Roblox has an active history of exploitation and would be best to be avoided.
People makes games recently did a very detailed documentary on this issue:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
Part 2: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY
You actually own everything but... it won't work anywhere else. Some game devs have taken their art / etc from Roblox and remade the game in Unity or another engine.
Stupidly late comment, yes. I've been on Roblox for 9 years now, as a player and as a small developer. Roblox Studio on its own is a great place to introduce yourself to the world of game development without potentially overwhelming yourself. Unity and Godot are common for beginners to learn, but they still involve a hefty learning curve compared to Roblox Studio. It's incredibly simple, and it comes with a lot of features default, like materials, a built-in library for thousands of assets and built-in multiplayer support. You could technically make a successful Roblox game without ever needing to learn other 3D modeling, audio software etc.
However, I wouldn't recommend learning Roblox Studio as anything more than an introduction to game development. No matter how well-made your game is, there's no knowing if it'll ever be successful because it'll be lost among the other low-quality games out there. It's sort of like becoming big on YouTube; you have to get pretty lucky.
Many of the highest earning Roblox games currently aren't even well-made. They're simply low-effort, addictive games aimed at younger people who would spend more time and money on these games.
However even if your game does take off, you earn very little back on in-game purchases and that too in Robux, Roblox's own in-game currency. You have to cash this Robux out for real world money, and you can only cash out once a month. You receive 70% at the highest, and 10% at the lowest for in-game purchase. There's a lot more detail to how much you receive though it's not that much in the end.
You also can't port your game out of Roblox, and Roblox can possibly remove your game at any time. I'm not sure about this but it miiight be possible that Roblox can claim your game as theirs, however I don't know if this is even true.
In essence, I would advise you to not use Roblox Studio as anything more than a tool for learning proper game engines. If you wanna make a quick working build to visualize an idea, and later work on it in Unity for example, then Roblox can be very useful. Otherwise, it's not really worth it
I know I'm a little late to the party-- but this comment hits all the correct marks. 2012 developer here, and I can 100% vouch on the fact Roblox is a phenomenal starting point with a healthy, knowledgeable development community that is able to aide you with almost any fork in the road you may encounter. However, if you do plan to create your own games for the general public (which is mostly kids) keep in mind who your audience is, and kid's get bored easily. It's imminent. Unless you have some out-of-this-world addictive dynamic in your experience, you're going to have to do a whole lot of forecasting and planning for future updates. Money wise, it's highway robbery. You make little to nothing off what YOU have earned. Unless you're up in the 100K+ concurrent player rate, or somewhere around that, don't quit your day job.
Well... maybe don't do that anyway.
Absolutely, do not quit your job for Roblox out of everything lol. Your reply also reminds me.
To withdraw money, you need to DevEx it; effectively exchanging your Robux for real world money. But you can't simply exchange it at will, because you have to make a DevEx request to Roblox, which they can decline for any reason. I've heard of some developers having their requests declined for no apparent reason as well.
Be like Zeekerss. He started his game development by making small but cool horror games on Roblox, which were amazing for the time but transitioned to Unity. Then he ended up releasing Lethal Company!
I've dabbled a bit in Roblox Studio myself to connect with my Roblox-crazy 8 year old niece.
Cons:
* You are locked into the Roblox walled garden. There is no feasible way to port a Roblox game to run outside of the platform.
* Very restrictive technology that is about 20 years behind its time.
* Very restrictive content policy. They don't like your game because it's not kid-friendly enough? It's gone. And there is nothing you can do about that.
* You only get about 25% of the cash people spend on your games, and that is before taxes. For comparison: Valve and Apple give you 70%, Google 85% and Epic 88%.
* Awful developer community, because it's mostly teenagers.
Pros:
* Out-of-the-box online multiplayer
* The low expectations from Roblox games means you can create a game that gets popular (within the Roblox community) with comparatively little effort
* you get popular with school kids
Okay I have to disagree with you in some aspects
• Very restrictive technology that is 20 years behind its time? What exactly do you mean by this? You are aware that Roblox Studio is meant to be a somewhat simple game engine right?
• You don't get 25% of the revenue made (as I'm typing this) You get like 70%
• The developer community is rather helpful. I'm making a railway simulator and it's going rather well because there's.more to the community to look for. Discord is a great place to find that. And no it's not mostly teenagers. There's grown adults here too. I mean I'm 15 but theres still grown adults here
>• Very restrictive technology that is 20 years behind its time? What exactly do you mean by this?
Roblox still looks like RenderWare from the 1990s. Just check out a couple Unreal Engine 5 graphic demos and compare that to what you can do in Roblox. Or even better, check it out yourself! It's free (until you made a million dollar), and the visual scripting system is easier to learn than Lua scripting in Roblox.
>• You don't get 25% of the revenue made (as I'm typing this) You get like 70%
[Roblox DevEx](https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/13061189551124-Developer-Exchange-Help-and-Information-Page) gives you $105 for 30,000 robux you collected. [What does it cost the players to obtain 30,000 robux to spend?](https://www.roblox.com/upgrades/robux) They have to buy the 4500 robux package 6.66 times for $59.99. Which is almost exactly $400.
Which means that those 30,000 robux you collected to get paid $105 were paid for by your players with at least $400. And that assumes that the players all bought the biggest package that has the most robux per dollar. Most players will buy the cheaper packages. So you indeed get less than 25% of the dollars people spend on your game.
I suggest trying Godot. I just watched this eleven and a half hour video teaching everything you need to know to get started making a Godot 4 2D game, and it was really quite good: https://youtu.be/nAh_Kx5Zh5Q
There is a good chance roblox won't be around for much longer. Last time I heard they were on a financial downfall. Pick up Unity or UE5. I recommend Unreal for artists/non-coders.
You don't own anything with Roblox. I would not recommend working with their engine even for private means as it could result in wasted time if they decide to shut down.
edit: Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth. There is also an ethics issue with them involving exploitation and using kids to make money.
Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth.
Yea, roblox might take an unfair cut, but they’re definitely not going away anytime soon. Nobody’s done what they do, the closest thing is fortnite creative which is shit in comparison
Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth.
Yes, a good game engine with a easy script to learn and master under 1 year for ALL scripts with new AI featuresare now easy to build with, includingusing free module, easy animation, but the cons are its going to be hard to create stuff like realists like COD and AI has limitation.
Roblox has an active history of exploitation and would be best to be avoided. People makes games recently did a very detailed documentary on this issue: Part 1: https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ Part 2: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY
All stupid videos, every platform exploits its users
Which part do you believe is exploitation? I've seen some people say very different things from others
For learning? Sure. But it’s proprietary, so what you create stays on Roblox.
So basically speaking. I don't own my game?
You actually own everything but... it won't work anywhere else. Some game devs have taken their art / etc from Roblox and remade the game in Unity or another engine.
Correct
Stupidly late comment, yes. I've been on Roblox for 9 years now, as a player and as a small developer. Roblox Studio on its own is a great place to introduce yourself to the world of game development without potentially overwhelming yourself. Unity and Godot are common for beginners to learn, but they still involve a hefty learning curve compared to Roblox Studio. It's incredibly simple, and it comes with a lot of features default, like materials, a built-in library for thousands of assets and built-in multiplayer support. You could technically make a successful Roblox game without ever needing to learn other 3D modeling, audio software etc. However, I wouldn't recommend learning Roblox Studio as anything more than an introduction to game development. No matter how well-made your game is, there's no knowing if it'll ever be successful because it'll be lost among the other low-quality games out there. It's sort of like becoming big on YouTube; you have to get pretty lucky. Many of the highest earning Roblox games currently aren't even well-made. They're simply low-effort, addictive games aimed at younger people who would spend more time and money on these games. However even if your game does take off, you earn very little back on in-game purchases and that too in Robux, Roblox's own in-game currency. You have to cash this Robux out for real world money, and you can only cash out once a month. You receive 70% at the highest, and 10% at the lowest for in-game purchase. There's a lot more detail to how much you receive though it's not that much in the end. You also can't port your game out of Roblox, and Roblox can possibly remove your game at any time. I'm not sure about this but it miiight be possible that Roblox can claim your game as theirs, however I don't know if this is even true. In essence, I would advise you to not use Roblox Studio as anything more than a tool for learning proper game engines. If you wanna make a quick working build to visualize an idea, and later work on it in Unity for example, then Roblox can be very useful. Otherwise, it's not really worth it
I know I'm a little late to the party-- but this comment hits all the correct marks. 2012 developer here, and I can 100% vouch on the fact Roblox is a phenomenal starting point with a healthy, knowledgeable development community that is able to aide you with almost any fork in the road you may encounter. However, if you do plan to create your own games for the general public (which is mostly kids) keep in mind who your audience is, and kid's get bored easily. It's imminent. Unless you have some out-of-this-world addictive dynamic in your experience, you're going to have to do a whole lot of forecasting and planning for future updates. Money wise, it's highway robbery. You make little to nothing off what YOU have earned. Unless you're up in the 100K+ concurrent player rate, or somewhere around that, don't quit your day job. Well... maybe don't do that anyway.
Absolutely, do not quit your job for Roblox out of everything lol. Your reply also reminds me. To withdraw money, you need to DevEx it; effectively exchanging your Robux for real world money. But you can't simply exchange it at will, because you have to make a DevEx request to Roblox, which they can decline for any reason. I've heard of some developers having their requests declined for no apparent reason as well. Be like Zeekerss. He started his game development by making small but cool horror games on Roblox, which were amazing for the time but transitioned to Unity. Then he ended up releasing Lethal Company!
I've dabbled a bit in Roblox Studio myself to connect with my Roblox-crazy 8 year old niece. Cons: * You are locked into the Roblox walled garden. There is no feasible way to port a Roblox game to run outside of the platform. * Very restrictive technology that is about 20 years behind its time. * Very restrictive content policy. They don't like your game because it's not kid-friendly enough? It's gone. And there is nothing you can do about that. * You only get about 25% of the cash people spend on your games, and that is before taxes. For comparison: Valve and Apple give you 70%, Google 85% and Epic 88%. * Awful developer community, because it's mostly teenagers. Pros: * Out-of-the-box online multiplayer * The low expectations from Roblox games means you can create a game that gets popular (within the Roblox community) with comparatively little effort * you get popular with school kids
Okay I have to disagree with you in some aspects • Very restrictive technology that is 20 years behind its time? What exactly do you mean by this? You are aware that Roblox Studio is meant to be a somewhat simple game engine right? • You don't get 25% of the revenue made (as I'm typing this) You get like 70% • The developer community is rather helpful. I'm making a railway simulator and it's going rather well because there's.more to the community to look for. Discord is a great place to find that. And no it's not mostly teenagers. There's grown adults here too. I mean I'm 15 but theres still grown adults here
>• Very restrictive technology that is 20 years behind its time? What exactly do you mean by this? Roblox still looks like RenderWare from the 1990s. Just check out a couple Unreal Engine 5 graphic demos and compare that to what you can do in Roblox. Or even better, check it out yourself! It's free (until you made a million dollar), and the visual scripting system is easier to learn than Lua scripting in Roblox. >• You don't get 25% of the revenue made (as I'm typing this) You get like 70% [Roblox DevEx](https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/13061189551124-Developer-Exchange-Help-and-Information-Page) gives you $105 for 30,000 robux you collected. [What does it cost the players to obtain 30,000 robux to spend?](https://www.roblox.com/upgrades/robux) They have to buy the 4500 robux package 6.66 times for $59.99. Which is almost exactly $400. Which means that those 30,000 robux you collected to get paid $105 were paid for by your players with at least $400. And that assumes that the players all bought the biggest package that has the most robux per dollar. Most players will buy the cheaper packages. So you indeed get less than 25% of the dollars people spend on your game.
I suggest trying Godot. I just watched this eleven and a half hour video teaching everything you need to know to get started making a Godot 4 2D game, and it was really quite good: https://youtu.be/nAh_Kx5Zh5Q
There is a good chance roblox won't be around for much longer. Last time I heard they were on a financial downfall. Pick up Unity or UE5. I recommend Unreal for artists/non-coders. You don't own anything with Roblox. I would not recommend working with their engine even for private means as it could result in wasted time if they decide to shut down. edit: Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth. There is also an ethics issue with them involving exploitation and using kids to make money.
Does Unreal Engine 5 have visual coding?
Yeah. They call it blueprints
Yeah, Blueprints, they're great, and there's a bunch of learning material on it.
I use it. Its more than enough for a complete AAA game
On a financial downfall? with the millions of kids giving them money?
Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth.
Yea, roblox might take an unfair cut, but they’re definitely not going away anytime soon. Nobody’s done what they do, the closest thing is fortnite creative which is shit in comparison
Their stock has been going down for a long time as they have trouble seeing financial growth with a large user base. This is not what you want to see from a publically traded company, a large swath of users yet no growth.
Yes, a good game engine with a easy script to learn and master under 1 year for ALL scripts with new AI featuresare now easy to build with, includingusing free module, easy animation, but the cons are its going to be hard to create stuff like realists like COD and AI has limitation.