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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does this fix the bug where games on groups don’t get commissions (eg selling a 100 robux hat, 0% gets paid to the group or group owner) because that bug has been around for literally years
A 40% affiliate commission seems fairly high, but I’m sure Roblox has thought carefully about this and decided on a figure they thought was fairest for all parties.
If you look at it from an average game developer’s view:
Players have the option to wear UGC in thousands of games for free, self-advertising as some people call it with no expense to yourself.
The UGC program is highly selective and a small majority have the ability to create Catalog UGC meaning that your revenue is substantially higher than many other revenue streams on Roblox.
Incentivizing the option for developers to sell UGC in games will undoubtedly increase your sales and overall revenue.
You have the option to configure the ability to sell UGC, so if you believe the system is too favorable to game developers, only sell it in the Avatar Shop and your places.
Changes and adjustments are likely to be made to this Affiliate System overtime as more people give feedback on this post.
