Update to the Plugin Marketplace

I agree with this amazing statement

3 Likes

I’m on the verge of “is this right” or “is this not right”, because I feel like Plugin Developers should have their own freedom in charging for their plugin and not be forced to do 100+. As some of y’all mention, if you want to make money off of plugins, you could easily charge 100, 200, and all, nobody is stopping you from doing it, but for those who want to price their plugins lower, they can’t.

2 Likes

I disagree with this agreement; everyone should be able to do anything with their prices as high and as low as they want.

1 Like

100 robux isn’t even a high enough price floor for devs to get a fair cut for their work. 5-30 robux isn’t even a dollar per sale. What world are you on?

10 Likes

These are amazing news, I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years!

I have plenty of powerful plugins to share :fire:

Not at all, as many pointed it out, some of the plugin developers are overworking themselves with the quality and complexity of their plugins and they deserve to be paid for the work.

Most plugins are under $1 (and developers are getting paid like few cents) on Roblox, that’s almost nothing for a person to spend once for a plugin that will improve and speed up their workflow.

1 Like

Roblox takes a 30% cut, in the grand scheme of things it’s no worse than the cut they take from gamepasses and clothing items. It’s not a high cut. 70% of what you pay goes to the developer. As other have said developers are constantly undervaluing their work, particularly in plugins, and I think this is a good step to try to stop people doing it.

I do understand the point that people should be able to choose their own price, though your expectations for people to offer their plugins for fractions of a cent are mindblowing.

3 Likes

So are plugins now 100 robux+ in price? If that is that is not a great change and I feel like it’s not doing a lot. As long as you can price it free then I am fine with this update. As @rabbi99 said small developers won’t be able to afford such plugins. I am using about 15+ plugins with will cost about 1.5k robux 15$. And you won’t be able to know if you be able to profit enough to “re gain” the spendings. There are lots of developers that work on games using plugins to create them and don’t charge money but now they will probably have to make some microtransactions. If you want to stick to the quote “Power of Imagination” then please make plugins to be free. Instead of forcing payments to prevent scams then write a script to detect malicious scripts within the plugin.

Edit:
nvm I am stupid

2 Likes

Wouldn’t this (almost) completely kill plugin sales?

I personally would love to pay and support a developer who made a useful tool, but I know most Studio users are young and would consider 100 robux or even any paid plugins as a non option.

I am curious to see what this change leads to.

3 Likes

I’ve been on Roblox since 2011… Why do I have to verify my ID in order to sell a plugin?

4 Likes

Could we hear more about what’s being done on the safer side of the Plugin Marketplace? It’s mentioned in the thread but there’s only financial coverage here.

A while ago when paid plugins became a feature on Roblox, it was made very apparent by testimonies from those in the program that selling plugins is not sustainable and is even dangerous. The price floor doesn’t make a significant difference in the expected revenue for developers and may even reinforce the aforementioned danger of using the plugin marketplace.

Please see the following discussion, where the issue of death threats was even raised simply for selling plugins for less than a few dollars:

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/plugin-marketplace-is-toxic-and-needs-to-change/682339?u=colbert2677

7 Likes

This is a way of protecting all plugin creators. Those that underprice their work set a precedent that no one should charge high prices. As seen many times, plugin developers have been harassed before for pricing their plugins any higher than a few cents.

A hard floor prevents this harassment from happening as it’s physically impossible to charge any lower.

The developer community brought it upon themselves. They couldn’t stop harassing plugin developers for perceived “”“high”"" prices, so Roblox had to step up.

3 Likes

This change seems meaningless without additional ways to show off plugin functionality to potential buyers.

How is someone going to justify putting down money for a plugin if all they can see is some barebones asset description text (no markdown or anything, yes you can link to external domains but that’s a hack to begin with), no thumbnails apart from the main square asset thumbnail, no video/gif to show what the plugin does? We need markdown support, image/video/gif reels, and other features like reviews and statistics to promote our plugins to justify higher price points.

It would be nice if the order of improvements to the plugin marketplace would be additive, I don’t think this step as the first step is the best choice.

41 Likes

Heavily agree with this too. Should at least have an option to include screenshots, videos, and etc.

This update looks like a bandaid fix to the complaints about plugin developers not making any money.

If the minimum price is 100 Robux, wouldn’t that deter users from buying paid plugins? I can’t expect an increase in profit to plugin developers by raising the minimum price.

I’m also intetested on how much Roblox relies on plugin sales. Would it damage them if they were to remove the 30% tax altogether for plugin sales?

10 Likes

This is more about how creators should be able to price things however they want, i see no reason for a 100 robux minimum, unlike the 5 robux one for most which is just for math reasons.

I too, find 0x1D quite useful… :trolleybus:
You could use a tool like remodel on your built RBXMs with some sort of source obfuscation API. (Won’t link anything in specific for obvious reasons…)

As of now, with how it all works, we’ll need to worry about all more security-based factors ourselves, but I think Roblox could eventually work on a better set of solutions for plugin developers.

Indeed, no reason for it, this only forces devs to do something they could’ve done already.

While the price floor is an interesting attempt at a culture change, I don’t expect it will improve the amount of money developers make when all of the supporting infra around plugins is poor. A description and icon will not and will never convince anyone, especially the majority of roblox developers with limited robux to buy anything. We need videos/gifs for plugin demonstration, at least images other than the plugin icon. These changes at best seem more like patchwork to improve a bad situation rather than any development that actually improves the core problems.

17 Likes

I agree, this should have been something to do with the selling of plugins or the hundreds of scam plugins, not just a price floor.