Like many others, I do not think this is a good idea.
I own a relatively small clothing group, started it a few months ago. This update is and would be really discouraging to small designers like me, or new ones starting out. We simply can’t afford to pay a lot for every single upload. (I do understand the impact would vary depending on how much it would cost.)
If the price is low, for example under 20, copiers/bots would still be able to afford that. However, if the cost to upload is more, designers who don’t get a lot of sales to start off would either be losing money per upload or not making/gaining any money.
The only major advantage I see from this update is designers who don’t make a lot of clothes per month could upload their creations and not have to worry about wasting $5 USD. But, for the ones who do make a ton of clothes, premium would just be way cheaper, and they can upload in bulk.
I feel like this change may also cause they smaller designers to raise their prices to get profit easier while bigger groups will be able to keep their price lower because they already get a lot of sales.
I agree. 100 Robux is way too much. I’d agree if it’s just like 10 Robux per upload, that’ll be great! Keep in mind that some people are trying to make money from Roblox. So, therefore, people will lose their profit if you have to pay for 100 Robux and many smaller designers will be giving up.
That is beyond the points being discussed. No matter the price, people will need to spend money uploading a certain amount of clothing pieces. Let’s say though that it’s 50. For designers uploading around 20 pieces a month, they will then be paying over double then what they would need to be if they were just buying premium. No matter the price they use, premium or not, people will have to continue to buy things to upload clothing, and now there are just more limitations.
The only way this change would benefit any group/designer short-term or long-term is if you reduce your profit cuts to less than 15% instead of 30%. Even then for users who are newly into designing clothes this change is still not beneficial.
I get the attempt of making the catalog less broken but this has way more disadvantages than anything good coming out of this and i will state some reasons why coming from a clothing designer.
Clothing Botters will still thrive
This will only actually discourage the people that don’t have much robux or money to begin with to mass upload or front page clothing which they aren’t really the main culprit of taking money from original designers. Most of these people aren’t even able to afford premium to upload in the first place. It’s the people that have a long history of front paging clothing assets to 80-90 robux that we have to look at here since they are doing the most damage to the catalog. Those bots or people that take their time of day to copy other peoples assets and shoot it up to the front page are STACKED with robux from doing this for months and even years, they will have hundred thousands and even millions of robux piled up to invest on front paging clothing.
If for example each clothing asset is 100 robux, which was the price to upload a T shirt when that ‘bug’ occurred, to upload all they need to do is get 2-3 clothing sales from front paging and pricing someone else’s work 80-90 robux to make up for that which they are already bidding about 50k+ robux to launch it to the front page in the first place. What is 100 robux to them anyway if they already invest so much more to get even more back? This fee will only affect users that lack robux and not people that carefully upload copied assets and just reuse the same old assets to front page until it dries out. This will actually help these people by only needing to buy one premium subscription to devex the robux profiting off of others instead of buying multiple premium subscriptions JUST to upload.
Unknown / Small clothing designers will struggle
People that are very new to designing or doesn’t have any connections to anyone will really struggle with this since they may only be able to upload 4 clothing pieces a month unless they luckily make something back. This may also affect how clothing groups that hire clothing designers work as well depending how they end up functioning with this update. Not sure how this will work out for clothing groups but it doesn’t look good.
How will this affect me as a clothing designer?
I’m someone that gets a somewhat stable amount of sales, so a small fee won’t hurt me too much assuming I already make enough to devex once every few months. It’d be nice to have this 30% tax fee removed on top of this because charging us for putting something on sale AND getting taxed every sale is a bit overboard? Just me though.
Suggestions~
featured clothing spot
I feel like there should be a featured designer spot for the catalog in the meantime since the catalog (front page) for clothing (shirt/pants/tshirts) is beyond broken and this change will only slow this down so slightly it won’t really be noticeable or benefit anybody that makes clothing as their main source of income on roblox.
upload limit
Also actually having an upload limit per month in place would slow down botting if it is implemented correctly. It’d probably have to be something where you have to be in the same IP for a certain amount of time before uploading. I’m thinking 10-20 clothing assets a month would be reasonable
nuking the entire clothing catalog and redo how it works
This would be the most beneficial to us designers since people that bot/mass upload for profit won’t benefit from it anymore if the way clothing is listed on the catalog page is more stable than it has been for the past years. People only mass upload clothing because they get crazy amounts of profit from doing so, and their main source is the front page… so why not actually tackle the main source before adding this price wall?
Those are all great points. I do really agree and want to elaborate on your statement about how this won’t be stopping bot accounts, which I agree with. For example, when someone searches something up on the catalog, botted results come up, not smaller and hardworking creators. The bot accounts are the ones who are actually making money in the industry, and the smaller and much more deserving creators are not. With that, this is having a far greater impact on the smaller creators who can not afford these changes than the bot accounts who will obviously find ways around this and will continue to thrive like they have in every other unsuccessful way Roblox has tried to prevent them.
I know Roblox is a for-profit business that wants users to purchase currency. This is just unacceptable in many ways due to the fact that most people want to Develop on the platform without hassle, but no this is just outrageous. What’s next? Is studio going to cost you 5$ to access it?
Yep. With easing prices, it will draw less sales to them. No matter what fee Roblox implements, it will disrupt the small creators far more than the bot accounts, the ones that this whole thing is trying to prevent.
I understand that lifetime premium users are a very small percentage of the Roblox community now, but I can’t help but feel dissatisfied with this change. Back when we purchased our lifetime BC, we all expected to keep features like shirt/pants uploading forever. It just feels wrong to make us pay for something that we already paid for many years ago… I hope something can be done for users like us.
Good points. I do think that when Roblox is trying to portray themselves as a pro-creator platform, they actually need to live up to it. They are doing a pretty bad job doing so currently.
As others have pointed out, 100 Robux is honestly a bit too much just to upload clothing. This fee will discourage small creators from starting out. Perhaps a limit similar to the UGC catalog could be implemented, where players could only put certain amounts of clothing per week or month.
Honestly I think this is so punishing to small content creators. When I started off on Roblox I certainly couldn’t imagine having the long line of necklace t-shirts I had by the time I stopped being active if there was a fee (especially 100 Robux) on uploads.
Additionally as a lifetime subscription purchaser I feel increasingly bothered by the way my purchase has been devalued over time. I’m not so much bothered by this being opened so others can upload, but am bothered I’ll be charged for something I already paid for. I already had my ability to upgrade taken away from me which was an advertised part of my purcahse, which was promised many times would be resolved but never was.
As a clothing designer I appreciate that Roblox is attempting to clean up the catalog, however I do not see how this as the way to do it.
Groups as large as mine can easily afford these fees, but for smaller groups this will be costly. It’s already hard enough to start a clothing group from scratch, and this will discourage it further. What’s to stop clothing copiers from simply paying the fees? I don’t see how this will fix the root of copying issues.
Instead of discouraging botting, I believe it would be better to promote original creators on the catalog. This could be similar to how UGC accessories are done, where creators must apply and be approved. There can be a section in the catalog dedicated to these original designers.
Hopefully this will help open some eyes to why this is not what needs to be done to fix the catalog. Aside from criticism, I really do appreciate that we will be able to test items in studio before uploading.
20, copiers/bots would still be able to afford that. However, if the cost to upload is more, designers who don’t get a lot of sales to start off would either be losing money per upload or not making/gaining any money.