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

Updates Announcements
#25

Roblox mentions earnings a lot in this post, and that is great that we both ultimately want the same thing!

A more fair revenue split for marketplace creators is something that everyone should agree is a honest request.

Every announcement about UGC, more so than any other topic on the forum, hammers the message “Earn more!” “Improve Creator Earnings”

Yet Roblox continues to take the largest share from marketplace creators, including a 30% marketplace tax, a 40% affiliate fee (which nobody will answer why affiliates earn more than creators?)

and then the platform proceeds to double dip this tax through the developer’s exchange program, where you siphon another 76% of our already small 30% revenue share.

This results in every dollar spent on UGC, netting the creator ~9 cents, while roblox takes home 91 cents, this is the worst split of any creator oriented platform.

When will we get transparency about this revenue split? This topic is ignored repeatedly on Roblox’s end. (Truthfully, as per usual, I fully expect this reply to be ignored)

50 Likes
#26

Desperately begging for more exotic body proportions to be possible. Aliens and dragons and birds and weird things are what I live for. People are uploading body suits to get around the rigid rules around body sizes.

Roblox should explore fallback avatars for experiences to opt into when it matters. I want to have a crazy avatar for social games, but I also want to be able to automatically switch to a more conservative avatar for games with tighter gameplay. Imagination in UGC is currently hamstrung with this one size fits all rules model. This could be implemented as tagging excessively large avatars and accessories separately from regular avatars and accessories, and switching on the fly depending on experience config.

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#27

Will this 750 fee be refunded if the upload is rejected, and will rejected submissions count against the daily allotment of uploads?

With uploading/selling tied to Premium, will there be a specific tier you will need to have?

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#28

isn’t billy most popular ugc bundle??

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#29

Prolly not because they will also include the reason why it was rejected, and 750 robux is the moderation fee

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#30

This picture is one group, there are several like this. Roblox doesn’t fool me, their intentions are the full and complete destruction of limiteds and the trading system - one giant rugpull. Some investor asked why Roblox is spending money and manpower on trading when it provides zero revenue, and that is where the plan to rugpull traders began.

Statistic provided by Rolimon himself: “I did a quick adjustment to my query, not sure if this is accurate but I think this is the total robux for classic limited resales for the past year
7,529,330,673”

Now we subtract 30% from this number, which is the tax Roblox takes from each limited sale. We are left with 2,258,799,202, which is the amount of robux removed from the economy via taxes, which means this is a devex savings of $7,905,797. We’ll call it $8mil USD per year that Roblox is saving on devex payouts via limited taxes.

Not only is this not classified as revenue (plus no investor is interested in the convoluted equation of how and why that money is saved), $8mil USD is a drop in the hat for Roblox and a completely negligible amount of money to consider spending time and resources on. Might I remind you, the trade system’s original purpose was to prevent players from being scammed & complaining to Roblox support. In its existence, the trade system has received ZERO (0) updates! No, bug fixes are not being classified as updates here.

The first part of the rugpull was the trade hold. It’s now significantly more difficult and less attractive to trade. We are now in the second part of the rugpull, the slow bleed of value destruction. Make no mistake, Roblox is not moderating these items very much on purpose. Don’t believe me? Try uploading anything that says “TIX” or any item like a sword or knife that pokes into the avatar’s body.

Investor: “if we let people copy the expensive items, will robux sales go up?”
Roblox: “idk probably.”

Herein lies where they turn limiteds profitable for the company. If you think “heh, they won’t rugpull limiteds, there’s so many big devs that have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of limiteds” you are going to be one of the idiots caught bagholding. They will pay off those top devs to keep their mouth shut and you will never hear any of them say one word about the limiteds rugpull.

TL;DR: to the people reading this, sell your limiteds before the rugpull of all limiteds continues, this is a controlled demolition of limiteds and the trade system. Everything goes to zero. Roblox wants the clone items to continue so they no longer have to dedicate resources and employees to the trade system, rollbacks, account comps, and the like. Trading, and limiteds, are nothing but a liability to Roblox.

2024 Roblox support is going to permanently suspend all tickets related to trading. Got scammed of your dominus? Go buy one of the several hundred cheap clones available on the catalog, we don’t care.

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64 Likes
Purchasing In-Experience Limited Items from Resellers
Bring Back Roblox Brand Tradable Limiteds to Roblox
Why Roblox should invest in classic limiteds again
#31

Can you accept more people to the UGC program then? Some of us have been waiting and thought we will be able to upload by the end of the year.

4 Likes
#32

Moderation feedback isn’t just a body / heads issue. There is a serious lack of communication on UGC items in general.

And there are instances where we aren’t sure if an item is OK or not, and want to pre-approve it before putting it on sale and risking a moderation action.

The program is very profitable for Roblox, and some of us creators are making Roblox a significant sum with our work. Why does it seem impossible for Roblox to allocate even the minimum resources to us for simple questions? Purchasing a water from McDonalds gives more support than we recieve… it is becoming extremely frustrating.

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#33

Thank God we survived, but will there still be public UGC production in 2024? :confused:

4 Likes
#34

Are you going to modify what you wrote on the Roblox rdc blog?

RDC 2023: Where Roblox is going next - Roblox Blog

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#35

Aaand you guys removed the thing that made ugc bundles good. More free customization for players was amazing, and seeing that all going away is really frustrating.

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#36

This picture perfectly encapsulates the current state of UGC.

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#37

Look at all those refunds Roblox will be required to do.

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#38

So… we’re just pretending there isn’t an absolute trainwreck elsewhere in the catalog at the moment?

As many others have already said UGC has its biggest moderation issues concerning accessories - more specifically the absolute failure to properly moderate uploaded items. There are identical reuploads of limited items and other high demand items out there that aren’t even hidden. There’s no excuse to just wash over it and pretend it isn’t a problem after making us wait for so long for even the slightest hint of acknowledgement that it’s even a problem in the first place.

If you consistently enforced your own rules and issued appropriate punishments this wouldn’t even be an issue to begin with.

10 Likes
#39

Love how thought out these changes are. Delaying public release will give them time to iron out the issues they are currently having, though I do support doing a public release when they are ready.

Increased body part sizes is huge (pun intended) for creators to get even more creative.

Moderation notes could be a big W if they’re specific enough.

I’m surprised to see some frustration with the removal of the ability to make free bundles. I understand the value in being able to give away freebies, I’ll miss this as well, but economically it was not sustainable for anyone. A player wearing one body fundamentally means that they cannot wear another body at the same time. Infinitely free bundles kill the market because, prior to this change, players could just get a forever supply of free bundles.

What I recommend for this is to do something like what limiteds have done. Let me buy a quantity of free items. Boosting my items sales by giving out free copies to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to buy it at all is a marketing strategy I can get behind, so long as people can’t give out infinite copies of free items for free.

The second major point of contention seems to be the $R750 upload fee. I know a lot of people think there should be no fees at all, which I don’t think is practical, but thats a whole other discussion. I do think what could help relieve this issue, especially for avatar bundles, would be to allow us to refund avatar bodies that we’ve uploaded so long as we haven’t put them on sale. Avatar bundles are some of the most complex pieces I’ve worked on, and I often have to upload multiple copies to iron out issues. I mean seriously, look at my poor, cluttered inventory:

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Letting us get rid of unused bundles would be a huge help for me, and I imagine, other creators.

As far as people complaining about them not tackling the limited-rip-off-issue, I can sympathize with this point, but I suspect these changes are parallels to tackling that problem and aren’t taking away from their attempts at that. They’re separate issues, possibly even being handled by separate teams, on separate timescales.

12 Likes
#40

Firstly, when are you re-opening UGC? It was previously stated that applications would be permanently open, yet they are now closed.

Secondly, when are you going to actually stick to what you say? Roblox is currently rampant with UGC copies of highly expensive limited items. You stated that this would be enforced heavily, and stated that you have seen a “99% decrease in limited copies” which is completely false.

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#41

That’s a really BAD idea, you don’t understand how hard it is to make a head and a bundle. This is hard work, and I know people prefer to buy accessories for 750 robux than bundles and heads. I’m disappointed with these news. Please don’t do that, this is actually hard to make profit with!

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#42

same with roblox said “98% roblox user have R15 avatar, and user spend 40% more time on average in R15 experience than in their R6 counterparts” :sob:

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#44

What about all the 1:1 limited copies on the catalog?

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#45

Something that concerns me as a player as I’m thinking about this: I’ve had a number of items including a bundle drop out of my inventory over the past few days. Several saved outfits pop up the ‘you do not own X number of items’ type warning. I am unsure whether the bundle was moderated or if the creator took it down.

With the shift to nothing under 75R + everything limited (monthly expiration), if the item(s) are taken down from sale do we get to keep what we bought? Is it only moderated items that dip out of inventory? I am worried about a system of a never-ending money sink for temporary avatars and avatar clothing. What happens if what you have gets pulled or taken down and you don’t have funds to purchase avatars and avatar clothing?

Which leads me to…

And most importantly, I know that the goal is to eventually have 100% use of skinned mesh avatars/dynamic heads and 100% use of layered clothing (from the earnings call it looks like at that time it was meant to be in place by Investor Day).

Will we get to keep and use the classic avatars that we have that are designed for 2D clothing, and the 2D clothing items already purchased? Was the 100% compliance mentioned in the earnings call intended to be in addition to existing classic avatars/clothing or as a replacement for them?

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