Upcoming Changes to Affiliate Fees & Catalog Item Configuration Options

CKALLDAY18 · February 23, 2021, 10:14pm

Hello developers,

We are making some changes to the revenue sharing for in-game sales of certain types of avatar items.

Today, creators of non-clothing avatar items receive a 30% rev share for sales in Avatar Shop. When a third party game owner (i.e. “affiliate”) sells one of these items in a game, the affiliate receives a 10% commission, and the creator receives 20%.

What’s changing for these AssetTypes:

We will be increasing the affiliate commission from 10% to 40% for in-game sales
The 40% affiliate commission will apply to sales of user-created and Roblox-created avatar items (excluding clothing and bundles)
The creator will receive a constant 30% for sales in Avatar Shop or in an affiliate’s game
If the creator sells the item in a game they own, they will earn both the creator share and affiliate commission (30% + 40% = 70%)

We have also provided an additional option in the item configuration panel for creators of these items to determine where their items can be sold. Initially, these options will be:

Avatar Shop and All Places
Avatar Shop and My Places
Avatar Shop only

As an affiliate, if you prompt users to purchase an item that has not been made available for sale in your Place, the user will not be charged and the purchase will fail.

Note: All of the mentioned changes apply to in-game sales prompted by a developer, as well as sales made through the inspect-and-buy menu.

The options provided to both creators and affiliates are expected to evolve over time.

Please stay tuned for further updates. Thank you!

Kairomatic · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

This topic was automatically opened after 15 minutes.

buildthomas · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

Does this fix the bug where users can “get back” the affiliate fee as a discount when purchasing a UGC item for themselves in one of their own / their alt’s / their friends’ games? If not, it looks like this change makes that discount go up from 10 to 40% of the item’s price.

I’m also not sure about 30% for the creator and 40% of the affiliate, isn’t the balance usually the other way around when you sell someone else’s product? Why is the original creator getting less, is this something that they can toggle up/down in the future according to their preferences?

Is this going to apply for other classes of catalog items in the future? (clothing?)

Aiomab · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

This is great because it incentivizes me to sell catalog items in my game more, and helps UGC creators.

I also feel like this can incentivize people who want to cheat the system because now you can buy items from your own place for even less robux. Yes, this is against ToS I believe, but we’ve seen people committing fraud for some robux. (Remember this is the kind of thing you’d only see in Roblox)

A quick fix to this would just be to disable this affiliate fund on the dev’s end for if the dev buys a hat in their own game.

Swinsor · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

This is really exciting!

While I’m not in the clothing sector of Roblox, I’m sure a lot of designers really appreciate the thought put into earnings.

BostonWhaIer · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

I think this is a good idea, since the affiliate commission allows game owners to capture a larger portion however even though a 30% increase is a bit of a jurastic increase due to them facilitating the sale it makes sense. I also like the idea for users to be able to configure wher their assets are sold since they may not want creators profiting off of their work.

lluckvy · February 23, 2021, 10:30pm

Wait… this is amazing

Not only do we get 30% more back from selling avatar shop items in games but this will probably encourage a lot more users to incorporate affiliate commissions more.

Also I’m glad that you guys fixed the Roblox-owned items commissions issue, before this buying Roblox-owned items through games never returned any percentage back to us.

THANK YOU!

Noble_Draconian · February 23, 2021, 10:31pm

Why are affiliates getting more revenue % than the original creator of the item? This doesn’t seem right…

CausalityOrigin · February 23, 2021, 10:32pm

Very interesting update, wondering how this will affect the economy on the platform.

F_ortitude · February 23, 2021, 10:43pm

Do these affiliate commissions apply when a user purchases items from the Avatar Inspect Menu in-game?

Builder_Boy · February 23, 2021, 10:44pm

Why should a large game make more money from my items than I do?

Roblox 2021, we value adding a “buy now button” to your game 10% more than we value the creators who actually make the content people want to buy.

An affiliate commission is a great idea. It incentives the sales and advertising of catalog accessories. However, knowing that the sales commission is higher than the creators cut is honestly insulting to creators.

ImprobableAI · February 23, 2021, 10:44pm

Imagine a retailer selling at hat on their shelves. In your scenario, the original creator of the hat will get 70% and the company that manufacturers the hat will get the other 30%. This leaves the retailer with 0%.

Why would a company sell an item they don’t make a return from? More people play Roblox games then peruse the Avatar Shop. It’s advantageous for the sellers to create a deal with games to sell their hat and display it prominently in their game. They will move more inventory, or in this case: make more money.

This is especially so as the Avatar Shop becomes more crowded with UGC Creators.

ColdCr4ft · February 23, 2021, 10:45pm

I have a question. When you say user-created and Roblox created items, you mean when someone puts an in-game shop to buy Roblox catalog items?

I would appreciate it if someone would answer my question :)

x0row · February 23, 2021, 10:47pm

This is quite an interesting proposition. And with regards to the concept of incentivization, it makes sense to some degree.

But morally this just feels skewed.

Why exactly would the people putting the items we make be receiving a larger cut of sales compared to us UGC creators? We take the time to create, refine, and upload items for users to enjoy, yet are given an even smaller cut than those who don’t even give a direct aid in such a process. It’s infuriating.

posatta · February 23, 2021, 10:49pm

Like the announcement says, you have the option to disable affiliate sales of your work if you don’t want other people making money off it. You aren’t making any less money because affiliates get more; that chunk is from Roblox’s cut.

ImprobableAI · February 23, 2021, 10:52pm

Did you forget that the people selling the content in their game spent hundreds of hours putting together the game which gives you access to the millions of monthly active users that don’t look at the shop?

Please don’t discredit the creators of these amazing games by boiling down their contribution to “adding a buy now button”. It’s disrespectful. If UGC Creators don’t want this, they can turn off the option and partner with games to do other deals.

Example: Imagine I was a top UGC Creator, and I didn’t want this. I’ll turn off the option and go to games with a proposition that I want my asset sold but I want that 5% to make the split even. Its now on the Developer to weigh whether that proposition is worth the investment to create a data pipeline to accurately represent where the money is going.

BloxzBox · February 23, 2021, 10:55pm

I believe that’s what this statement means, but I could be wrong on that. I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply to that menu either way.

x0row · February 23, 2021, 10:58pm

Not sure if you got the message of my reply to the thread, but I’m not insinuating that having the promotion of our items is a bad thing, in fact, I think it’s quite an interesting concept.

Just to clarify, the problem I had was with the disparity in percentages between item creators & promoters, NOT with the idea of having users promote our items.

DevSynaptix · February 23, 2021, 11:08pm

Is it a requirement for these purchases to be made through the avatar api? I would like to keep the character customisation system I have but provide a way promote and sell UGC items.

M_caw · February 23, 2021, 11:16pm

After reading and re-reading your post several times I agree with you. Roblox would get 5 dollars spent yet 5 dollars would be earned, split in dev-ex between the game and the creator. Roblox would make 0%. Perhaps the revenue should be raised to something between 30% and 70%, say 45%, instead.