Starting today, we will be removing the Item Tags field from the avatar item publishing and configuration flow on the Creator Dashboard.
Why are we making this change?
Avatar Item Tags are no longer used by our systems. They do not influence search rankings or recommendations and they are not surfaced on item details page. Because they have no material impact on avatar item discovery or sales, we are removing the field to streamline the publishing process and eliminate confusion.
What does this mean for you?
You will no longer see the option to add or edit tags when publishing or configuring your avatar items. This change is purely visual and cleanup-related; it will not affect the performance, discovery, or sales of your existing or future items.
Huh??? What??? So then… Will there still be some way of filtering accessories by sub categories?
For instance. I’m still very annoyed looking up “Boy hair” is practically impossible when the search results is all the same Goth Emo ruffled hair that I DO NOT WANT.
I would very much prefer UGC accessories being correctly have Sub-Tags that help with better filtering search results and would suggest ideas for a better “Item Tags” system:
Filter Via Color
(UGC creators HAVE to setup a color tag based on the UGC or Roblox should automatically calculate the general color)
Filter via Genderized filters
(This is super specific but helps a lot in defining the hair’s via category). This should be completely optional addition as not everything is implied to a specified gender of accessory. though prefer to be enforced for generally Hairstyles.
Filter Via PBR.
This is Needed! I don’t get why this isn’t in any plans when you guys brought up the plans of having PBR Accessories in the future!. We the consumers want to know whether our UGC has Normal Maps, Roughness maps. Ect. Which would look more different when worn in-game.
Filter Via Detailing. This is more-so fits as tags for categorizing smaller detailing’s for instance:
Ripped/Torn = A filter for Accessories that are either worn in some way
Grungy = Accessories that are just Dirty
Clean = Have no worn details included on the accessory
Filter Via Genre:
This is a much more complicated kind of ask but just like filters for games. I feel like should be applied to here aswell:
Military, Lethal (Visually a weapon), Casual, Worn, Mythical, Futuristic, ect.
The whole in general was Tags originally weren’t probably utilized due to how limited they pretty much were? Each time you search for a tag it doesn’t appear. Or there isn’t any suggestions based on accessory.
Maybe you should utilized your AI systems in place to POSSIBLY suggest tags that correctly tags your Accessories that you can edit later? Just a food for thought.
In summary overall I’m just very confused what removing tags really solves. This is a problem for both searching for games in the discover page and I thought you guys were actually gonna do something regarding the UGC page. Tags for accessories sounds like a Hassle but I believe this has to be MANDATORY negative for all creators to at least categorize their creations correctly.
For most who I believe hate this idea is mainly just to tag their accessories for everything just so they can solely gain more profits.
Why is this a good thing? Some are saying it is. I’m confused.
The reasoning doesn’t make logical sense. We don’t use this internally, so we’re getting rid of it. Okay, then why not use it internally? More effort to remove something then make it work?
I don’t make avatar items, but I’m a proponent of good discovery tooling. We can’t have proof of tags in this use case not working effectively if it wasn’t even implemented.
They were very limited, useless, and a pain to type out. Most creators already stopped using them a while back. Anyone uploading 100+ items to the marketplace do not have the time to type up 500+ relevant tags.
There is a reason that experiences do not have a tagging feature. This is something that could be easily automated by using the name, description, and thumbnail.
I typed them out every time and it was painful
Can confirm I would rather not have to do this. Especially when I could type the same key words into the description and it be just as effective.
I think a tag section would actually be better. Instead of spamming the description with stuff that only the search engine cares about. It would also be great to see pre-defined tags, that way there aren’t 5-10 different user-made tags that are really just 1 tag with 5-10 different ways of writing it. It would also allow the search engine to be much more exact on results, especially if you can do strict searches or exclusionary searches.
If tags don’t influence the searches/discovery of items, what was the point in having them in the first place? Genuine question.
Something like this would be nice for item discoverability, especially as today’s picks for UGC is also being discontinued soon. It would definitely help a lot of smaller creators.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Time-consuming at scale, so most didn’t use it.
I disagree on the experiences/games, though. I, at least, don’t spam hundreds of games like I would avatar items. Tags are a thing to help game discovery on a variety of platforms (Steam & Itch), so I assume there’s something there.
A blend of automated discovery (algorithm, guessing what i want) and actionable discovery (filters & tags, saying what i want) is important for game discovery imo (not so much the avatar stuff here based on creator accounts), I digress.
To add onto this, Roblox seems to have automatically assigned hidden tags to every item already. It’s pretty noticeable when using search that Roblox is able to automatically assign highly relevant tags to items based on just the item appearance and not the title or description. Here’s a pretty good example:
We’re in good hands here, automatic tagging is better for both the creator and also users (so that items don’t just get spammed with irrelevant tags)
I am using the itemconfiguration.roblox.com/v1/item-tags endpoint to categorize items. Is this endpoint being removed? Can you expose the same tags for individual items that the search currently uses?
