood Kairomatic’s post as that they would look into improving communication for RDC for next time around. It’s probably hard or infeasible to change anything about the roll-out of the current conference, there’s a lot of folks and material involved, so it’s not reasonable to expect major changes here at this point.

Also, I’m pretty happy they’re sending out late invite waves, because some people I know forgot to submit the RDC application survey earlier on and wouldn’t have gotten an invite at all otherwise! It’d be good if they can advertise this link more clearly in the future though.

5 Likes
#19

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