Why giving developers more isn’t as easy as increasing DevEx rates; but what can be done to give developers more?
On January 31st, Roblox announced they were to reduce the Cash Out minimum requirement from 50,000 Robux to 30,000 Robux. They stated by allowing this, it would allow “more developers to convert earnings into cash to reinvest in themselves, their studio, and their community.” This follows a similar change to the system the previous year which reduced the cash-out minimum from 100,000 to 50,000 and removed the Roblox Premium requirement (the platform’s paid membership that gives its users perks and benefits.)
While these changes have been greatly appreciated by the community as a whole, there is a subset of people, especially certain developers, who believe that Roblox should be focusing on increasing DevEx rates rather than a reduction in the minimum cash-out requirement. But the answer to giving developers more isn’t as simple as increasing these rates, though with this in mind, what can Roblox do to give developers as much as possible?
According to Roblox’s help article on the topic, the Developer Exchange, also known as “DevEx” is a program created by Roblox that “allows Roblox creators to exchange their Earned Robux for real money.” To be eligible for the program, you must;
- Be at least 13 years of age or older;
- Have at least 30,000 Earned Robux in your account;
- Have a Roblox-verified email address;
- Have a valid DevEx portal account;
- Have an IRS form W-9 (for U.S. taxpayers) or a W-8 (for non-U.S. taxpayers) on file with Roblox;
- Comply with the Ongoing Service Requirements; and
- Be in complete compliance at all times with the Roblox Terms of Use, which include these DevEx Terms and the Roblox Community Standards.(…)
Currently, according to Roblox’s Creator Documentation, the platform gives developers a 24.5% Developer Exchange Share along with a 5.1% “Engagement-Based Payouts (EBP)” share which relates to the Premium Payouts feature, which gives developers Robux “based on the share of the time that Premium members engage in the developer's experiences. Where does the other 70.4% go?
According to the documentation, 23.3% goes to App Store Fees, this relates to “the processing payment fees related to all purchases of Robux” including fees to Apple (iOS), Google and Amazon (Android), and Microsoft (Xbox and Microsoft Store) along with processing fees such as credit card or Paypal, and costs associated with the sale of prepaid cards. 22.4% goes to Platform Hosting and Support, which Roblox states relates to “future-looking investments in the Roblox platform and ongoing research & development.” 15.7% goes to Platform Investment, which they state “relate to Roblox’s maintenance of the servers that all Roblox experiences use, as well as platform-wide customer support, user and experience moderation, and user acquisition. Finally, 9% to what Roblox calls their own share of the cashout pie which they state covers “ongoing services and operating costs.”
So while at first glance it’s easy to look at the cash payout structure and say Roblox is only paying 30%, which is true, when you ultimately look at the larger picture there’s a lot more that goes into how the entire system of Developer Exchange is structured and why it’s inherently not the best to compare the rates of Roblox to that of Epic Games, Steam, Apple, Google or other online storefronts.
Additionally, according to Roblox’s annual 10-K (annual filing), they spent 623,855,000 dollars on “Developer Exchange fees” which is an increase from the year prior having spent 538,321 million on Developer Exchange fees in 2021. In 2022 they reported earnings of 2.23 Billion though posted earnings of -924.37 million. While an increase from 2021’s revenue of 1.92 Billion, it’s also an increase into the red from the -491.65 million the corporation reported relating to earnings. To fully visualize how much Roblox spends on Developer Exchange if the program had seized to exist, the platform would have been profitable in the year 2021 and less within the red during 2022. Of course, the solution isn’t to completely remove Developer Exchange, as that would remove the incentive to develop on the platform seriously, which would likely lead to a decrease in the overall popularity of the platform.
But if increasing Developer Exchange rates aren’t the simplest or easiest solution either, then what is? Firstly, I believe Roblox should be more transparent in relation to what steps they’re taking to improve the Developer Exchange rates. During the Roblox Developers Conference in 2022-an annual conference event where Roblox discusses the direction of the platform including statistics on how the platform is performing along with features they’re working on-the CEO and Co-Founder Dave Baszucki (also known as “Builderman”) was asked about his thoughts on raising DevEx Rates. The response to the question was “We are trying to move as much of the money back to the developers to fuel the developer economy. We will continue to work on bringing more money to creators.” I believe by being more transparent on how they’re working on such methods to give more money to creators, will bring more trust from developers and be more understanding of the entire situation from an economic perspective.
Secondly, Roblox should look into creating the Roblox platform into a third party app-store. There have been discussions that Apple may finally allow third-party app stores on iPhone and iPad due to the European Union’s new Digitial Markets Act (DMA) set to become fully applicable in early 2024. Meanwhile, the Google-owned Android operating system allows users to download third-party app stores as well. This would allow it to possibly avoid the 30% cuts that both Apple, Google, and Amazon take when users purchase Robux or Premium on the platform. They can additionally force any remaining users on the Microsoft Store version of the platform-an already an outdated version of the platform to the web version, where the 30% Microsoft Store fee won’t apply. Unfortunately, this would ultimately not affect the 30% cut taken on the Xbox platform, though statistically, a small minority of users players on Roblox play on an Xbox One or Series X.
Thirdly, Roblox should pay developers proportional to the services they use on the platform. For example, a plugin developer should receive better Developer Exchange rates since the requirements to host the plugin content requires fewer services to be used compared to a developer creating an experience on the platform.
I’ll end this off by giving a few testimonies from Roblox developers on a Developer Forum post called “Issues with the Developer Exchange: Testimonies from the Roblox Dev Community” posted May 2019. You can choose to ignore this section but I believe it shows an important insight into how developers, especially top developers, view the system.
Testimony 1, from NewFissy the creator behind Adopt Me;
“November 2018 was Adopt Me’s near worst month ever and things looked bleak for our studio’s survival. In 4 months, our metrics quadrupled in size, and we were the #1 game on roblox by playtime. What happened?
In Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 we made two strategic hires who drastically changed our trajectory. One was a talented UI designer who helped us reimagine our game’s look and feel. The second was a proficient scripter who drastically sped up our game’s development. Both of these individuals were living paycheck to paycheck (devex to devex) and struggling to pay rent prior to working with us.
The reality is that no outsider to Roblox ever applies for a software engineering role at a Roblox game studio. Roblox is simply too different of a platform, and none of us have the time to onboard an outside software engineer for 6 months, teaching them the intricacies of the Roblox API. Instead, the best candidates for hire are those who have developed their own small indie games and have shown a lot of promise.
However, low devex rates are threatening to uproot many of these same indie devs, including the two we eventually hired, forcing them to look outside roblox for work to make a living. This dramatically limits our ability to scale because these talented individuals we want to hire are leaving the platform at an increasingly alarming rate
Increasing devex rates helps make Roblox development sustainable for small devs. And those devs will either one day create large Roblox games or work for others on large Roblox games.”
Testimony 2, from BuildIntoGames aka Preston, creator behind Pet Simulator;
“Roblox is an extremely competitive and stressful environment. Developers are asked to manage games with MILLIONS of unique users, and we’re only given a tiny fraction of our gross revenue to do it. Most popular games are ‘one man ships’ because they cannot afford to take on artists, programmers, managers, testers, moderators, support, and everything else a game with this amount of traffic asks for. Managing more than one game on this platform is unfathomable for nearly everyone.
Pet Simulator was a personal example for me. For the first few months, I would stay up for very extended periods, sometimes for days, to push out updates weekly. It was absolutely physically and mentally exhausting. I’m thankful I was able to afford to get myself out of that situation, but 99% of other developers cannot say the same.
Roblox has exploded in popularity but finances haven’t kept pace. A Dev-Ex raise would allow developers to hire staff, create legitimate teams & companies, and persuade freelancers to take Roblox seriously.”
Testimony 3, from Onett creator behind Bee Swarm Simulator;
“Roblox caught my attention 10 years ago as an innovative multiplayer building game with a ton of creative potential. I’ve kept an eye on it since then, and after reading about the success of the DevEx program for Jailbreak, put a halt to working on my own mobile game engine to give development on Roblox a try. I began work on Bee Swarm Simulator in December 2017 and launched it in March 2018 — a testament to the ease and speed of learning the Roblox API when you have previous experience making games. I’ve worked full time to expand it since then, but have recently reached a crossroads where I’m trying to decide if Roblox is the right long term decision for myself — this despite being one of the higher paid developers on the platform.
Roblox is uniquely accessible, offering a variety of different services (a game engine, app store, server hosting, and a social media platform) combined in a way that relieves hobbyist and amateur developers of many of the technical pains associated with creating an online game and grants them the potential to find success overnight. But Roblox is also unique in the level uncertainty developers are bound to experience when devoting themselves full time to the platform, seemingly as a consequence of that accessibility. As a solo developer I’ve had to take on many roles to keep Bee Swarm Simulator successful, including game designer, artist, composer, customer support and programmer — and even some I never considered like a community manager with a somewhat public persona. To maintain success on Roblox has demanded total commitment — concepts I had originally worked on years ago for independent projects have bled into my contributions to Bee Swarm Sim, and over the course of the last year, I found myself fully invested in what started as a relatively small project. The ease of entry into Roblox allowed me to quickly support myself full time, but also came with ambiguity of ownership and permanence. I began to wonder how much of myself I should give to a project that I may not have a long term future with. I’ve been fortunate enough that I can afford to shrug the concern off, but I consider this uncertainty to be the biggest hurdle Roblox will have going forward as it tries to attract new developers.
This uncertainty is the result of many factors, including the DevEx rate — essentially the financial ownership a developer has over their game on Roblox. The percentage of revenue a developer receives suggests that the developer isn’t so much an owner of their own game as they are a content creator for Roblox. This contradicts the number of responsibilities and the level of creative contribution we’re required to invest into our games. This is in contrast to paying Roblox a percentage for their services like would be experienced with game engines like Unity, or stores like Steam. Roblox is unique and has no direct analogues, but as it stands the DevEx system and rate seems appropriate for a content creator you’d see selling mods or assets for specific games rather than independent devs and studios using Roblox as a service to make and distribute their own game. In the early days of Roblox I believe this approach made sense — games on the platform acted more as showcases for Roblox’s novel features (eg. the lego-like sandbox physics engine). As the games grew more complex and Roblox transitioned into a full-featured game engine, the role of developers has transformed into something more legitimate, and the games that find success rely more on developer efforts.
This seems to be a foundational problem steering outside professionals and studios away from the platform. The creativity and effort required to succeed on Roblox approaches levels required to create games that can be uploaded on multiple outlets and owned solely by the developers. We don’t know the total cost Roblox has to bear to keep our games operating, but the problem here is one of optics and a sense of ownership. The DevEx rate suggests your contribution to a games success is around 25%, and the agreement of the DevEx program creates a looming uncertainty that even that percentage may be denied on a month by month basis. If top earning developers feel insecure about this arrangement, I’d imagine outside game studios would feel it even more.
The fact that most of the top earning games have been developed by small teams or individuals that have been on the platform for years seems to support this assumption. As of now, there’s little evidence that investing in large teams yields greater return for a Roblox game within the current system. The relatively low DevEx rate combined with uncertainty of the platform creates a situation where investing in a large team or studio carries a considerable risk without precedence of reward. In my case and the cases of some other high-earning devs I’ve spoken with, this is what has caused us to question if Roblox makes sense long term when compared to other platforms with proven opportunities for growth. If Roblox addresses these concerns, it will be in a position to retain and grow with their existing developer base as it matures and becomes more ambitious with the type of games they want to create. As it stands, it not only risks shrinking the established developer base, but is failing to attract outside talent. The goal of having 100-member studios working on Roblox games seems no closer today than it did a year ago — the top earning teams still consist of handfuls of players-turned-developers.
With all that said, I’m one of the few developers who isn’t immediately limited by funding — rather, I’m speaking openly about my long-term concerns with Roblox as a platform. I believe an increase to the DevEx rate is a necessary step in eliminating the uncertainty and sense of illegitimacy that comes with Roblox development, and is required for Roblox to evolve into the large and varied platform it intends to be. Taking steps to help Roblox grow overall will ultimately give developers the certainty they need to establish large studios and work on more complex and ambitious games.”
