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#526

First of all no idea why I got flagged, obviously not your fault but I definitely didn’t say anything that deserved that xD

Anywho, I feel like you agreed with some, if not most of what I said, in my post in your own. We both agree that UGC needs restrictions to succeed (as I’ll explain soon). The only place we seem to differ is that you think limited items should crash and burn in favor of UGC (if I’m wrong about this sorry, but that’s the vibe I’m getting so heavily and if it’s not true then not sure why we are arguing here at all).
Such a view, regardless of if that is yours or not (because it is some peoples’), is utterly unfair to all of us who own limiteds, and that’s the problem here (to me).
I’ll quickly break it down again:

I think we can agree the main thing we have to be worried about with UGC is it being too unrestrictive, right? There’s no debate that if anyone can upload and don’t have strict standards, you will have 1000s of black fedoras priced at 10 robux because they all want to compete for sales. Again, look at the clothing catalog… that’s what happens when you can upload unlimited virtual assets with no regulation because unlike real life, there’s nothing called a price of production (other than that upload fee lol).

Sure that’s all find and dandy to the consumer I guess (yay everyone gets their 10 robux dominus), but it’s not going to encourage quality uploads, people to spend lots of money on robux (since they can get everything they want for like 100), or a market of different valued items (since everything will be on the price floor like shirts/pants). It’s all a matter of how ROBLOX wants to treat its economy. Do they want exclusivity or not? I say don’t fix what’s not broken, ROBLOX has created a very cool virtual economy where items (though virtual) seem to have some significance to them. Unregulated UGC kills this significance, and I just don’t see how anyone is going to make money (ROBLOX or the creators) if this happens. I rather have quality > quantity, originality > cash grabs.
From what I can tell, and what ROBLOX has said already, they DON’T want this to happen, which is great; BUT it clearly already is happening with some of the items that have been released and it has already had an effect on the pricing of some related limiteds (which is also a fact if you literally check their price decline.)

I feel like we already agree on this point, so (correct me if I’m wrong) but you seem to differ in the thought that it just shouldn’t matter if someone makes an item that looks like a limited. You think good, let it be a free market. I mean sure ROBLOX can allow people to go this route, and make whatever they want… I just don’t see anything positive to come from it. (Many) People are greedy, it’s just what happens in capitalism. People are going to try and make knock off items of things that are already successful if it’s unregulated, because that’s what people do. The ROBLOX market can’t be compared to real life because unlike real life where the difference between real gucci and fake gucci is material and brand, on ROBLOX there’s no supply costs like I said. If someone makes a cheaper domino crown, the originals are going to suffer in demand (and thus lose value)… there are plenty of case studies for this so no room for opinions.

So I’ll get to the point of my argument since I feel like I’m straying: ROBLOX set up a system of original items where they tried their best to make each one exclusive and unique. This has been going for years, and people have spent years and lots of money collecting them. It’s totally unfair to take that away from people. Yeah, it CAN happen if that’s what ROBLOX wants, it’s their call (I think of ROBLOX like the government in that sense lol), but it’s still unfair to the collectors obviously because it devaules everything they did.
It’s unfair to me, and anyone else that spent that time trying to get let’s say a Dominus Frigidus (spent 1000s of hours) and then some kid makes a knockoff in 2 hours and destroys the significance of it.
If I knew that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have wasted my time (nor would anyone else). These items currently have value even if you don’t see it, I sold some of mine which gave me several million robux to launch a dev studio. I took time to earn those items, and thus that robux, so it’s not really cool to destroy that. I know you see my as an elitist, but this will hurt everyone just on smaller scales.
I just think you’re seeing this from the view of someone who never spent time trying to earn these things. It’s just a really odd unique market ROBLOX has setup and this threatens it greatly.
Going off that, do you agree with these points?

Personally, I think UGC will succeed the best if:
-the people who can make items are severely limited in number, and only the highest quality can be accepted
-The amount of items that can be released stay very regulated
-The items cannot copy other peoples items or current items that have high value (since that’s basically manipulating the market)
-The prices set on the items are well thought out and approved

I think UGC will fail if:
-anyone can make items
-anyone can make any items
-anyone can set any price

The question is, how do we draw the line between these two sides. What can be accepted and what cannot? That is the difficult part, and I think it will take a lot of effort and lots of testing. I do think we should be vocal if someone is doing something that’s pushing the line, which is how we ended up with the controversial WhoToTrus case (WHICH I think is where are argument stems from, where you think what he did is fine and I have major issue with it).

Specifically: In the WhoToTrus case, I said when he made that fedora and Elegant Bowler he admitted he looked for a gap in the market. I just think this is a negative way to treat the program right now. He was given the chance to be one of the first uploaders and express his creativity, but instead capitalized off the success of two memorable hats instead. There’s no point arguing “but it’s different”, because yeah it is slightly, but he made that hat FULLY intending to profit from the fact that people like the CF that costs 60K and knows he will make a ton from pricing it at 1K or whatever. If what he did is OK, do you think making a dominus for 1K is fine as well? What about if someone makes a dominus for 500 now, virtually the same?
WhoToTrus changed his tone with his recent uploads, they have been more creative and didn’t cause dispute with well known items. I think UGC should be fine if it’s kept pretty strict like it is, and that’s my take on it.
Not sure where we still disagree so you can enlighten me, but I just don’t want to see what happened to CF happen to every single item on ROBLOX, because if we aren’t careful it certainly will. This is obviously a really complex argument that we can write essays about, but we are talking about the future of ROBLOX and something that matters a lot more than people think.

Thoughts?

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#527

I think so too that we probably see the same in some regards though in others, not so much. Apologies if I may have come off as slightly passive aggressive in my reply. Your reply has helped me with seeing the trading side of things though and the reply is greatly appreciated.

Broken down, here are some of my initial complaints which flared me up for replying here:

  • Shallow view of potential problems with UGC. There are in fact some replies within this thread and users over Twitter who have expressed nothing but distaste towards UGC solely because of the impact they have on Limiteds.

    • A common argument is UGC affecting Limited sales. There have been a lot of complaints about UGC affecting Limited sales but I wouldn’t say that’s the case. Stock markets are constantly fluctuating and Roblox’s Limited market is no different.

    • Because of UGC, some Limited owners feel that they may lose Robux due to an alternative being available, thus the rush to sell to make as much Robux as they can before its selling price drops low. This drop would not be the fault of UGC then and saying so would just be an excuse to witch hunt the program.

  • Aggressiveness towards current content creators. I do agree that there needs to be an acceptable ground for uploads to prevent any kind of misuse of the program, but there needs to be an understanding that this is a trial period. These creators exist, as someone mentioned in a reply earlier, to prevent future problems. I find it unfair to be criticising the program about similar hats and the like when that problem could be far worse in the future.

    • Hat similarities and uploads of an existing category are one of the more major complaints throughout the thread. However, there is also the fact that these creators have to actually spend time to make hats to be able to publish them. To me, arguments with little basis come off as disregarding the effort staff and creators are putting forth to make the program successful. The current content creators exist to simulate what UGC will be like during public roll out and they get a head start.

These are essentially the two points I want to drive home and want to call for the thread to chill out a little, since it’s been dragged around in many different circles. I mean, that’s pretty much how it began at first: somewhat of an aggressive view to trading but generally calling for relaxation. From there, people replied and it just went from there.

I don’t want my replies to come off as “trading is irrelevant and all of your opinions are bad just because you trade so stop posting”. I want to address the debacle currently going on regarding UGC complaints and their supposed effect on Limiteds. It’s also worth nothing that realistically, it’s actually the owners of the hats who control that market and thus whatever effects it has is on them for the most part.

UGC is restrictive yet unrestrictive but I find that to be okay. There needs to be a start point for Roblox to go with and a place to work up from. It so happens that at the time, there was just enough leeway for another black fedora to be made given that one exists (three or more, precisely). Obviously there will be issues when it starts coming down to thousands of them when we start bordering more serious issues such as theft, Intellectual Property infringements and the like. This one fedora doesn’t deserve that same argument though.

Is this where the whole precedent thing comes from though? I’d understand it if it were that way, but then my response to that is that UGC is still in trialling and the policies for what’s acceptable for the catalog are still ever-changing, so it doesn’t make much sense early in to say that it is causing a set precedent. It could cause one and that’s valid feedback to provide for this thread, such as the standing rules around uploading or why these uploads cause a disturbance. With this being said, there is something that is majorly overlooked when attempting to argue similar hats and the like. OP addressed this concern over and the thread was even locked for a long time so people would read before posting. Take a look:

Staff are very much aware that a reupload/copying/similarity/etc precedent exist, but it’s a difficult problem to solve. That’s why I don’t think it’s particularly fair to push the instance so much. When UGC faces public roll out, scalability is very important to accommodate for the potential thousands of content creators ready to publish. Side note: I’d personally prefer if UGC stayed closed access permanently. It’d still be UGC but vetted.

As for the current content which supposedly looks similar, that’s a different story. Like I mentioned above, Downtown Denizen Fedora didn’t actually cause any price drops, WhoToTrus just uploaded a black fedora. What really happened is the stock owners worried that their items would be devalued and thus sold it to hold onto their money. See where I’m coming from? UGC doesn’t necessarily affect trade. That’s one foundation for me when I reply to Limiteds; perhaps I didn’t make that clear early on.

I concede my point regarding trading and limiteds and their values. To me though, I see a lot of statistics on Limiteds as highly subjective. What’s valuable is the ability to sell those Limiteds and earn Robux which you can put towards things you’d like to buy or use that to earn Robux which actually has monetary value (discussion available in my previous reply around the top). So from the viewpoint of a developer and earning Robux, I’m able to yield to the ability to salvage Robux for Limiteds. Ultimately though that’s dependent on the market. UGC certainly isn’t a chief factor to stock market drops, hardly one at all. That’s up to who owns stocks in an item.

Personally, yes, my view on items is that you shouldn’t care if an item looks like another one. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it and move on. In Roblox today where a lot of games use customisable characters and your aesthetics hold up to your profile and games that don’t force a character style or allow for customisation, then yeah you can show off your cool hats or whatever. I just don’t find the reason behind wanting to go after hats for being similar or of the same category. Better example to use for an argument: the antlers on-sale that look vastly different from the existing ones. They were recently taken down and deleted, but using the model is fine enough to compare.

image

image

The first set do exist and various retextures of them do, so hooray for the people who want antlers. But there will always be that twinge of difference for the more iconic mesh which bends outward of your head and is skinnier without rounded corners. Don’t have enough to buy those? Wait them out with a cheaper and more affordable set. If you prefer to wait or don’t like those, don’t buy them.

The points around here start to differ from my original frustrations and I can agree with a lot of what you raised. There isn’t really a problem in similar hats and it’s bound to happen, but it’s completely valid to condemn subsections of similarities that could potentially spin up during UGC’s span (which, to my knowledge, are accounted for). Retextures, reuploads (theft actually), exploiting loopholes to earn quickly and generally deceptive practices that don’t belong up to low quality content. That’s not okay.

I’m very fency when it comes to Limited collectors and how UGC will affect them. Like, I can see that your collection paid off in how you were able to salvage some of those to start some activities and that’s totally okay. For those who are only interested in the trading though, they need to understand that stocks fluctuate even without the influence of UGC and self-delusions and not everything will be rosy when it comes to UGC. Who knows, someone may create a hat that looks far cooler than a Dominus and not sell it for a high price (no one will do that, that’s an easy money machine waiting, I’m speaking hypothetically) or not make it Limited should we get the ability to create them. I fully understand from the Robux gaining side of things though and have nothing to retort with. I rest this case due to the reply below. Not too sure what I was trying to counter here, much less what I was talking about.

Anyway, from here I’m probably just going to hop off. Pretty sure I lost track of what I’m trying to convey at this point too. All I came here to do really was to tell people to relax some with the arguments and whatnot. I didn’t really intend to spend a long time discussing UGC and there are story-length arguments you can write for certain points. I just care that the program sees success and that legitimate concerns are addressed first. Limiteds are a highly subjective and touchy topic and I don’t want to see content creators feeling unwelcomed or insulted because of the “disruption” that it’s supposedly caused traders.

Open to hearing back if there’s anything extra to share.

Edit: A ton of revisions. A lot was culled from my post. Also, nice response below.

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#528

I feel like I jumped around too much in my previous response so apologies for that too.
I can resonate with most of your recent post and I agree that some results of UGC will just be inevitable and must be accepted if we want the program to flourish, and other regulations need to happen if we want to flourish as well.

I’ll just string together my final thoughts on the whole UGC system for anyone who cares, mostly because I just really care about its future in a positive way:

there’s no way everyone is going to agree on the rules of UGC because it will change one of the most fundamental aspects of ROBLOX that has existed since 2007. That is, an economy with an exclusive item market.
I think the exclusivity is completely a positive for the platform, as it it encourages quality items and people to spend more money on ROBUX than they would if everything was on the price floor. Others will disagree, but from a business point of view it makes sense to be somewhat restrictive than not at all for ROBLOX. The system being restrictive makes sense for the creators themselves too, since they want the assurance that their item that they spent a lot of time making will sell well because it is unique and not threatened by copies.

If ROBLOX was setup differently in 2007 than this argument wouldn’t be so divided, because literally nothing as we know it (regarding items) would exist.
Yet, this is how it has been since 2007 and big changes are coming. ROBLOX can take many paths in the way they lay the rules for UGC, but every path taken will have a totally different impact (wether good or bad) which is why I believe they needs to proceed with caution and be careful about precedents that are set.

For instance, regardless of if people think limiteds have value right now or not, as one of the largest holders of them on the site I can tell you they certainly do (ROBUX > ads, ROBUX > fund creations, limiteds have a community following which allows content creation (like my youtube channel), they inspire people to spend more $ on ROBUX which is good for ROBLOX’s business, and exclusivity of items is good for UGC creators and their quality of uploads) so clearly they are more significant than people think. The demand of these items is what gives them their value, nothing more (thus why a 10k stock CF actually has more value than items with under 100 in existence).

These changes matter to people, especially for the people who spent time or money obtaining an item (heck even people who now are making UGC items and expect that their work will remain protected) so they should not be made lightly. I think there should be a respect for the time, money, and effort people have put forth for their collections and even the current unique UGC items that were created.
I truly hope that SOME DECENT restrictions remain intact, because if you were me you’d be sitting here considering if you should hold your items or sell every last one to a poor fool before the market collapses. It’s the uncertainty that kills us all here, and I just think ROBLOX shouldn’t make any decisions that are too radical.
At the end of the day, no matter what you, I, or some other dude thinks is probably not going to make a difference in ROBLOX’s decision, but if I gave some people a new perspective they didn’t consider than I’m glad I took the time to write this.
My best wishes go out to the people in charge of the UGC system (and the current creators) and if anyone ever needs advice or opinions I would love to give it since I’m so passionate about this game and the economy it created. I think it’s incredibly cool and unique, and literally item trading was a major part of my childhood which is why I feel so deeply about this all. I really hope to see trading and item uniqueness persist into the future and that ROBLOX makes the best calls to allow UGC to succeed. That’s all folks !

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#531

I’m sure only 3D modellers can upload to the UGC Catalog but it will take training and a few applications.

As far as I know

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#534

I agree, UGC will help the community and others join more. I feel as UGC helps others come to a goal of being an experienced developer to become a part of the UGC. So I agree.

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#535

I noticed that lately no one has been commenting on the subject of UGC items can now be made for back, at first when UGC released the use of UGC was limited to hats only, but now creators can create back items! and that’s excellent, why? Community item creators can now make items that the community has always wanted! and apparently some changes have been made to the item sales system, for example in the past the items were 100 to 5,000 robux now there are items priced at 15 robux! And this is very good! Now players will buy cheaper items which depending on the item with a better quality!

#536

This is part of the reason that the UGC catalog creator program is currently small and hard to get into - we have learned from shirts and pants and we are being very careful and thoughtful about these new UGC asset types. Asset copying between our creators (and Roblox) is protected against in the program policy.*

Okay, random question, are you forgetting that this mistake with “shirts and pants” has been on Roblox for awhile now? Are you gonna focus solely on UGC hats and stuff from now on, or will the problems with the catalog under the Clothing tab never be fixed?

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#537

They’re currently working on “debotting” the catalog.
Source: They mentioned it at the RDC.

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#539

Is there currently any way to apply for UGC access? I have some cools ideas and modeling skills but I have not heard of any way to become a part of UGC yet.

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#540

We will be adding more developers in small waves throughout the rest of 2019 and 2020. For the initial group, we chose developers who we have worked with in the past who also have experience with 3D modeling. The criteria for future developers given access is an ongoing discussion.*

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#543

While this is not in place yet. This would be a good idea. To help reduce the issue with bad items. Having to do applications just like the live op event would be great!

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#544

As the feature rolls out more, and more users are added to UGC access, will rules and limits be placed on item descriptions, outside of the obvious (such as no profanity, inappropriate content, etc)? For example, will ROBLOX lean more towards a degree of professionalism, or will users have full control over the description of their items?

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#545

As long as it’s nothing rule-breaking…i’m pretty sure UGC developers have full control over the hats and the descriptions they make.

If the current UGC devs can get away with advertising clothing and making fun of Roblox a little ( i.e…Making hats that show how bad the filter is or how annoying clickbait games are ) then they possibly wont make things strict…although it depends on what happens in the future.

Tighter rules can also happen if some newer UGC designers begin advertising entire groups or start adding fake tags to their descriptions.

It’s just way too early to tell right now, considering both options are likely.

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#548

I have one more question concerning rules/restrictions, and it concerns items. Are UGC creators allowed to create their own unique items related to already existing item lines, such as ROBLOX’s Lore Groups (Redcliff, Korblox, Splintered Sky, Seventh Sanctum, Astral Isle, etc.).

Say a user wanted to create a Redcliff Waist Accessory, using the colours and Redcliff symbol, but not reuse an existing asset (such as weapon mesh or design), would that be allowed?

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#549

It would be my dream to make UGC for Roblox… can’t wait for a public application. :slight_smile:

I wonder though, what sort of rev share agrement to people who make UGC catalog items have?
Do you think it’s a 30% marketplace fee like shirts and pants?

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#550

I always had this question at the back of my head, can people actually design their own body bundles, faces and put them on sale in the catalog? I mean, it hasn’t came out yet but there is a possibility.
However, if it does come out, what is the point for an Rthro contest then? Can people actually create some animal bundles like a tiny puppy? What if a person decides to put some appropriate “realistic” human body part to an already existing body bundle? Like the 3.0 woman, except that they modified the hands to have some fingernails and giving the head a pair of ears? When you create a face that has some color in it, is it considered a limited because most limited faces have some color in them?
Feel free to leave your thoughts!

1 Like
#551

I think that bundles wouldn’t become apart of the UGC, but only for reasons that can probably be said with UGC in general. “What if something bad happens?” is one of the biggest questions but since there is testing before hat uploads, I don’t see much problem with bundles. Yet again, bundles would seem a bit extreme at this point in UGC. ROBLOX might not want that anyways.

Faces, on the other hand, might become apart of UGC in the future. If so, there will be need for a lot of moderation on them though. Bad face decals are very very likely to come out of that.

But in general, at one point in the future I’m sure all parts of the catalog can have user creations (not including Limited Items). Even Avatar Animations should be up on the table.

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#552

I actually think you’re right, having bundles with the UGC seems a bit too extreme.
Other than that, I’m genuinely hoping sooo much that faces could be apart of UGC. If we can make a face for our own, not putting it on sale at all, I think that it would make us more unique and recognizable in games.

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#553

I would love to see faces come to UGC. They should be pretty easy to make too. And even though there wouldn’t be much use for it, I would love to see heads as well. Besides Rthro bundle heads, there is basically no selection.

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#555

Would be amazing if we could get an official response on this

1 Like