This week, the Roblox Creator Store online marketplace announced some changes. As of March 2024, creators will now be able to keep 100% of the revenue they earn, minus taxes and payment processing fees, from selling a few in-game assets: models and plugins.
In case you’re unfamiliar, in Roblox, models and plugins are fundamental user-generated building blocks designed by creators and coders. Models are pre-set designs for in-game items and scenery. For example, a building design or a more fandom-specific item, like this Skibidi Toliet model.
On the other hand, plugins are tools and programs creators can buy to customize the Roblox Studio — the platform and toolbox Roblox creators use to make games and other assets for their audiences. For example, this plugin that makes the moon in a game change according to the time of day.
For those who sell their assets on Roblox, it’s a pretty lucrative business, with the platform’s top creators reportedly earning over $20 million a year for selling avatars, accessories, games, audio, font, images, and so forth, according to Roblox. But the one thorn in these merchants’ side was Roblox itself, which took a 30% cut of creators’ revenue on models and plugins.
This type of revenue split is fairly common for creator platforms, with Twitch also adopting a 70/30 split for streamers on their Partner Plus Program. But creators over on Roblox have made it clear in the past that they’re unhappy with this arrangement.
Unfortunately, Roblox is seemingly only now removing the 70/30 split for models and plugins … not updating monetization on the fonts, meshes, video, images, audio, and all the other assets sold on the Creator Store.
Another major change the Roblox Creator Store is making is its currency system: replacing it entirely so players can buy items with U.S. dollars (USD), as opposed to in-game currency, Robux. This change is set to come into effect in late March, meaning that creators don’t have to wait too long until they can purchase items with USD and collect 100% of the profits.
At the Roblox Developer’s Conference in September 2023, the company revealed that this is a change that was two years in the making. At the conference, it seemed like the 100% revenue-sharing model would apply to all assets sold on the Creator Store, but at the moment, the announcement only appears to apply to models and plugins. It’s also unclear whether these changes will be implemented just in the U.S., or internationally.
The aim of the Roblox Creator Store, the company claimed, is to “foster an ecosystem where creators can safely exchange high-quality assets and solutions including models, plugins, meshes, images, fonts, audio, and video that accelerate creation on Roblox.” We’ll have to see if that’s really what the future holds.
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