UGC Program: Updates to avatar bodies and heads + opening up creation

[Roblox]

Hi Creators,

We launched the ability for creators in our UGC Program to create avatar bodies and heads in August. This included the option to create avatar bodies and heads without an upload fee, no price floor, and the ability to sell them for free. Since then, our community has created thousands of bodies and heads and sold millions of them. While this has helped accelerate the creation of avatar bodies and heads on the platform, we’ve also seen that this has made it hard for creators to earn from their avatar bodies and heads.

Today, we are making a few changes to the pricing for bodies and heads to improve creator earnings.

• Starting today, no new bodies and heads can be sold for free.

• Avatar bodies and heads, like all other 3D asset types, will have a price floor. More specifically:

  • New bodies and heads created today will have a price floor of 75 Robux.

  • Existing bodies and heads that are priced less than the price floor of 75 Robux will be migrated to the price floor of 75 Robux on November 2nd. We encourage creators to review and set a price before this update.

• Later this year, as we accelerate efforts to improve feedback for moderation decisions, we will be adding the standard upload fee of 750 Robux per submission when creating avatar bodies and heads. We will provide another update once we get closer to making this change.

In addition to these changes, we have made improvements to our policies, validation, and moderation to make it easier for you to create and earn from your creativity. Please note that the policies we share in this post are currently in effect.

FACS (Facial Action Coding System) validations

Avatar heads must include the required 17 facial base poses to ensure minimal compatibility with avatar chat and facial animation. Coming soon, we will have validation that checks for these base poses during the upload process. This means that if you don’t pass the FACS validation, you won’t be able to upload the avatar head you created.

Increased body part sizes to allow for more diverse proportions

We have updated body part size requirements to allow for more variety and diverse proportions. While avatars must still adhere to the body type requirements, this update expands the types of bodies and heads you can create.

Updated invisibility policy

Invisible avatar body parts pose many problems for experiences such as giving users an unintended advantage in gameplay (e.g. hide and seek type experiences). To clarify, avatar body parts must be fully opaque, and body parts such as a Torso, Left Arm, and Right Leg, must take up at least 50% of the body part’s bounding box. The head part must take up at least 35% of the mesh’s bounding box. Please review this section on visibility for more information.

Better insight into moderation decisions

We know that more detailed feedback on moderation rejections of bodies and heads will make it easier to understand why your creation was rejected. We are continuing to make improvements by providing more actionable feedback on moderation decisions explaining why your body or head was rejected based on our Marketplace Policy. Before the end of this year, we will provide this feedback which will be delivered as a message to your inbox.

We hope these updates will help you create and publish your bodies and heads more efficiently and continue to give you more opportunities to earn.

Opening up creation next year

Lastly, we know how important a simple, dynamic, and fair Marketplace is to our community. To deliver on this, we plan to open up creation of our 3D Marketplace in early 2024 instead of later this year as originally planned. We are working on other key changes to Marketplace in 2024 and to make the transition simple for both current and future creators, we are making these key changes and expanding participation in Marketplace creation all at once. We will share more as we get closer to launch.

Thank you.

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FAQ

From now until November 2nd, what can I change the price of any existing body and head to?

• Prices can only be changed to be at or above 75 Robux. You cannot edit your price to be free or under the floor.

What are you doing around the miscategorization of items?

• We will share more updates about this in an upcoming post.

If I have questions about the UGC Program, who do I reach out to?

• Please share your questions via this DevForum link.

Additional resources

• Character Specifications
• Avatar Bodies Guidelines
• Marketplace Fees and Commissions
• Protecting Creativity by Understanding Intellectual Property

[bluebxrrybot (blueberry)]

Thank god, no more free headless or ghost-like body parts!

I also like the fact that these can’t be free anymore. Why? So I don’t see literally everybody in the server wearing the same thing… but that’s not the point.

I also hope Public UGC takes a while to come out. Please think hard about the rules!

[reaizsym (reaIz)]

Way to go continuing to not address the hundreds of 1:1 copies of existing items in the UGC marketplace in a timely manner. I’m not even convinced early 2024 is a good time for UGC to go public the way things are right now.

[JoeyKreates]

I’m glad to see these changes as well as the delay for Public UGC.

Hopefully by next year a lot of the issues the catalog currently has will be worked out and we will see a smooth release of Public UGC. Thanks for starting to hear us Roblox!

[idelww]

This is amazing news!
I’m not a fan of the 750 fee on the avatar bundles, unless we’re getting refunded IF our bundles don’t pass, but other than that, everything seems to be really good.

Maybe now that some decisions were taken, we can also see the removal of the few things which are currently ruining the UGC market, hopefully terminating everybody involved into these, and possibly restricting their access to the roblox website as visitors.

Keep up with the good updates roblox!

[apenzijncoolenleuk1 (Apenz1)]

Please consider improving automatic moderation algorithms that can detect duplicates of existing items.

[CrimsonForce (Kyle)]

Seems like a W update, should help bundle creators earn more since they can’t be price cut any longer. Looking forward to hearing more abt moderation regarding 1:1 clones of existing limiteds and miscategorization of items.

[PlanckDEV]

HAHAHA This is such a fun update. I can’t wait to have players fuming now that they can’t get free bundles. This is the first time I’ve seen Roblox do something which negatively affects the majority. Maybe now you’ll start caring about developers? :> . Public UGC is bound to be a catastrophy but Im just excited to see the chaos, I have (respectfully) had no hopes for Roblox Corp.

[MahaIo]

This is a great update but please also consider a universal price floor across all UGC items, this would help creators so much with people misusing the asset categories as well as price cutting.

[dvdko (dvd)]

Appreciate these new changes! Hope we can see more improvements to UGC develop while we get closer to early 2024.

[BlueEhinas (GreenEhinas)]

@Roblox

Starting today, no new bodies and heads can be sold for free

Rip people who like collect free bundle and dynamic head

[Noble_Draconian]

@Roblox

Increased body part sizes to allow for more diverse proportions

We have updated body part size requirements to allow for more variety and diverse proportions. While avatars must still adhere to the body type requirements, this update expands the types of bodies and heads you can create.

Are there any plans to increase the sizes again in the near future? I made a post detailing why the current max size restrictions are too small (Roblox-created packages wouldn’t even be allowed with current restrictions). I did another test, and most of the packages I tested with (snowman, crimson claw, gargoyle etc) still don’t fit within the max sizes:

[Valkenheim (Valk)]

Very glad to see the bundle price floors were created and actual moderation notes are coming- I will more than likely take the time to learn how to create bundles and dynamic heads now

[Dango360]

@Roblox

Existing bodies and heads that are priced less than the price floor of 75 Robux will be migrated to the price floor of 75 Robux on November 2nd.

Get what you still can get for free in the marketplace, guys. You only have a week until they are forced to become paid bundles.

They didn’t do this to the classic T-shirts…

[SuperSpaceMan230 (Spacy)]

I am obviously sad the price floor is that high and free items are out of the question (indirectly killing potential non-profit fan-works), but i presume this was only meant as a temporary measure to get as much user usage as possible (and thus have a bigger sample to collect statistics and feedback off), and from that perspective i assume this decision makes sense (with it being less of a change and more the way it was initially meant to be)

[RedLegendDev (RedDev)]

I think this is bad decision to make dynamic heads and bodies to cost 75 R$!!?

[maIIorca (malo)]

you might also postpone public ugc to an indefinite date since you guys need to give your moderating team proper instruction. i don’t understand how there can be 1:1 copies of roblox limiteds on the catalog in one single part up for 50 robux and nobody bothers to take them down.

this thing has been up for days, sold tens of thousands of times and no moderator has taken action. i’m pretty sure plenty of them must’ve seen it already. how is this possible?

[Abcreator]

@Roblox

• Starting today, no new bodies and heads can be sold for free.
• Avatar bodies and heads, like all other 3D asset types, will have a price floor. More specifically:
• New bodies and heads created today will have a price floor of 75 Robux.
• Existing bodies and heads that are priced less than the price floor of 75 Robux will be migrated to the price floor of 75 Robux on November 2nd. We encourage creators to review and set a price before this update.

This is quite a major backtrack when the whole point of the original announcement was talking about why bodies need to be free in order for players to express themselves. I understand the negative reception from UGC creators about this but implementing a price floor will simply just reduce the amount of sales of lower-cost bodies (IE: bodies that are currently >0 Robux yet <75 Robux); making it even more difficult to gain sales without breaking the rules (as all of the super popular avatar body bundles have done at some point / are doing). A price floor is not a solution, it’s a band-aid restriction to allow creators to get a minimal amount of revenue.

@Roblox

Lastly, we know how important a simple, dynamic, and fair Marketplace is to our community. To deliver on this, we plan to open up creation of our 3D Marketplace in early 2024 instead of later this year as originally planned. We are working on other key changes to Marketplace in 2024 and to make the transition simple for both current and future creators, we are making these key changes and expanding participation in Marketplace creation all at once. We will share more as we get closer to launch.

UGC has been continuously getting worse for the past few weeks and that is before it is even public. Little to no punishments are going to those who abuse the system and more clever abuse-methods are being found every day; this is appalling and not something any of the current report systems can handle.

[TheAngelMGR]

True… R.I.P.
I was one of those users who collected free bundle and dynamic head, but as always, there are people who cannot get rid of their hunger even by eating 13 tacos in 1 hour…

Sorry for the way I expressed myself, but I don’t think this will make 90% of the community happy.