Is Roblox Stealing Millions From Young Developers?
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2024
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Thanks to YoYo Games for sponsoring the video!
Is Roblox stealing millions of dollars from young game developers? In this video, I break down Roblox's monetization system-the Developer Exchange (DevEx) program-and why I think the 24.5% revenue share hidden beneath its layers will only bring harm to this game dev empire in the long term.
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--Chapters--
0:00 Intro
0:48 Game Maker
2:14 How Roblox Monetization Works
3:06 Roblox Revenue Share
4:04 Is It Fair?
5:07 The Real Problem
6:48 Conclusion
--Resources--
Issues with the Developer Exchange: Testimonies from the Roblox Dev Community
devforum.roblox.com/t/issues-...
Roblox Investor Day
• Roblox Investor Day
Roblox Developer Conference 2018 - Keynote: David Baszucki
• Roblox Developer Confe...
Roblox Gameplay On iPhone 12!
• Roblox Gameplay On iPh...
--Music--
"Don't Go Outside" - Vladmsorensen ( • Vladmsorensen - Don’t ... )
"Die Historic" - Three Chain Links ( • Three Chain Links - Di... )
"Coconut Mall" - Mario Kart Wii OST
"Sidearm" - INTRNLCMD ( • INTRNLCMD - Sidearm [S... )
"Binary Stars" - MONIN ( • MONIN - Binary Stars [... )
"Seasons" - INTRNLCMD ( • INTRNLCMD - Seasons [S... )
"Phoenix Wright Objection!" - Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney OST
"Star World" - INTRNLCMD ( • INTRNLCMD - Star World... )
--If you liked this video, I highly recommend this even deeper investigation by People Make Games--
Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
• Investigation: How Rob...
With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage of?
Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.
• Roblox Pressured Us to...
Following our last video on Roblox, players and creators began getting in touch with their own stories to share. Here are some of those stories.
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Dani - The History of Dani - Why UA-cam Banned me for 5 Years
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Start your free trial on GameMaker Studio 2 here: opr.as/PolyMars
enjoyed the vid alot!
GMS2 is how I learned to code
Hi
downloading this saved my house from burning, got me a girlfriend, and made me start going to the gym. Download now!
Nice Vid. Very Cool
Then again, the developers of CART RIDE INTO BOSS BABY SUS AMOGUS OBBY OBBY TYCOON TYCOON [PETS AND FREE ADMIN] probably don't deserve any profit at all
0 dollars no money they should not earn
For sure, they make kids go in their game and trick them into spending robux. Even tho they do it legit, it is kind of manipulating kids.
Good point
they literally just use free models
@@ChrissQuartz But honestly I'm not against free model use if it's not everything all over the place (or a scam). Back in the day we all used free models and it was a blast.
never thought I'd see a Game Maker 2 sponsor
A new company bought Gamemaker and they've been sponsoring people a lot lately lol
@@cripplebum4792 yeah I'd noticed they'd been bought by Opera... fingers-crossed theres a bright future ahead
@@minerkey682 Yoyo games have always kind of been doing their own thing anyways, and I'd say Opera is a much better company to own them than some gambling company lol
Ikr?
Game Maker is a very good product to sponsor tho
Another channel, "People Make Games", also made a video on this, and they uncovered that the situation is even worse, small, young developers are lured to the platform, but soon find out that getting people to play your game is really hard, and profit is completely negligible
but that applies to literally anything? getting people to play your game on steam is hard too, and getting profit too. if a 9 year old wants to make their game and "expect profit" and their game to be popular, then they need to work for it and cant just make a trash game in 15 seconds that looks horrible
@@sh4rp713 I didn't give a full overview of the video's conclusion in this comment, before you can make up an opinion, you should watch the video I referred to, also yeah, other game platforms might have the same thing, but comparing them to roblox, it's clear that roblox isn't a good option.
@@Thor_the_Doge i have watched the video and its pretty much all bullshit
@@sh4rp713 what led you to believe that?
@@Thor_the_Doge i cant remember exactly what he said, but tell me anything and ill say why its bullshit
Ironically, game maker studio 2 is one of the most unfairly priced engines on the market, costing $100 upfront and charging thousands PER YEAR for ports to consoles. Unreal only charges you once you make $1M and Unity after you've made $100k. Godot is literally 100% free.
And Unreal scrapped the $1M revenue cuts altogether, aiming for a much smaller revenue cut throughout, allowing developers to better gauge how much they will earn and increasing transparency.
I literally have game maker studio 2 for free though
@@rgbatom5145 Yeah but you may have to pay them a specific amount per month if you want to build to a platform that isnt GX(dot)games
The low dev ex rates harm on Roblox are pretty noticeable. Games like robot 64 and cleaning simulator are not common anymore. They are replaced by cash-grab games with hyper-monetization. It's pretty sad.
Like the really spammy one like AMONGUS BABY CART RIDE SUS SUS SUS SUS [ FREE ADMIN AND VIP ]
@@ChrissQuartz or BLOX ANIME SIMULATOR RPG
@@ChrissQuartz thats pretty outdated my guy. cash grab games (simulators and tycoons) have become less popular and aren’t shown on the front page much anymore, you have to search for them or go to the simulator or tycoon section on the games page which requires a lot of scrolling. the sims and tycoons that you can actually find on the front page are much more unique and fun (for example tower defense sim and restaurant tycoon)
Ugh, cleaning simulator is SO underrated it hurts
They were never common?
They are very new games
Speaking as a developer myself, I know very few people who will go through the DevEx program; rather, they sell their funds on a black market for far more than Roblox will offer them
Tell me the name of the market?
Yeah, current rates for B/T (where someone buys a shirt from you) is about $3-$3.5 per 1000 you occasionally find a seller at $2.5/k though.
Tho the black market well get your roblox account banned
@@AngryBirdsFanboy06 I’ve been in the black market for years, it’s all about exploiting and selling stuff to do with roblox like robux, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single person be banned for selling robux though.
@@AngryBirdsFanboy06 If you BUY it. Not if you sell it.
As a roblox dev with almost 100k visits, roblox really doesn’t care abt the devs, they only give us an avatar item and they’re like “yep that’s ur reward”
No wonder Roblox game’s game passes are so damn expensive
Ikr
SAKTKIA51: my most expensive gamepass is only 90 robux and cheapest is 5
ok poor person
@@pika_pika900 ok rich parents kid
Never knew Roblox came all this way and actually became a platform for developers. I always just saw it as this game with blocky characters that go oof
O O f
Yes. Blocky character go oof
@@endgamerplays haha blocky character go oof
@@endgamerplays no, i am a roblox player and can confirm that blocky character go oof
@@endgamerplays its not even supposed to be an oof lmfao. Its an eugh, just sounds like oof
Omg, I can’t believe game maker just sponsored you roasting their competitors.
Normally you can’t even mention competitors. You guys are both chads. I appreciate the focus on this topic because Roblox needs growing competition.
Wasn't there something which tried to compete with Core and Roblox at the same time?
There was core, but i think its swept away
@@givemeanameiwillhate9525 Personally I think the use of Unreal made a lot of people not play with the increase spec requirments
roblox is immortal
He was sponsored by Core.
This is probably the cause for the extreme staleness in games that started in late 2018, now nearly every front page game is just a crappy over monetized cars grab rather than actual fun gameplay.
It's crazy just how bad it's gotten. I've found a few little gems that are actually fun games without any aggressive microtransactions/pay to win mechanics. Ragdoll Universe is a great one, It's a fully fleshed out combat game that plays well, is still being developed, and could honestly probably run as a game on steam if it got enough traction. The microtransactions are all cosmetics related, and don't give any sort of advantage in game. I've bought a few of them myself, and i'm fine with that style of monetization.
@@enb6720 On February 2020 I found Juke's Towers of Hell. The community is... eh.... but the game honestly gets better and better the game goes on.
On somewhere in like October 2019 I found Blockate. I stopped playing it until August 2021 and the game's a blast.
@@s1nblitz I would also recommend The Cool Zone which is a really good Roblox Gmod clone.
Thankfully there are still a few great games getting popular such as robot 64, doors, or JToH, but the majority are still trash
@@s1nblitz ITS A JTOH PLAYER, PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU STOP PLAYING JTOH PLEASEE
Another thing to note is that because of how little the developers make compared to what is actually spent, it can further incentivize predatory practices to squeeze as much money as possible out of the players.
Roblox is like. :. ok Ok Ok Ok We need to take as much of their revenue AS POSSIBLE Like Preston With Over 22 Buttons with ROBUX SO
A while back I learned lua (the programming language used by the engine) to make roblox games. When I found about how bad the devx rates were, I was better off learning c++ and python
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think GMod uses Lua as well so maybe you can reapply it there?
@@pixonstate3670 Yeah but the the revenue tho..
don't worry, lua can be integrated into c++ projects and is quite widely used overall
I'm not joking but I legit did the same exact thing. Roblox was just to competitive and the rates were not the best. Now I've learnt c++
Firstly lua is not only used on roblox, you can still use it on many places plus lua is way faster compared to c++ and python. Also you should have learned python first, that would be smarter since it is a general used language.
As a new roblox developer, thank you. I’m trying to start with roblox, until I become a good programmer. So to know this is what is happening is worrying. We work hard. We deserve credit.
This modded Lua is kinda easy to learn and it also adds a lot of things that doesn't have on normal Lua, for example the function wait() so it will be easy to you learn scripting, it would be better if you already knew programming logic or other programming language but you still can learn, good luck.
@@lowrhyan567 wait() (not wait(x)) is pretty terrible actually. RunService.Heartbeat:Wait() runs on every single frame while wait() runs every 0.03 seconds as a minimum.
@@Forcoy Both are trash, chads uses
local clock = os.clock
function sleep(a)
local t0 = clock()
while clock() - t0
@@lowrhyan567 "your mom"
Sounds fuctional
@@Fractalure your mother
As a developer on the platform, I can say DevEx rates are outdated. Recently in 2019-2020 they actually changed prices for robux to be more expensive which makes users not want to spend their robux as much. DevEx rates are off of when robux were 10 bucks for 1k robux, ect. I would love a higher cut of my work since I am a solo developer and I would love to continue making content for the community I slowly grew over the past 4 years.
On the other case of Roblox wanting to expand to full on studios and older users they are definitely going to have to fix a few things. One is that they need to higher a team to take care of quality control. Currently on Roblox you can find loads of copy and pasted cash grabbing games on the front page that exploit young children and infringes on other IPs which is NOT a good look for the platform. Two is definitely rising the DevEx rates. Third is overall their moderation, support, and the freedom given to developers. There's a invisible line of how far developers can push the boundaries when it comes to blood, violence, "romance" (not really a genre on Roblox), horror, ect. It doesn't help how sometimes Roblox will full on target a creator they do not like. We had a situation where a youtuber was on the platform that made games. The youtuber bad mouthed Roblox and had a history of trolling younger users when they were younger. Few year later they stopped doing that and grew up but their game was deleted for blood splatters which can be found in other games. It's very scary to be a developer on the platform cause it's highly expected that one day your game or even your account could easily be hacked and or banned.
Sorry for this long read but Roblox is a really important part of my life and as a developer on the platform I obviously have a lot to say about the platform and how it treats their users and developers.
What games did you make?
@@itzcaio1786 Cube Cavern: Reborn, Contributor to Make a Cake, working on a platforming game called Noob Quest, and smaller projects.
@@AlexSzubka cool
i can understand your first point of expanding QC teams but what exactly are "games on the front page that exploit young children"?
devex rates - cant rly comment on this since there are so many factors that contribute to roblox's true "value" to devs eg the ecosystem, but roblox needs to try to be profitable, and it still isnt - the argument can be made that increasing the cut will create more "experienced" devs which will lead to more players + more players that will pay, but thats for the company to calculate (and i doubt they will take this approach)
mod/support cant rly comment on, i personally havent had any issues. if ppl want more quality/quantity, = more costs, less chances of devex rates increasing
freedom - this has changed quite a bit over the past yr (for the better?, im not that looped in with the news anymore); i think they had to be very restrictive since all games were for players, children included, but now that age guidelines/restrictions are taking place, i can only imagine more "risky" genres can exist on the platform
roblox is a company and can target whoever they want, esp if it hurts their business (and causes more harm than benefit to them), its just reality
account hacked/banned - i am almost certain that accounts dont get banned for "no reason", it just makes no sense logistically; "hacked" isnt really their problem, though they can force more 2fa etc if ppl want ig
It's not only the dev ex rates that are ruining their long term goals, but their technical expectation of what developers have to make. They expect developers to make games that can run on mobile, and do not offer any way of unlocking the performance cap for non-mobile games. They force scripters to always think of optimization to the point where you need to hire a developer or two whose sole job is to optimize old features as new features are rolled out, if you want quality optimized content to be rolled out weekly.
This has been an issue ever since the devex was released to the public. Same goes for 30% sales tax on any items.
I never found the sales tax that bad.
Why you guys want money off a child’s game? You are better off making more money on y8 than on roblox. Devx rates are a small incentive, not a reasonable cut for your work making a game on their platform, which yoy advertised on their website.
@@joshkanyinda5569 you give people content and you probably want something back. Most developers are adults/grown teens that got to pay for their food, rent and bills so they need to earn somehow
@@joshkanyinda5569 If your a beginner or just a kid with no money roblox is great
@@joshkanyinda5569 fr it’s for kids but when you join it let’s you choose your age over 20
I played Roblox in around 2016 to 2017 and have been playing since, but recently my friend and I have sort of quit Roblox as we believe it’s going downhill, as the stocks are dying, they removed the oof sound, and it just doesn’t have many unique games as most of the top games are anime games, simulators, or roleplay games. I do think some games I enjoy on Roblox are good, but I find myself playing only around 3 unique games per month. Thanks for reading my essay lol.
Due to the unfair exchange rates, developers have to either make cheap cash grabs that takes advantages of various loopholes or make a game so good and revolutionary that everyone on the site will flock to if they want profit. Issue is that making good games takes hard work, and like all games that have actual effort put into them, they may just die, considering how tedious advertising your games can be. This results in very similar games that are boring and put in-game transactions in your face all the time. This is actually pretty profitable considering that most of the player base are literal 1 month old fetuses that will play just about anything in front of them. I feel like the devs could really use extra income, so they don’t feel obligated to make cash grabs and give newer devs a bigger incentive to work harder on their games, because the state of the site in general has been really disappointing at best, and downright unsafe at worst.
6:09 "The President of the USA will mention his or her Roblox Avatar on camera"
Bro imagine this actually happens lol
Why would they put it in the list
@@jauhnwilks2114 why not
Lmao
"You have to play roblox or you ain't black" - Joe Biden 2019
Pause on the “Predictions for the Next 5 Years”
Some of those goals are ridiculous
A lot of those have already been reached
No not really roblox is growing insanely fast and some of these goals have been completed and some developers made a few million dollars of off roblox
@@dissatisfiedp5311 A few? I just checked back only to realise that top devs are earning literally in 10s of millions of dollars a month just through game passes.
Roblox is literally filled with games like these right now. Becoming a good developer on the platform is competitive as hell.
@@BME-dj1ox you forgot about 75.5%? What.
@@BME-dj1ox Finally someone understands, for the past few years, I always get slightly annoyed when people think that the top game developers only make a few thousands.
The only experience I've had with Roblox developers was when I was into Wings of Fire. That series had a pretty popular fangame on there. It was stuck behind a paywall and last I remember, they had stopped making updates.
I just happened to click on the exact video with the exact same sponsorship segment as an ad for GameMaker I've seen before.
If there happens to be a mysterious storming of the Roblox headquarters around 5:43 est tomorrow morning, it definitly has nothing to do with me.
What?
It definitely has something you do then if it happens
@@PrivateMcPrivate Wdym. I definitely am not involved. 100%. Its a joke.
@@PrivateMcPrivate just coincidence...
stop
holy shit
he actually included roblox starscape in there
thank you polymars you absolute fucking legend
chet moment
@@herbert_shnerbert chet moment
@@LUMINA3 IMO starscape is the best game on roblox
@@signaltoground9159 chet moment
@@signaltoground9159 cap
They should get more, they work on their games sometimes for months or years. They can change but we can wait
This is literally the first time i didn't just fastforward the sponsor. Also the editing the amazing.
You should make a video about Dreams (PS4/PS5). Another game where you can create games within a game. You could similarly analyze any questions about its longevity.
People create insane projects on there
While we're at it, Core and the other one which also uses Unreal(forgot its name)
@@revimfadli4666 core is far bellow roblox
@@Forcoy below in terms of? Player count? Accessibility(due to spec requirements)?
@@revimfadli4666 yep, and a lot more
lack of tools
memory limit for games
low player count
only available on PC
forced characters
etc
4:35 If you can earn money from Core Engine, I think that would work as a comparison.
You can it’s 50%
Edit: I retract my statement
@@ashleybyrd2015 have you tried core though
@@bl4ckk i mean its basicly roblox but graphics are changed and i think developing is way easier
@@cacsjr.4610 Yeah, but core doesn’t have nearly as many players as roblox, so you’d honestly still make lots more from a decent roblox game.
Fair enough. I've devexed a few times and although there are some losses let's look at it in a different aspect. Roblox provides alot of services that other developers on other platforms don't get. Having to not pay for them is is a big advantage. Being able to earn profits without having to organize much is heavenly. I still think Roblox needs to invest more on their developer community platform to the furthest potential. They have recently gone public to the stock market and I can guarantee it's becoming tougher in a financial aspect for them. Still it's not just Roblox's developer community, they also need to improve their moderation.
also their support team. the complaint is sent and someone looks at it for 10 seconds and makes a decision then totally ignores any other replies, and moderation is controlled entirely by bots
It's true that most of the revenue is taken by Roblox but since the game has a large community with literally millions upon millions of people playing every day, it might just be worth it. Just make sure to use your head and go in with a plan and I'm sure you'll be alright :)
At least Roblox gives a bigger cut than most book publishers
LMAO
Lol
lmao
At least it's less work from a certain perspective. Write book, go to publisher, they like it, they publish it and you get money from it for a while. With roblox games you have to constantly update them to add bew features or remove bugs. Roblox updates from time to time which also causes old code to break. It's a pain for they pay you get.
@@Kai-rust and then observe it die like Mad Games or something
Woah... the algorithm just gave me one of your older videos for my recommended page... Was this video scheduled and did it trick me to come watch it? O.o
as a roblox developer, this is pretty interesting, i might share this with the dev teams i work with, such as afterdawn interactive (the makers of militant) and gunpoint, (the makers of gunpoint)
i used to watch you and then i saw ur game maker sponsor segment as an ad and i have returned to the video with that sponsor segment lol.
honestly it'd be cool for polymars to make an official game in gamemaker cuz like its actually VERY easy to make one as shown, hell i made one without knowing like no code and now ive learnt so much gml (the code that gamemaker uses) from tutorials or just messing around in the documents
I've noticed there are quite a few reasons why the DevEX exchange rate is what it is right now. For one, Roblox used to have another currency called Tickets. Roblox gave a few each time you log in, and there was a way to transfer these Tickets into Robux. Seeing as though Tickets were only discontinued a few years ago, there's got to be a huge amount of Robux gotten with Tickets. Low DevEX rate helps to cut the amount of Robux with no monetary value out of circulation.
Another reason is you save quite a bit if you buy in bulk. If you buy 400, each Robux is worth ~0.0125 each meanwhile 10,000 Robux is worth ~0.00909. While that might not seem significant, basically you're getting 1,000 more Robux compared to paying using the 400 Robux's per-robux rate. And just in case you're curious, Robux gives devs 0.0035 per Robux, meaning Roblox takes 61% to 72%.
Keep in mind that Roblox still has to pay payment providers for facilitating Robux transactions; the most they're paying is 30% on mobile devices (though I believe a few mobile apps stores have lowered their rates in favor of Devs), and the lowest I believe is PayPal's rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents, (unless the Roblox Gift Cards provided by FastCard has lower fees).
That requirement to buy premium before you can dev ex is the most annoying part, why do you have to pay them before you can get them to pay you? Its dev ex can't they also just deduct the 5 dollars from the dev exchange that will be requested by the player? They also have a very old or lacking website, their income grew significantly during this pandemic and little effort is given to their website. :sadge:
Roblox is pulling their end by removing features everyone loves like avatars,faces that Roblox themselves created and taking 30% of the ROBUX and taking 65% when devex’ing is horrible they don’t know that there will be no games in the catalog if there isn’t any players or developers roblox has been too lucky for almost 20 years but they won’t be too lucky after 2025
Great to see yoyo games sponsoring videos of youtubers. This move maybe represents the new era the company is going through, since Opera bought them and I hope it means betters things to developers and gamers.
With that being said, Roblox is doing something similar to what buildbox is suffering now(low cut to developers and making you pay to increase cut you can receive), and as GameMaker is trying to compete against Unity and Unreal, I expect Roblox and Buildbox to have more competitors, forcing them to be more competitive and offer better conditions to developers using them.
Polymars' version of club penguin is beautiful, we need it on steam
To avoid getting sued, call it Penguin Club
@@buttersquids Disney aren't suing actual reuploads of club penguin.
make it $999.99
The ad after the intro played as a seperate ad before the video even started
We got coconut malled!!!
0:49
That sponsor announcement was the first ever that I didn't get bored watching. :D
I don't make games on the platform but I have developed a bunch of tools for developers on it such as plugins, game frameworks, and modules to simplify certain aspects of game development. I would love to see a marketplace for people like myself to sell our creations on.
Hey! I think there are such services, for example. Well done for making such a tool, I am also a developer and I hope to use it someday.
ikr, many front page games literally need to hyper-monetize to even survive on the platform, some developers live on roblox as well.
it makes sense considering small things that have to do with your avatar are already covored and in other 3d game softwares its a pain to make an animated, unflawed, customizable avatar
Wow way to destroy my dreams of becoming a fulltime Roblox developer.
let's start a roblox union
what? I also wanted to try out roblox once but eh.
you can still get lots of money if ur smart with advertising
Sucks huh, reality is harsh
keep going mate. its fine asimo and badcc arfe millionaires. you can still become succcsessfull even wirh roblox money grab.
Polymars. I ended up checking it out. In December. It's now my main game engine and I LOVE IT!
Imagine walking up to someone and taking 75% of there money and just going away that is not fair at all
when i saw starscape at 4:53 i was so happy
Yet another PolyMars video. The Fortnite UA-camr with almost 100 million subscribers.
Lol
@Clxp and markass brownlee
@@Terrazon what about him?
@@tres-2b299 Clxp's comment said something like "fortnite!!11" so I quoted Will Smith from UA-cam's Rewind 2018
(ua-cam.com/video/YbJOTdZBX1g/v-deo.html)
i have been on roblox for over 6 years (both in my old and new account) and this is completely unfair to roblox devlopers, the developers don't get paid enough and roblox should really check on this
They are paid this little for all of the privelleges roblox provides its developers. Its generally more easy to develop on roblox than any other platform.
@Tyler Carey
1. They already did
2. What we provide them is used to sustain those same benefits they have given us
As a Scripter on multiple projects which make large amounts of Robux it can be really sad to see that I get 7,500 dollars worth of Robux turned into ~700 dollars for me. And it also depends on how much of a money hoard your boss is.
The problem is
--The underrated game,You need robux to make it sponsur which is very unfair
--The moderation,same as youtube moderation
--Rthro,Moslty they don't listen to us to removve rthro
--That all
Some of the goals they set out is absolutely hilarious, “Have the president mention their Roblox avatar on Camera” I doubt Biden would ever care about it
Breh that is really dumb goal lol.
They took "anything is possible" too far
Just you wait.
@Valka Lmao nice
@Context. not just kids
Does Biden even know about Roblox?
I've actually NEVER seen or even considered how the DevEx rates could be unfair or whatnot. I've been developing on Roblox for 8 years now and I now am able to DevEx every single month for around the past year. I've honestly just always been incredibly thankful for just having the opportunity to make make money from doing games on Roblox... but in the past few months, I've started to realize how much making a "front-page-quality" game actually takes... While working on my biggest project yet, I reached out to a sound producer that worked with Nintendo, popular movies, etc, and after asking for his rates, I immediately said no, I wasn't even CLOSE to the amount of money I needed for a single track. This video is really making me question, am I getting enough from my consumers?? IK apple only takes 30% of a cut total from your apps, so going from the apple game store to the Roblox games... Kinda crazy to think Roblox almost takes 3 times more than what apple takes... Seeing an up in DevEx rates would definitely help me to continue to push on with hiring and working on really good games. Not sure what side to take but I do think Roblox needs to focus #1 on moderation first, they're moderation is awful and IK plenty of devs who have quitted completely due to getting hacked or falsely banned and whatnot!
i've never really had any problems with moderation except for warnings for some decals which was definitely fair, despite being on the platform for 3+ years, and sometimes not saying the best things in chat
How much do you earn in a month and what's your average of players in your games?
try moving off the roblox platform?
This is slightly the reason why I quit programming entirely, but most of the reason as to why is because I'd probably have to learn so much about coding that will be invested onto something that I'd most likely get bored in the first minute, now I'm trying to focus on a job that meets with my skills or something I genuinely want to do, like management, law enforcement, rubbish cleaning or joining the military.
I feel like the only thing increasing devex rates would do is push more people to build the same cashgrab tycoons and simulators for even more profit. I think Roblox needs to add a feature where they choose what games should be monetized for certain rates or something
That's stupid because developers will then target the same genre unless they are making games as a hobby.
I loved this, you should make more essay-y videos :D
As a Roblox developer I love to talk to people about this topic. I like to see other people agreeing with me. Roblox developers are carrying the website and are the only reason the website is as popular as it is. Roblox gives developers 70% of a purchased item. Meaning if I made a game pass for perks in my game for 100 robux I would get 70. Then on top of that to do developer exchange you need 100k robux which is hard to get. I have made about 4 games now that took months to create. And I have made about 1 million robux from them. On top of that 10,000 robux costs 100 dollars so if I bought 100,000 it would be 1,000 dollars. Yet Roblox only gives developers $300 which don’t get me wrong is fine but for smaller developers like myself they don’t have huge studios it isn’t very good compensation for what they do. Roblox needs to make a better system and I hope after their lawsuit they will fix it. Until then I really hope people realize the same thing I do.
the thing is your overall income probably isnt going to be too far off when you consider the massive amounts of hosting fees and the fees to get stuff ported to mobile
like, where else are you going to find someone willing to host 20 servers full of 20 people for as cheap as roblox does
also this is unrelated but im surprised that roblox hasnt gotten in much copyright trouble, especially recently
the rates are a product of an era on the website where the games were mostly small passion projects and the idea of anyone getting to cash out on them seemed crazy. Now that there are games polished enough that they could reasonably be sold on steam the rates feel outdated
i believe that games that are mostly appreciated by the community should get better revenue due to the fact that many games on the roblox platform barely holds itself as it gets younger children and manipulate them into spending money to give the bad game better revenue, as games that people like (which can be used from the rating of dislikes and likes ratio) should discuss how well and the amount of revenue they should make. For example Phantom Forces, as that game is a true revolution toward roblox games, so it should make better revenue cuts.
Yay! A new video!
Thats not to mentions the hardships of making a good game inside roblox. It starts out easier than making a game in unity for example but there are a lot of limitations you have to overcome in developing a game. Thats not to mention how new roblox updates can often break a game permanently if the developer never comes back to fix it.
honestly just from what im learning from this video, the most "unfair" part to me is that not only do they take 75.5%, but then you have to pay them 5 bucks minimum every month just to get the 24.5% you've earned, to me that's really dumb
Paying 5 dollars isn't that big of a problem when you have to make at least 350 dollars to make money
Most games on roblox are money hungry simulators and roleplaying games. Some projects are cool but most is bad tbh
saying most of roblox games are bad is a bit of a stretch
@@Forcoy welp i used to enjoy roblox but as i got older it made me lose interest.
But i understand that lots of kids still enjoy the games just like i used to
Battle sails, armoured patrol v9.5, zeppelin wars, arsenal, dead ahead(when your team isn’t monkeys), northwind, rise of nations, the Wild West, child labour tycoon 3. Try them they are good
@@Emperoroleary robot 64 is always a great time waster. If you have friends (rare ik) you can try horrific housing on a private server
@@Forcoy I personally just like playing the games I mentioned
Quite an interesting video to watch! A bit different, but this was definitely a very solid video :)
lol i got the gamemaker sponsorship ad in this video as a seperate ad on a completley different video
Why not switch the rates around? That way, it would be a great incentive for developers to create games as well as well as to make it similar to how game stores take their share of cut
I’m so happy to see a new video from you, they’re always interesting!!!
berezaa's cheeky cameo at 5:02
I've made games on Roblox for almost 9 years now. I've seen the platform change from developers just having fun making stuff, the mass copying of games (literally stealing an entire game and reuploading it) and misleading games to scam kids, the peak in my serious development and then the plunge into endless cashgrabs that harbour no interesting gameplay. It's always felt unfair to me that such games can get so many players that it honestly feels pointless to pour my soul and technical knowledge into a game when I know for a fact it won't get players despite being objectively deeper in terms of actual gameplay. Only to make barely any money off the game and then have Roblox take a huge cut.
Roblox also barely listens to its developers, they take forever to do anything. Outlines/highlights were put on the roadmap 6 years ago and only NOW its in beta. They love to break their own engine constantly and has caused me personally endless headaches of debugging something that wasn't even caused by me.
Omg is you :0
I used to make roblox games when I was 10. Roblox introduced me to programming, but when I was 12 I had a game with 70k daily visits, but I realised the low Exchanges so I switched to Unity
what was your game if you mind sharing?
@@korvexus9922 sure. It was called Modded Miners Heaven rez. It's now called industrwlist breakthrough. I'll get the link soon. It was a replica of miners heaven. I know miners heaven had a leaked version but it was old so I recreated it. It was very simmalar I even had multiplayer kinda. But the game died when a official source code was dropped by the owner. There was a version of thst dropped version called heavily Modded Miners haven. And it was not close to how Modded mine was. I recreated it all and he got 5 million visits for adding a feature to change your facility name while I remade the whole game with such features
Making money off roblox is waaaaay to similar to UA-cam.
Both do not give a fuck how much effort you put in, it gets deleted for no reason
So true, i used to be a roblox dev
110% agree there mate!
And after all those money Roblox earned, they used it to sue a roblox youtuber for 1.6 million dollars smh
There are some highly complex game on roblox such as entry point, those who remain, notoriety and so much more
These edits are sooo smooth!
As an ex-programmer on Roblox, this was the exact reason I quit developing on their platform. There is so much more out there, and this just demotivates an aspiring developer when they realize the reality of how much they actually earn.
What language does Roblox use?
@@fdfsdsfds2831 It uses a derived version of Lua. Definately a language I don't recommend learning if you're trying to break into game development or programming in general. Simply because of how there are better languages out there which can achieve what you're making with Lua.
What is the name of the game on 1:10
4:14 i love the objection! theme there
as a developer myself, i dont do dev ex but the earnings are horrendous
As a scripter on the platform, I kinda understand why the amount of revenue roblox takes is justifiable. The roblox studio platform is a super easy and ready to use platform to create games on that roblox provides to you for free. While some other programs sell their platforms, roblox also allows you to upload your game to their website to get free publicity. At the end of the day roblox is taking alot of money but it's justified.
People Make Games: are you really in charge here?
peoples can't understand this
A couple of things missing here context wise.
First of all, going based purely off of the numbers provided in the video, they don’t take 65%. You don’t add percentages together.
If the dev exchange rate is 35%, then it’s not 35% of the total revenue. Only of the robux you are trying to exchange. So of the 800 robux your product sold, you see 364 robux worth in your bank account. This is 45% of that initial 800 (Roblox takes a 55% cut total)
Secondly, of that 55% a large portion goes towards infrastructure. Infrastructure the devs would otherwise have to develop and maintain themselves.
After that cost (I’m going to take a wild guess and say that infrastructure costs are about 25%), there is then advertising for not only Roblox, but your games too.
After all is said and done, I would say Roblox sees about 10-15% in pure profits. This is opposed to your 45% takeaway from your game that you pay no upkeep for (at least not in terms of general game updates and what not)
Just some food for thought
Cheers,
Lucas
the amount of tax they add is so crazy, so if u do like a commission and the payment is a gampass you have to set the price like 5 thousand more robux.
And yet… 920M in revenue is still not enough for even decent moderation
Ontop of that the dev has to pay 20% to 30% tax on earnings depending on where they are in the world.
Where can I get 20%?
Some Roblox games are actually underrated, and their devs
i'm addicted to super golf
@@PolyMars eh-what?
@Jaison Ngock-Ita Roblox is not bad there are bad games that show Roblox the devs some of them have really cool games like polybattle and rise of nations those are few
@Jaison Ngock-Ita also the company is pretty greedy also just search Roblox moderation and bans it just sucks
zkevin
Do remember that initially the main point of making games is just to make robux which you can reinvest into your profile, buy gamepasses on other games, or advertise your game. The devex is just a feature there if anyone wants to make money.
Certainly a good business model for roblox though.
fun fact : roblox got 1.5 billoin a year the dev exchange alone is 400 mil and the 400 mil go to david and aboutt 200 mil go to roblox employee and 500 mil for server hosting / hiring dev and others
(I commented before watching this video)
I completely agree that the current system (DevEx) is kind of terrible. This is mostly due to the fact that roblox pays for a lot of privileges roblox developers have (example: free servers). The good thing is I'd I'd roblox has been making an effort to fix this system.
I thought that roblox was something between scratch and unity, but as it turns out, it's something cooler
bruh
many roblox games are better than some unity games
@@ajemajh it's really complicated to compare tho
Roblox games have high diversity and you can notice the age difference between game types and such. You'll very often find a CoD toxic environment in a competitive pvp game, but the second you lay foot in a main page game, it'll all be children, rainbows and fun. It all depends on what you seek
@@necrotomia I try to find an actual good game to play. I've only founded a few and one of them is Aethelbeorn. And I hate children.
I used to work for a game studio, and it went bankrupt because of this crap.
I was an administrator for a video game on roblox with millions of visits. No money, and they said I wasn't a "real" admin. Not to mention I got witch hunted on every single social media that involved me once I left. This game is terrible.
i think its not worth it to create games on roblox for financial gain
-WAIT A MINUTE GMS2 HAS A TRIAL VERSION? MY DAD JUST BOUGHT THE WHOLE THING FOR ME AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT LOL-
You got infinite time to create whatever your game is
WAAIT A MINUTE DID YOU JUST USE STRIKETHROUGH
@@endgamerplays yeah you just put "-" on both sides of the text and you get -this-
@@ExtemTheHedgehogLol -cool-
-Aaaaaaaaa-
Hello polyMars I wanted to ask a question: I noticed your game that was snake but in Twitter and I really liked it, but I wonder. What happened to it? On 8:51 AM feb 15 2021 you said the snake is sleeping for a update, the snake has not woken up ever since. I want you to make a what happened to the snake on Twitter account?
It sucks that cookiecutter games like brookview or whatever its called hold the top places. It's literally a 2013 era role-playing game but minus any of the fun and charm of the original games, yet it rakes in millions of players every week. All the games with loads of effort get drowned out, and it seems to be useless to try to make a good game anymore