I don’t think that our issue is that we want the affiliate revenue decreased, it’s that the developers who sell the items are making more than the creators who made them. Along with this, it’s understandable to pay advertisers, but it makes no sense that they receive more than the actual creator. Why should the person selling the item make more money than the one who created it? The seller didn’t put in the effort to make the item, all they did was add an in-game shop to sell it.
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The chances are Joe in this scenario is only going to sell very little amounts of cars regardless of how many you give him, the conversion rate between selling hats and such in games is so low that the vast majority of developers don’t even have it as an option in their game because the benefits don’t outweigh the cons. You have to remember “Joe” has to convince someone to purchase it someway & somehow, which isn’t easy and even 40% isn’t a good incentive because Joe could easily make his own “dealership” for his own cars that can only be drove around in his dealership and get 70%.
Even at 40% most developers still won’t add this to their game. If a developer is going to have cosmetics and such for their game they likely will make their own hats or use hats already on the catalog and charge ingame currency for specific hats or robux for “hat packs” which they make more off of and will likely cost less than having the user individually buy those specific hats.
I run a clothing group and for a short duration of time last year I sold UGC items in my store and even though my store was solely based on clothing the amount of conversions I made for UGC items was so low (under 2%) that I had to remove it because benefits of having hats in the store didn’t outweigh the cons. (Mind you if someone ran a tycoon or a different sort of game their conversions would absolutely be lower than mine).
I understand developers don’t make the hats but this is essentially Roblox giving developers more of an incentive from their cut to include other peoples items in their game and the chances are people will not add hats in their games to be purchased anyway, most likely it’s going to be clothing groups, clothing stores or outfit rendering places adding your items because they’re just about the only group of people on Roblox that have an incentive to do this.
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As someone who has ALSO run a clothing store, this argument makes little to no sense. There is no con to having hats in your store, if you integrate them correctly. It’s virtual floorspace, you can easily expand it or even make a virtual catalog (which is how I handled sales typically).
Not true. I’ve run catalogs in games that I’ve partnered with to produce clothing for their NPCs, there is plenty incentive already for adding UGC and Clothing to existing games, especially if they match your theme. Perhaps bigger devs haven’t caught on to that yet, but believe me, the demand is there. A 30/40 split does nothing but rub salt into UGC makers, if they INSIST on ‘incentivizing’ Developers more, 35/35 would likely be more palatable. This is coming from someone with experience in clothing sales in non-clothing games, and experience as a developer.
Let’s also not forget that UGC creators do not have fine control over WHO gets to sell their items. It’s an ‘all or nothing’ situation right now. They may not even WANT most games to sell their stuff. I know plenty who would want more fine control so their assets are not being represented in games that have bad reputations or go against their beliefs.
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If you also run a clothing store then you should know the conversion rate is absurdly low compared to if you’re selling just shirts and pants. The reason you see solely clothes sold in most stores is because the 10% you got before this change wasn’t enough to justify putting the work and effort in creating places where users could purchase UGC content. As for selling it on the virtual floorspace that takes a good amount of data especially if you plan on selling dozens or even hundreds of hats and have to load their meshes. You’re right, you could do a virtual catalog but the conversion rates on those are still absurdly low and there’s little to no point in making one if you only get 10% of the sales at the time, with this new update there is more of an incentive and you likely will see more UI catalogs in things such as clothing stores.
It says right here they have control
This is likely just the beginning so expect them to add more customizations on who can sell what items in the future.
You completely ignored my point and tried to say I said something I never did, I never said there was no demand for UGC content in games I said as of this moment developers have a much higher and a much more profitable incentive to sell hats through ingame currencies or hat packs. The amount developers get for selling UGC items compared to what they would get for selling a pack of them for much less and for a higher percentage outweighs this new update.
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10% is terrible, and I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise. 30/40 is unreasonable though. I don’t think that’s a super controversial statement to make. Data shouldn’t be a problem in your clothing stores unless you’re displaying more than needed at any given time. Blasting a user in the face with too many choices is bad business, doesn’t matter if you’re a virtual game or a real store. Choice paralysis is a thing, it applies to a lot of things. You can also end up overloading them with too much going on preventing them from finding anything. There are no cons to selling hats in your clothing stores, unless you’re going about it wrong. Also, UI Catalog sales were quite reliable income when executed well in games that had a theme that could be run with, they should also be made by the clothing group to save the developer the effort.
You ignored my point and tried to say I said something I never did. They do not have FINE control. It’s all or nothing. There is no option to say; “I want to sell my stuff at ___ place, but I do not want Lootbox gambling sim the video game to sell my stuff!” There is no FINE control over it. It’s ALL OR NOTHING. Either everyone else gets to sell it, or no one else.
It’s never safe to assume things will be added that are not explicitly said.
If you’re a clothing/dressup game, yeah, maybe. Otherwise? No. Most games would not profit from ‘Hat Packs’, as most games do not fixate on customization in this regard unless they do entirely custom characters, which would be incompatible with most UGC/Hats anyways. It’s more work for a developer to add in a ‘Hat Pack’ than to just sell some UGC that they like that goes with their game. Could they make more money with Hat Packs? Sure, if they’re a very specific type of game. Otherwise? No, as it wouldn’t be easy to market to their players. Much easier to market something they can wear anywhere as opposed to something that’s only in their game. There really isn’t any incentive to do either.
At the end of the day, my main point is just developers do not need 40% worth in incentive to sell UGC. It’s not helping anyone, and it feels like a slight against UGC developers. 40/30 or 35/35 would make more sense. It’s an illogical split. UGC Creators also need much finer control over who can sell their items and where.
The rest of this is getting off topic, if you want to continue the discussion feel free to DM me.
No data is absolutely a problem when you could be using that for something else that is much more profitable. There also is a problem with selling hats in your store if the incentive to sell them is not enough compared to what you could be selling instead. I’ve already stated the conversion rates are not enough for most stores to justify adding them let alone games.
What you stated here is what I’ve been saying this whole time. As you say most games would not profit from hat packs. What makes you think that them jamming in the option to purchase hats from the catalog suddenly would be profitable then? It’s also much easier to just take items off the catalog and sell them as a one time purchase and let the individual wear them anytime in their game than it is to add UGC items into your game and convince them to spend much more when they didn’t even join the game in the first place to buy UGC items. 40% is justifiable for developers if they’re the one who convince the user to purchase the item.
Again let me make it clear, the only portion of our profit game developers deserve is the value of their promotion leading to more sales for the artists. We don’t owe you anything more than that, and that mindset is important. It’s my work, it’s my livelyhood, this job isn’t going to last forever, and I don’t exactly want you getting a portion of my potential profits because I feel bad for you. I pay taxes, and I’m friendly most of the time, that’s what I owe you.
We especially do not get any benefit from poor integration by small developers, we are loosing more in the money pool with small developers than we’d gain if we just recieved that money without the benefit of games driving sales. If we sell an item for 100 robux, and it sells 100 times on the web at our current tax rate we recieve 3000 robux. If we were being given the extra 40% (70% total) for our web sales that would amount to 7000 robux per 100 sales. Take those numbers, and at the current rate each game developer would to sell 133 in-game hats for every 100 web sales we get in order to give us back the value we would get from less sales at the same tax rate from the website. Seeing as I can move between 200-1000 hats a day right now, if a small developer was selling my whole catalog in their game they would have to sell between 266-1330 hats a day in order for me to get more value from their promotion than I would get if I just got the market-standard tax on my web sales. The UGC creator is doing the developer a bigger favour here than they’re doing us.
Now I’m fairly confident a big game might be able to match the web-sales rate in a profitable manner, which is fantastic, and if they’ve integrated it properly they’ve essentially generated bonus revenue for themselves while also driving up the item creators sales. The thing is we know that at a big scale UGC can drive between hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of robux revenue with a 70% tax. There is literally already so much incentive for large developers (the ones that actually benefit the creators margins) to implement UGC items into their games at almost any percentage. If only making an extra 100k on every roughly million we make (adjusted with the concept of lower in-game sales) isn’t enough for you, uh idk bro, I’m a dev, that’s just dumb. Also not to mention that it’s probably not fair that if you’re actually generating that many sales, which again is only reason why game developers getting that cut is actually of more benefit to us as a creator than fair taxes, you’re earning 140$ USD BONUS INCOME to our 105$ USD PRIMARY INCOME per 100,000 robux spent on OUR WORK.
Frankly even if you flip it to 40% to the creator, 30% to the developer the margins still don’t make a ton of sense. I’d swing for it just because it’s an improvement, but if roblox is trying to mantain the concept of at least 30% of robux to the void on every sale 50% base for creators (on all sales) and 20% to in-game sellers would be ideal for me.
To reiterate, we are losing more to drive in-game promotion than we would get if we just got the full pool without that promotion normally (with the exception being games driving massive sales) which is kind of a bad deal for us. The reason it probably is this way though is because roblox may be attempting to drive as many web features into games as possible (which would actually result in more in-game sales to all developers making the ratio kind of make less sense).This seems to be more about driving the marketplace to where Roblox wants it to be, and as a result accidentally-on-purpose helping large creators generate more revenue, than helping small developers or UGC creators grow.
is this suppose to be metaphorical or in a literal sense?
it’s free advertisement, no pay from the ugc creator whatsoever. both parties benefit from this.
That’s a good point actually, they’ve probably made that way because it would ruin roblox by community and economy if they raise the UGC tax to 40% and everything else 30%
I am kind of biased in this situation, I know. It’s still puzzling to me to why roblox did that…
who knows? maybe they’re foreshadowing a decrease to the tax?
It’s literal. I understand why you would pay the person advertising and selling your product, I just don’t think they should make more than the actual creator
As affiliate sales are now encouraged more than ever before, can there be any official clarification on how to make use of user-created assets (UGC) in places while respecting the Roblox Terms of Use & Roblox Community Rules or should one assume that developers can now make use of user-created assets (UGC) in their games as long as the UGC creator allows these items to be sold in all places?
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Hello! A quick question, yesterday I received a commission but only received 10 percent of the Robux. When will you be changing the percentages? Just to let you know I was just the owner of the game and did not create any of the avatar items sold. Am I confused here or has this just not been changed yet.
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It seems like this change is active now.
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It’s such a shame bundles aren’t included, that would be great for the headless horseman in October.
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Careful there, you’re treading in hot waters with the words you’re picking.
What people mainly seem to be complaining about is that they have no control over the margins, not the fact there is a margin at all (see the post you’re replying to). Evidently, some creators don’t enjoy the 40% margin over the 30% they earn themselves. This is a totally valid concern.
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The 40% affiliate commission means that someone could just make a place with a purchasePrompt for an item they want, and basically get 40% off nearly any accessory in the catalog.
This seems kind of broken to me, and I’m not really sure how it would be fixed apart from moderating the users who exploited the system, or the commission not applying if the owner of the game bought an item in the game. Both could be easily circumvented by using alternate accounts.
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I tried this on a few small items, and I sensed something was a bit wrong. Surely nobody will want to buy ROBUX if they earn a decent amount back? I think it’s cool and all, but I don’t want to buy more items doing this in risk of account termination. Hopefully we can get some clearance on this soon, since it’s becoming more and more widespread and people have no clue if they’re going to face consequences or not.
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Also, the fact that various star creators are talking about this makes it seem fine to people, including me. I think it would be nice for ROBLOX to clarify if this is allowed or not.
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This has always been possible and it has never been tended to. As long as the commission system has existed even at 10% people had done it. It would be unfair to moderate people over it, as it is way more of an oversight than an “exploit”. There are ways to prevent it to a degree, like disabling commissions towards yourself, but this could be worked around too. I’m going to assume such a minority of people do this that they don’t care for it.
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Hello!
Has this feature been removed / have new restrictions been applied to it? I have just purchased a Roblox made accesssory within my game, but within the transactions tab (and under the commissions category) this isn’t reflected as purchases made a few days ago immediately were.
I thought there might be an update posted here, but I’m not seeing one. Thanks!
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