Starting on June 20, we are making a backend change that will allow all non-Limited items published prior to April 4, 2024, to use the latest publishing interface. Previously, only non-Limited items published after April 4 had access to the new interface.
This change comes with a few additional changes for items published before April 4:
Improved Discoverability of Items: Sales Locations will be consistent across all non-Limited avatar items with the following options: Marketplace and All Experiences, Marketplace Only, and Marketplace and Experiences.
No More Premium Discounts: Items offering Premium discounts today will continue to stay on sale without the discount. Items that are currently exclusive to Premium users will be taken off-sale, but can be put back on-sale at no cost. We anticipate this impacting a small number of creators. Anyone impacted will receive a notification in their inbox with next steps.
Who Should Care About This?
For the majority of creators, no action is needed on your end. Creators who have avatar items that were published before April 4 that are currently âexclusive to Premium usersâ should be aware of the changes to Premium benefits.
Changes for Catalog API for Developers and Experiences
Due to the deprecation of Premium Benefits, there will be some changes to our Catalog API:
On July 15, Catalog API will no longer support filtering for items that have Premium Benefits. The Premium Filter (SalesTypeFilter = 3) on the Catalog APIâs V1 and V2 search endpoint will default to the same behavior as All (SalesTypeFilter = 1).
This impacts the game-engine function AvatarEditorService.SearchCatalog as well, any call to this method with CatalogSearchParams.SalesTypeFilter = SalesTypeFilter. Premium will have the same behavior as CatalogSearchParams.SalesTypeFilter = SalesTypeFilter. All where all items will be returned.
The PremiumBenefitFilterType parameter will be removed and no longer supported on all V1 and V2 search endpoints on Catalog API.
On July 15, the premiumPricing field on the Roblox.Catalog.Api.CatalogSearchDetailedResponseItem model will always return null. Clients will be able to handle null values as it is already a nullable field today.
On September 1, we will remove this field from our response model entirely.
Changes for Creators
Non-Limiteds items published prior to April 4 will see these specific updates over the coming weeks, starting on June 20.
These items currently use the legacy publishing interface. They will now be updated to use the latest updated publishing interface.
The following Sales Locations will now be consistent across all avatar items: Marketplace and All Experiences, Marketplace Only, and Marketplace and Experiences By Place ID.
Premium Benefits will no longer be supported on these existing items due to the minimal usage of the product from both creators and buyers.
Items offering Premium discounts today will continue to stay on sale without the discount.
Items that are currently exclusive to Premium members will be taken off-sale, but can be put back on-sale at no cost.
Wonderful update, however is there any chance we get the ability to also rename Avatar Bundles & dynamic heads? Thereâs no reason why we shouldnât be able to rename these but be able to rename EVERYTHING else
Really cool to see the Experiences By Place ID option finally being added to regular avatar items!
Could we get documentation for the V2 Catalog API? It seems to have a lot more useful filters which V1 doesnât have. There are currently no endpoints documented at all if you select the âCatalog Api v2â definition on the api docs page: Swagger UI
Itâs great that non limited items can be exclusively sold in one experience now, it boosts engagement and removes the barrier of having to pay very high limited stock fees just to have game specific items!
Okay, so youâre removing one of your main reasons for users to upgrade to Premium. This makes avatar items more accessible, but may significantly decrease subscription rates and may even have some subscribers flooding Roblox support, asking for refunds.
If Iâm not mistaken, a lot of users spend most of their day looking through the Marketplace for items, and allowing a userâs perfect avatar item to be either discounted for or exclusive to Premium (by the creator) was a big incentive for getting more users to upgrade.
Premium is a primary source of support for the future of Roblox, therefore it cannot be redundant.
I donât see how this is breaking anything, but Iâm really not a big fan of and still arenât of the removal of premium discounts, just one less feature for a dead membership.
With discounted items gone, premium now has one less benefit, meaning less users will buy it. This affects the earnings of creators because engagement payouts will have a smaller payout amount due to the decreased number of users using premium. To fix this, increase the amount you earn from engagement payouts or raise DevEx rates. Premium doesnât offer much, and this update doesnât help.
So is it an understatement or not? Will this not actually impact only a small number of creators? It really seems like youâre complaining just to complain, instead of providing something valuable to the discussion, such as a problem that you see with this update.
I may also be affected negatively, as 20% of our gameâs revenue are these premium payouts, just to give context.
With less premium benefits, subscribers may also shrink.
I think this wonât affect the revenue too much, though still may negatively affect our revenue in some way.
Edit: Depending on your case you might be affected in different ways, positive, neutral or negative. Though I think Premium needs more benefits in order to make it attractive to buy. I think most users wonât even notice the change immediately though and it wonât affect it too much.
Roblox has always been moving away from premium-exclusive features for a while now, so Iâm not surprised. They did end BC a while back, so who knows? Maybe Premium isnât worth it for the increase revenue they could earn from having people buy more items.
Iâm sure they would not require Premium for 2 extremely relevant features on their platform [Trading & UGC] if they are planning to discontinue it or something.
ok, I donât understand how this will really contribute anything positive in the long term, what we are all clear about is that there is one less reason for consumers to buy the Membership
It would be nice if you can fix formatting for item descriptions separated by lines to organize our items. Its really annoying having text wrapped together 90% of the time and on some items the text properly formats. Please fix this. Its been this way forever and its a simple thing to fix.
