I whole-heartedly agree with this. I happen to use a lot of UGC creations as a part of my games and I don’t know what I’d do without them. UGC is the same as a Modeler making props and assets for a game, and therefore are just as valuable. I have a Modeler for my game and he’s amazing.
But if someone can prove me wrong and make a game without any visual assets that’s popular than by all means.
Mature of you to edit your post to attack me after I’ve liked it.
That was a response to you being ademant that developers deserve more than ugc creators for overvalued advertising which you’ve just purposfully taken out of context, go read the entire original post properly.
This is a poor and exaggerated evaluation. Roblox certainly has a lot of bad simulators, but a significant portion (I would say a majority) of games are not like that. Give developers more credit.
No, because the games are promoting your hats and potentially getting you sales where they would not be made before, not vice versa.
Both parties profit off of it, so no it really doesn’t.
I agree that 30% for the actual creator of the item is low. I hope UGC creators are able to make a more reasonable amount for their items with the update. People should stop comparing the workload/skill required for UGC/game development though, they both require varying levels of effort and skill.
As others have said, it seems very strange the way shares are laid out here.
This is worded rather confusingly, but, if I am understanding correctly, this is a summary of this change:
The reward emphasis here is put on the seller. If Roblox is the one getting the purchases, 70% is going to Roblox. If a random game is the seller, 40% is going to them. The UGC creator always gets 30% unless they are the direct seller.
This seems like its founded upon some backwards logic, in my opinion. Why should the reward emphasis be placed on the seller so heavily? If a UGC item is drawing in sales, most of the time it will be selling on the Avatar Shop, not in a game. The emphasis should be the other way around to account for this and stabilize income for Roblox and the creator, this is like giving Roblox an income advantage on top of an already existing income advantage.
Secondly, the fact that a seller makes more money off of UGC they didn’t make will create an incentive for games to sell UGC they don’t own. If a game doesn’t have the ability or skill to produce UGC content, they are simply going to sell someone else’s. This will likely lead to the creation of “UGC hub” games, sort of like already existing clothing hubs, but, with accessories. In the long run, I can actually make an argument here for Roblox.
The above will split the sales across more places, which, will ultimately encourage UGC to get more greenlight and will likely drive up sales, benefitting the creator, the seller, and Roblox. However, I feel like both of these things together do not really work well. The UGC creator should be receiving closer to 60% on the Avatar Shop imo, as, the sources for sales is likely going to be emphasized on the Avatar Shop already as this is the “out-facing” location to buy UGC. This is where I have bought all UGC and I likely do not feel I will buy much UGC in game, because, often time, I buy what I am looking for for my avatar, not what I happen to see.
I think that the 40-30-30 distribution (Seller-Creator-Roblox) for affiliate sales make sense, but, I think that the 40-30-30 distribution on the catalog itself does not make sense due to the sale dynamic being completely different. The Avatar Shop distribution should, in my opinion, be 40-60-0. The purpose of the earnings being greater for the seller should be to encourage more sellers, but, it makes no sense when Roblox themselves is the only seller. On top of that, UGC creators should make more money off of Avatar Shop items because these are the most accessible locations for UGC to be sold, its where people are going to look to find UGC, and Roblox should be rewarding UGC creators for making them these Avatar Shop sales, not taking so much from them.
This would also incentivize UGC creators to make their UGC easier to search and higher quality, which would, I suspect drive up sales in the long run, because it would help to encourage more diversity in UGC content on the Avatar Shop.
I think the 30% commission rate for the UGC creator and 40% commission rate for the game developer is fair.
Think about it this way: If your item is sold in 10 different games, you are still making 10 sales compared to about one sale for each game developer. Even if your item is sold 5 times in two games, you are still making more in commissions than each of the game developers. Plus you are still going to make sales in the catalog which are probably significantly more in comparison to game sales.
Given this example, the UGC creator still makes far more in profit than game developers would from selling their assets.
How does this apply to groups if at all?
Sorry but I couldn’t understand this can you explain it with shortcut?
This seems very unfair to UGC creators. It doesn’t make sense for game developers that sell other people’s UGC creations in-game, get more profit than the actual creator. It would be great if they got an equal share (35% and 35%), or if the creator got more than the game developer (40% to the creator and 30% to the game developer). This just makes UGC less profitable in-game for the creators.
So… the creator makes 30%, but the seller makes 40%? That makes no sense. Flip those percentages and we’d be going somewhere. But as it is, it’s completely illogical. It incentivizes Developers to sell any and all UGC, but at the same time incentivizes UGC creators to disable letting people use/sell their UGC. You’re pitting two parties against each other that could instead be working together for each other’s benefit.
UGC creators will be incentivized to try to push people into going to their own ‘Clothing store’ to purchase hats, but realistically, most users will still buy almost exclusively from the ‘Avatar Shop’. The only time that a clothing store tends to work in this context is when it’s a curated experience that allows you to find new Creators. Why would the average user go through the effort of joining a game just to buy a single hat, when they could just grab it from the catalog instantly? Clothing stores work better as a collaborative effort between multiple creators. If collaboration was encouraged I could enter a City Dress themed clothing shop, and find entirely new creators I’ve never heard of before. But as it currently stands, this new shift is encouraging UGC creators to lock out EVERYONE from selling their things and try to funnel them into a place containing only their items.
I’m not going to be posting about who should get which half of the 30/40% since there’s already plenty of thoughts and posts on said subject. Instead I’d like to focus on some more specific details and personal feelings as a UGC creator.
Specifically, I’ll be focusing on the strange scenario these changes will cause and My personal opinion on how to better the collaborative process between UGC creators and Developers
Currently this point as stated by ShipooI is something I consider extremely important and I’m going to be looking at from a UGC creators point of view, I encourage any other users to chime in with their outlook on these things as well.
As it stands for a UGC creator we are being given 3 options for selling our items. I’m going to put together a pros and cons list from my point of view to try and simplify things.
NOTE: These pros and cons are only the ones I could think of. This does not mean they’re limited to being as listed. There are almost certainly plenty of other pros and cons I failed to consider and I’d love to hear them.
Pros: Free advertising for your items.
Neutrals: I have the potential to earn a lot of money from other games. If I were to make a home store it would likely have less sales due to the non-exclusivity of my UGC items.
Cons: no ability to filter unwanted users from selling your items. Which leads to a couple of problems. The main one being Why should a user buy from anyone but themselves, if a user has free reign to sell (almost any) item/s AND essentially get a 40% discount while doing it then why would they do anything else? Being unable to filter also has the problem of questionable users. I do not want my hats being sold by people who are generally speaking bad people but now I have no way to do so without making it so I cant collaborate with anybody.
Pros: I have exclusivity on my items resulting in more potential home store sales and a higher profit margin compared to just selling in the avatar shop
Cons: I cannot collaborate.
Pros: None.
Cons: I no longer have the ability to earn anything from affiliate sales, I cannot collaborate with anyone.
Without the ability to restrict our sales to finer categories You’re forcing all UGC creators to either pick money, or community with no possibility of anything less extreme. Just because I don’t want my items being sold by “Miscellaneous Tycoon Simulator” doesn’t mean I don’t want to collaborate with anyone. If we imagined the two currently viable scenarios as plotted points at the ends of a line segment we get a clear picture and that picture is a whole lot of unused space.
Potential solutions range anywhere from adding more filters such as a “Can be sold by Friends” or just the ability to Whitelist certain users, all the way to making it an even split of money between developer and UGC creators.
In conclusion I ask that Roblox please considers looking into these options because right now as it stands as a UGC creator, unless there’s some magical stats out there that Roblox would like to make available to everyone I can only see this as a losing scenario. whether it be a monetary loss or a creative one.
Thank you for taking the time to read this very long post,
-Guest
I personally do not agree with this. Having a 3rd party earn more money that you for a product you made seems unfair. Imagine putting loads of effort into a game but someone who had no involvement into making that game got more than you. That is what the situation is but for asset creators.
Yes, the 3rd party would make slightly more than you on a single sale, but not multiple sales of an item. It would also seem unlikely for a single game to sell your item more times than in the website catalog or any other game on the platform. You would still be earning more in revenue than any game developer for selling your item. Not to mention the cost of advertising your item for free and a likely increase of sales for your item.
No body asked for that. “Cost of advertising your item for free” reads “C’mon man, I can pay you in exposure!”
Devs shouldn’t be making more from a transaction than the UGC creator. I don’t know why that’s even a discussion we need to have.
This doesn’t make sense. I know this has been said before, but the developer did not make the hat. They had no part in the creation of it. While they might have provided a platform for that to be sold, they also don’t have all the work the creator put in to make it. I just don’t understand why anyone thinks that affiliates should get more than the people who made the item! That’s like saying a cashier at a bookstore should make more money off the book than the person who wrote the book. Yes, the cashier’s work is still important, and yes, they did promote the book and help sell it, but they also didn’t put in the work to write the book. You see what I’m saying, right? It makes more sense to pay the creators more, but nobody’s disagreeing with paying the developers who advertise it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.