As a dev, it’s impossible to get lifetime OBC. I remember during RDC 2015 they mentioned that devs would no longer need to pay for member ship to DevEx so I started paying monthly at that point instead of getting lifetime like I intended to that year. Now I pay yearly but I’ve spent more than it would’ve cost to get lifetime OBC and I could’ve gotten it back in early 2015 so I feel like I got scammed.
The best possible solution would be making it so devs or at least top devs don’t have to pay for their membership. I feel mislead because at RDC West 2015 they literally said devs wouldn’t need to pay for their membership. I would’ve bought lifetime OBC that year if they didn’t say that and now I’ve had to pay even more because they removed it later that same year.
This post is confusing, at first I didn’t know if you wanted free membership / lifetime OBC or hassle-free DevEx but apparently the problem is based on the latter. I don’t believe Roblox will ever exclusively grant BC or OBC to developers of any status (at least not for non-staff members) for free and this has been discussed before. More importantly, you propose that Roblox should give free developers free OBC instead of, as you already mentioned, drop the OBC requirement like they had talked about, but not promised. Please consider rethinking this request.
Simplified: I either want a lifetime option of OBC that I can pay for because it’d be a better deal (I missed out on the lifetime because they mislead us at RDC West 2015,) or I want DevEx to not be membership dependant which is essentially what they said they want to do at RDC West 2015
But Feature Requests aren’t necessarily supposed to be “I want this or that”, at that point it ought to be a discussion and both topics have already been discussed. If you want to talk about dropping the OBC requirement, head on over to the Drop the OBC Requirement for DevEx topic that I linked. Somebody did bump it recently after 9 months of inactivity, so hopefully Roblox will reconsider it again.
I thought feature requests was literally “I want this or that,” what would actually be the point in posting something you didn’t actually want. The point of my post is to highlight something misleading Roblox did in 2015 that ended up costing devs more money overall.
Yes, but why should we have to pay for membership if we’re making Roblox money? Roblox shouldn’t have said that devs wouldn’t need to pay if they were going to keep it the same and remove the cost effective options for devs a few months later
I get your point but buying OBC definitely isn’t a contract. Even if you don’t make enough to DevEx, you might be making Roblox enough that your membership could technically be paid off by the percentage Roblox takes. This could even entice newer devs that don’t want to take the risk of being declined for DevEx to still work more on games since they won’t resign themselves into thinking they will just lose money
Similar to @nexusium’s and @crazyman32’s replies, it’s probably a way to limit the number of people who will DevEx. If the scenario is like yours where you’re worried about the small amount of money (relative to the amounts you can DevEx) between Monthly OBC vs. Lifetime OBC, having to buy OBC provides an incentive primarily for developers who can generate a larger amount of DevEx cash.
Obviously if you’re not making enough to counteract the cost of Lifetime OBC without worrying about the cost of OBC, you’re probably not going to really be motivated to DevEx the small amount since it won’t cover the cost of the OBC you’ve paid for.
EDIT: Basically TLDR; if it was open to BC/TBC members…
there would be much less (if any) incentive to buy OBC at all
more people would DevEx since the cost to DevEx is reduced to the amount it costs to pay BC/TBC
I’m sure people wouldn’t care if they had to pay $20 to get $350. The only ones who wouldn’t do this are the ones in too bad an economic situation to afford $20, and if you put it that way, it just sounds cruel that this is a requirement.
Well yeah, people may not care that they have to pay $20, but reducing the cost to DevEx to just BC/TBC ($5/$12) would mean everyone who wants to DevEx would buy BC/TBC, and never OBC. There would be very little reason to purchase OBC.
And in the end, while Roblox does cater to children, it is a business, so this is how they can make money while still paying out a lot in the DevEx system. So it may seem cruel but it’s how Roblox helps keep itself afloat. Again this is all speculation on my part, obviously I’m not actually an employee of Roblox so I don’t have the actual data.
Even if you DexEx the minimum amount of robux (100,000), you would still be making about $310 without taxes as well as the cost of a month of OBC. Thus, as long as you can DevEx each month, you can basically get OBC each month for free. In regards to the question in the title, it would be rather pointless, present favoritism (it might cause a huge community outcry because users that pay for BC+ would be made that someone is getting it for free), as well as Roblox would lose money. At the day, Roblox is still a company that needs to make money.
The PR answer is that it’s not about selling a product. In the end, it is still incentive to buy OBC. If Roblox strictly did DevEx to help developers earn a living, it would already be possible to DevEx with the regular BC. Otherwise, why charge the additional $15 a month (OBC vs BC) if you really want to only help developers earn a living?
It’s the hard truth of business and in the end, Roblox is a business.
I worded that wrong, but I meant they lose money having DevEx compared to not having it, if you don’t consider that they make more money for motivating their developers.
DevEx program doesn’t cause Roblox an economic (including opportunity cost) loss either. DevEx is not separate from the incentive given to developers to make more games that make Roblox more money through the difference in purchasing and devexing rates.