I’ll go ahead and leave an example of my opinion. For the past few years i’ve been scripting, I was working my way towards affording a Classic Fedora. When I bought one, it felt amazing and like I completed one of my goals. If this new system destroys the rarity and values of expensive items such as the Classic Fedora, it won’t feel as much of a special achievement to own items like these.
(Sadly, 4 months ago the Classic Fedora was traded off my account through a Roblox+ breach. RIP 4 years of work )
While it’s probably true that as a trader it’s upsetting to have a hat that previously had value now have less value, I think the benefit to the average user outweighs the cost to traders and owners of the Classic Fedora. I would much rather people have access to an affordable matte black fedora than not, especially since it’s such a generic idea.
They’re only losing money if they treat that hat as a speculative asset, which is an unintended facet of how Roblox limited’s have been used over the years. The value of your investment may rise and fall, and you are not guaranteed to receive the entirety of your investment back. Roblox has no fiduciary duty to people simply for owning a limited item in the catalog. You haven’t lost anything because you have the hat you paid for.
Except that this does indeed set a dangerous precedent. A UGC creator blatantly copied the design of one of the most recognizable and iconic collectible items on Roblox. With a fraction of the pricing, this user is monopolizing the revenue, since UGC creator rules prevent other UGC creators from making a similar hat (aka competition). Since this one creator has made a CF clone for a fraction of the cost, they are the sole beneficiary of this new item.
While I share the view of benefit to the many vs. benefit to the few, which in this case would be average user vs. trader, I don’t think potentially threatening millions of robux in wealth that the thousands of traders have accumulated over the last decade is an unavoidable outcome. You can have UGC freedom while respecting the legacy that collectibles have developed. It just requires rules and guidelines on authorized UGC content. Classic Fedora for example has taken a 10k drop in RAP. Some may argue that drops like that are consequences of owning collectibles which are susceptible to market trends, but this is direct interference on market trends. Many successful traders make their wealth by predicting market trends. This new variable throws unpredictability into the mix, which threatens traders.
During the RDC Avatar conference (video listed here), the speaker states that they plan to completely eliminate the creation of accessories from ROBLOX themselves, and give full responsibility to the users, similar to how shirts and pants work. So, I’d say you do treat UGC catalog items as normal catalog items.
Just because it’s unintended, doesn’t mean it should be dismissed. It’s true the trading economy evolved in unexpected ways, but that shouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. As I said in my response to Dekkonot, one aspect of successful trading is predicting market trends. Allowing UGC creators to blatantly clone iconic collectibles threatens market stability and trends.
You argue that we haven’t lost anything because we still have the hat we paid for, but that’s simply untrue. There are unique values associated with collectibles, well-known by most active members of the trading community. Values are determined by the demand (desirability) of an item, its RAP, and a few other minor factors. Values are central to modern-day trading.
Collectibles have inherent worth, you can think of it as similar to stock. What we pay for a collectible contributes to what the collectible is worth. You can’t simply write-off the market prices of items as irrelevant simply because “we paid a price and received an item”. A drop in an item’s RAP, caused by a UGC clone of said item, hurts traders because their items worth goes down. Many traders pursue items not for their aesthetic, but for their trading value, the worth of the item in the eyes of the rest of the trading community. It’s true that traders deal with market trends which affect the value of our items but UGC clones of collectibles are a direct interference with the market. It’s an avoidable variable, solved simply by enforced rules on copied content.
But what does the competition have to do with copying existing items? If one person copies an existing item, and then another person copies him, that just added to clones to the catalog. It’s not like people competing to be the best at cloning others work is good.
With all due respect, it’s a generic black fedora. Fedoras are some of the most common hats in the world, and they are most commonly black. You can’t go around saying something is a copy because it meets two criteria that are “the type of hat” and “color” when the color in question is so common.
Were it a more specific looking hat, I would agree with you. But as it stands this is just a black fedora. It looking like another black fedora is a good thing, obviously, since it means they both look like fedoras. Whether it was intentionally undercutting the price of the CF or not, it’s such a generic looking hat that there’s no ground to stand on. I would rather people have a generic black fedora to wear that’s reasonably priced than have the only matte black fedora (again, the color of most fedoras irl) be unobtainably expensive for most people. That’s a point I said before but I think it bears repeating.
As for the loss in RAP value, that’s unfortunate. Losing R$10,000 in value isn’t fun on any day. It’s probably the only one of a handful of times it will happen with UGC hats and accessories though. Like I keep saying, the Classic was a casualty of being very boring and commonly colored. There’s not many limiteds like that since Roblox very quickly learned to make them less generic. Even other solid colored fedoras aren’t quite “literally just a black fedora” so it would be harder to justify making a hat that looks similar.
As an aside, I would appreciate it if you didn’t misquote me like you have in this response. The second quote is not actually what I said and has an additional sentence tacked onto it.
The misquote wasn’t intentional, my apologies. That sentence was part of my response, which got incorrectly formatted into the quote. Thank you for pointing it out, I have since removed it.
I see your point about the generic-blandness of Classic Fedora but I still think this sets a dangerous precedent for UGC creators to continue to push boundaries of what is permitted.
Classic Fedora has what? ~29,000 sales. And of those, maybe 1/5th of those are still on active accounts. That’s 5,800 copies. A 5,000 RAP loss caused by Downtown Denizen is a collective 29,000,000 RAP loss by all the owners as a whole. That’s a significant number, all things considered.
It’s not an insignificant amount of Robux but long-term it’ll probably not be much more than a blip. I suspect what’s happened is we’re seeing how much the RAP of CF was inflated by people who just wanted how it looks, and once they’re all gone people who want it just to have it as a collectible will take their place so the price will bounce back up.
This could mark a precedent, but like I said I don’t think there’s many hats where someone could get away with this, so I don’t think it will. There could be some concern with people uploading various colored fedoras and top hats since they’re generic, but I doubt they would get away with making things like banded top hats or black and white fedoras. Those are a bit too close to other existing hats to be coincidental and aren’t just what you get when you google search a specific hat style. The only real worry I have is if people start pushing towards more specific hats like sparkle time fedoras or properly unique things like them, which we’ve been assured by Roblox won’t happen. They have a vested interest in making sure their economy doesn’t crash, so I expect them to regulate it.
I’ve heard a lot about this, and overall at my position I’m pleased with this update. But I have concerns.
1: Tax
I heard from people in the community of ugc creators that there is a heavy tax (70%?). You said it would change over time, and it should. I think the tax should be 40% or 30%.
2: Process
Will the process be only for developers and creators, or can the average Joe upload to the ugc catalog?
3: Gear
It doesn’t explicitly state that gear will be supported, but if it does there’s a problem. People would make OP weapons and gear and it would give an unfair advantage. Also the handling with the gear’s code…
Nothing is too bad as far as I know, I just hope more clarification comes along.
There are countless “affordable” fedoras already. The fedora is generally one of the more expensive hats in the catalog. Not everyone is entitled to be in possession of one of the more expensive hat choices.
I like this because it lets the Community get involved a lot more. I can’t wait to see everyones Creative Minds at work! I already have a few hat ideas I can’t wait to upload and show off!
It’s more than fair comparison. What’s unfair is saying that fedoras and dominuses can only be recolored. That’s a huge insult to all 3D modelers and texture artists by trying to say they are not capable of modeling and texturing their own brand new fedoras that will end up looking different compared to the fedoras in the catalog.
To further prove my point, I can go on Amazon right now and find over 10,000 different looking fedoras. Point is, just because it is a fedora doesn’t mean they all look the same. And by no means should Roblox put limits on what creators can and cannot make based on this logical fallacy that there are too many already therefore they all must be the same.
Retexturing and remodeling are not the same. I was talking about retexturing originally. Remodeling is another discussion, how much is enough to make it different enough, etc. There are only so many different ways you can slap an image on a model and truly call it a new creation before it starts getting ridiculous.
This is not logic I have seen put forth by anybody.
Past you from 17 hours ago would care to disagree as you clearly stated that Roblox needs to put limits on what can be uploaded:
While somebody you were responding to talked about retexturing, you proposed the solution of an outright ban on fedoras and dominuses because “we have enough in the normal catalog”. In addition, it sounds like you weren’t talking about just retextures as you said the purpose of UGC needs to be for new and original creations.
i’m not convinced there’s many more ways to retexture these popular catalog items for them to still qualify as “new and original” (items i would prefer to see). I think it’s a wasted opportunity to stick to these old assets. Time to get creative.
To clarify, different models of the same concept are perfectly fine imo. Then the question arises of, who decides it is “different” enough?
also, this was more of an opinion than a legitimate proposal
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