As a Roblox creator, I rely on the income from my studio’s UGC items to make a living & support the development of my games. As UGC creators, we play a big part in driving the avatar economy to the success that it has today. With the creation of the UGC program, the catalog has become much more diverse, and avatars have become a lot more self-expressive. Gone are the days of wishing Roblox would upload cool swords, scarfs, and more! The artist community is now able to fill these needs. The program as a whole has improved the state of “identity” on the platform & the “metaverse”.
As such, the percent of our profits that we take from the avatar items we create should be fair and reasonable, but they are currently not. We shouldn’t have to pay for things like datastores and game servers which game developers are already taxed for, especially considering UGC creators use none of those services. However, at the time of writing this post, this is not the case.
Instead, UGC creators lose 70+% of their revenue to Roblox and affiliates / sellers, as demonstrated in this post. In fact, item sellers make more off the sale than the original item creator does, with the seller making 40% while the item creator only makes 30%. This is extremely problematic and unfair to the UGC artists who empower the avatar market today. The item creator should be making a majority of the profit, not the people who happened to sell it!
In light of this, this post was created and serves to:
- Highlight the issues with the current percentage splits & request more reasonable percentage splits between Roblox, sellers & UGC creators
- Provide personal testimony from UGC creators
Problems with the current percentage splits
As mentioned previously, UGC creators are only getting 30% of the revenue from their own items that they sell. The exact breakdown is:
- 30% goes to UGC creator
- 40% goes to seller (the seller is Roblox on the site).
- 30% goes to Roblox
First and foremost, why are item sellers getting a bigger percentage than the item creator? The UGC creator puts in the time and work to make an accessory that players desire, only to have most of their profit taken by the person that happened to sell it! It should be the other way around, with the UGC creator making the 40% instead of the seller (seller makes 30%). This is a fairer & respectful arrangement, and aligns with Roblox’s “respect the community” core pillar.
It is the UGC artists creating the demand for avatar items, not the the games or other people that happen to be selling them. It is commonly argued that a majority of UGC items make most of their sales from their group store pages & the catalog, which leads to my next argument:
Roblox should not be taking 40% from sales conducted on a UGC creator’s own group page. This is their homestore, this is where they showcase all of their UGC items. A majority of an artist’s income comes not from game-sales in most cases, but sales from their group page and the catalog. Roblox taking 70% of the profit from sales conducted on an artist’s very own group is a big problem!
This issue is made even more prominent when you compare it to how game revenue is broken down. Games have their revenue fairly broken down, since they have to pay for the services they use (datastores, game servers, matchmaking, etc). As such, they get a ~25% revenue cut in pure profit. With UGC creators and plugin developers however, they don’t use any of those services! At best they make use of what is essentially a file-hosting service. They can’t use advertisements, they don’t use datastores, they don’t use matchmaking, and they don’t use game servers.
Despite not using any of these services, they’re still taxed like they are using these services! Roblox takes 70% or more for simply hosting an item or file. If we’re speaking technically, UGC creators lose 90% of their profits to Roblox & item sellers, post-devex fees. This means partners in a studio splitting profit get 5% each, for their own work. If the creator worked very hard making a layered clothing armor set, they’re getting almost nothing for their time and effort on the item!
@elttob Made some videos that cover these problems for plugin developers & UGC creators very well, and I highly recommend watching them as they contain a majority of my arugment for better percentages:
Overall, the current percentage splits for UGC artists is extremely problematic to the work they put into the items on the market. Out of respect for the community and fair compensation, the percentages should be re-worked to allow all UGC creators to make a living off of their work. Roblox should not be taking 70+% of an artist’s profits from the site, and item sellers should not be making more than the item creator.