UGC Catalog is Now Live!

7droid · January 2, 2020, 7:44am

How is it going to wok with copyright?
Does it work the same way as audio does or is it going to work completely different?

DutchBloxxer · January 2, 2020, 1:17pm

When will all developers be able to publish assets in the UGC Catalog?

kacper532 · January 4, 2020, 10:01am

I think it’s impossible so all developers can publish stuff. In today’s world, you can claim that you are dev after writing print(“Haha I am dev”) or creating two bricks.

NOOBHQ100K · January 4, 2020, 10:23am

To make UGC products, 3D modeling is necessary, but those who have not yet learned 3D modeling can be a difficult one.

penguim2 · January 15, 2020, 11:14am

I think at this point you have to just accept that the whole idea of UGC was misleading and the “testing phase before releasing to the community” was a lie to get people to accept the current situation. Which is if you haven’t worked on any of their programs or have any connections with roblox then you aren’t getting in, 3D modeller or not.

Automationeer · January 15, 2020, 4:07pm

Roblox are working very slowly and carefully here. At RDC, the Senior Director for Avatar said ‘We don’t want UGC to end up like shirts and pants’, this philosophy is very clear why they are being (intentionally) slow.

penguim2 · January 15, 2020, 8:05pm

That doesn’t mean they can’t let in a few more talented modellers instead of youtubers. It just seems like an insult that people like @ZACHlNTOSH @JohnDrinkin and @GuestCapone (to name a few off the top of my head) still have not been granted access despite making a lot of UGC concepts arguably better than the stuff already being shipped as UGC.

Skyewatch_RBLX · January 15, 2020, 8:28pm

I feel that ROBLOX is attempting to take the UGC rollout slowly to prevent spamming of the UGC catalog, and, as has been stated, “prevent the shirts & pants catalog”. I’m in favor of keeping UGC tight and working out all the bugs with it before doing a wider rollout.

That said, I think it would be a good idea to start with a DevForum member rollout before letting the general public access it.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Mr_Awesome66 · January 19, 2020, 11:31pm

I want to make things for the UCG but there’s no application process anyways I got some models ready just in case some day they will let me apply but here they are:

Blue Beanie

Messenger Bag

P.S. I may have to make a couple of edits to the messenger bag

Ukendio · January 20, 2020, 12:33am

Roblox staff elects members themselves. Usually people with big names in the RTC or people that are close with certain staff members.

Automationeer · January 20, 2020, 7:28am

Yes, but Roblox’s vision is to allow all users to create their own user-generated content. Roblox wants to have no part to play in content.

Ukendio · January 20, 2020, 7:29am

Obviously, you’ve misinterpreted. Roblox doesn’t want UGC to become another botted epidemic. We don’t necessarily even have a thinkable solution for that yet. So unless that is resolved, UGC won’t be rolled out completely to the public.

Automationeer · January 20, 2020, 7:47am

I’m paraphrasing from RDC. Roblox’s avatar team see the current ‘invite only’ system as a temporary solution while they work on a permanent solution (which they have planned and are developing), when they will be able to open the floodgates (so to speak).

penguim2 · January 28, 2020, 9:40pm

copuni · January 28, 2020, 10:23pm

This is a tricky topic to debate. While it could be said that all the “market viable and profitable” ideas have already mostly been uses by the early adopters and members of the program, I do think it will push the precedent for public users to be more creative with their item creation.

If there is a demand for something (a gas mask for instance), the supply will soon follow. But if you suddenly have 8 gas masks in the catalog, the demand has likely already been met with the first few. This gas mask market share would have been met almost as soon as it were to go public. The issue would still be a matter of whoever entered the market first, whether UGC accessories be closed or public.

cloudwork · January 28, 2020, 10:25pm

What is going to happen to UGC hats is exactly what happened to shirts and pants— the more there are created, the the less unique they become. The less unique, the less demand. The less demand, the less value. The less value, and you end up with a price floor like clothing because they’ve become so cheap due to lack of demand caused by an oversupply of what was once considered “rare” hats.

Ask yourself this: when was the last time you spent a good sum of robux on a shirt or on a pair of pants? Take an average of your purchase history of clothing on Roblox, and see how much the average cost is. It would definitely be no more than ten robux for practically everyone.

When the Roblox staff created hats, they were very careful and intentional not to mess with supply and demand. They deliberately created few rare hats and an abundance of lesser-quality hats in order to create the categories of what we consider “unique” and “valuable” within the catalog. Rarity of hats are determined by the community through a whole host of factors— hat mesh, hat texture, hat subject matter, hat size, hat location, etc. Roblox took into consideration these factors when creating items so as to avoid an oversupply of rare hats or an undersupply of low-quality hats, for the sake of supply and demand. UGC hat creators are not trained to take these factors into consideration. So, the first group of people who can create hats are taking advantage of the fact that UGC is newly introduced in an already-sustained economy that has established categories of rarity, and has maintained a stable supply and demand of hats and types of hats. The “Abuser-Generated Hat” creators, as I call them, are taking advantage of the fact that they are “hat-sniping” new hats and raking in enormous cash, because hats like theirs have never been created before, making them extremely rare and valuable in the eyes of the community. It is a very similar process to name-sniping, only this is in terms of hat creation.

Right now, of course, UGC seems fantastic because we’re getting these unique hats unlike any other hats Roblox has created before, and we’re also getting them for quite the bargain. But you cannot have your cake and eat it too, nor can you enjoy the fruit of the tree if you cut it down. The uniqueness and value of hats was carefully constructed and thought through by Roblox, and they were the ones properly regulating it. Value and demand cannot be created without professional regulation of the economy. Labelling an item as “valuable” and “unique” is all relative to supply and demand. There is now an oversupply of hats that, if Roblox created, would be considered extremely rare, and to top it all off, the prices are extremely low, and so now you have high supply of rare hats and high demand— but that will not last forever. Demand will disappear over time. There will be no more concept or understanding of what is considered “unique.”

We need not look any further than the first and classic example of UGC items Roblox already lets us make and has allowed us to make for an entire decade— shirts and pants. Of course, when they were first released, can you imagine the demand for shirts and pants? The prices would have been much higher due to there being so few shirts and pants after their introduction. Compare the catalog from then to now, and see the results of what happens when you have oversupply. Ask yourself this: What is the “dominus” of the shirts? What is the “domino crown” of the pants? There is none, because there is no demand due to oversupply. This is exactly what will happen to UGC.

To quote the “Overproduction” Wikipedia article,

In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods

Enjoy UGC now while it is brand new, but don’t forget that the concept of a “valuable” hat will naturally and gradually dissipate. Whether Roblox’s intention is to shift the focus off of the catalog and focus more on being a ‘platform’ so as to focus less on fashion or not, I don’t know. But if Roblox is trying to maintain rarity of items so as to make the Catalog more valuable to the player, UGC is not going to go well with you.

Lesson learned from shirts and pants— don’t repeat the mistake.

RBX_Magicly · January 29, 2020, 7:19pm

I think it should stay “Invite only” Beacuse people will copy others like they did with Shirts/Pants.

There should be a way to apply as well and they get accepted to make Items

SolidState2 · January 30, 2020, 3:09am

Couldn’t Roblox allow EACH creator to have only 5 items on-sale at a time with cooldowns to toggling on-sale and off-sale (to prevent abuse) to solve this issue?

ADDITION: UGC creators that are active now should get their UGC permissions revoked in the future so they cannot continue to monopolize and rake more Robux from future sales. In fact, I feel like the ability to DevEx UGC-Earned robux at least for now, should be limited to 40-50% or even 30% for monopolies.

I am also afraid that people will be stealing models just to publish as UGC items. And not just from ROBLOX. If you google “Free models for Blender” or “Free models for Maya”, you will get a bunch of different results. Anyone can just download one of those models and claim it as their own and sell them to earn Robux. I am well aware that I have no evidence to back this up, but I am starting to have suspicions that the ‘hand-picked’ UGC creators are starting to steal or buy models off-site to sell in the UGC catalog.

shadowcalen1 · January 30, 2020, 3:46am

While I disagree with cutting the payout. I do like the idea of limiting supply. Here is my take on possible ways one might limit supply, and the “likely” side effects.

The current system incentive’s hat spam, try to get as many hats on the market in as many different “categories” as possible. This naturally is going to lead to the complete devaluing of the market.

Limiting how many unique items a seller can have on sale- This will vastly decrease the amount of spam, but will likely lead to a lack of new hats and a decent amount of discontinued as devs will likely just feature their best sellers.

Making hats limited (and caping it) - This will likely devalue the limited market, but it would keep prices from dropping too far. Would likely also result in hat spam.

Capping monthly sales (per dev) - Im guessing this would decrease hat devaluing, at the expense of developers being less interested in making hats but I am not rightly sure.

Charging to sell hats (you pay robux a flat fee for every hat you sell) - Puts a price floor on hats, decreases the profits from hats, but encourages developers to make higher quality hats.

Buying monthly “inventory space” for hats at a exponential rate - The idea is to put some degree of risk into the sale of hats. The more hats you want to sell (and hence the more profit you want to make) the riskier it is. Likely will result in developers focusing on high quality expensive hats, at a cost to availability and profitability.

Roblox is in a interesting position here. Anyone who has access to UGC basically will have access to free money until the market becomes over saturated, at which point UGC will be basically useless.

SolidState2 · January 30, 2020, 4:03am

While I agree with most of your ideas, but cutting the payout should only be either temporary (because there is barely any competition) or targeted toward the ‘monopoly’ UGC creators. The cut costs can be used to be spent on other things (e.g. better moderation) and ROBLOX is primarily a building and gaming platform, not a fashion show. I think UGC is a bit of a waste of money due to famous UGC creators being able to monopolize the market and reap massive amounts of Robux. In addition, the UGC catalog will also impact the limited economy as UGC creators continue to push the boundries between UGC items and Roblox-created ones. For example, the Leviathan crown was created probably to get more sales because it resembles another popular item, the Domino Crown. In that case, the item shouldn’t have just been made offsale, it should have been deleted & have the earned robux taken away from the creator. The users who bought the item should also get refunds.

I’m not saying that the UGC catalog should be removed but there should be some better regulations to prevent one creator taking the majority of the revenue and people copying popular hats by Roblox. This is to prevent both the UGC and the ROBLOX catalog from looking like the current shirts&pants catalog.

I also support your idea of making it cost Robux to upload hats, it will discourage possible “trolls” from uploading questionable/NSFW hats if UGC is expanded to more creators in the future.