It’s easy to get caught up in the “now” on ROBLOX. Every few days, there’s a new crop of popular and successful games – though only some have enough gameplay depth to maintain their chart-topping positions. But when you step back and look at ROBLOX from 30,000 feet and over the course of months rather than days, you start to see the trends and sweeping shifts of opinion. And at that point, you can draw conclusions about what’s fueling the fire – what’s working for developers and their players.

This is particularly fun in relation to game monetization, especially after the advent of the Developer’s Exchange. Now, being smart about monetizing your game can lead to real-world earnings – currently, if you accumulate 100,000 ROBUX, you can cash out for $100 U.S. dollars.

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We like releasing features that give builders and game developers the freedom and flexibility to experiment and find new paths to success. Our Paid Access feature, which essentially lets you charge Robux for players to access your game, is being leveraged by builders and staff alike. There has been a mixed reaction about whether Paid Access will benefit ROBLOX, though the numbers we pulled were quite revealing. We thought we’d take a look at some of the metrics behind Paid Access to see how builders and game developers are using it, and what strategies appear to be effective in the early stages.

First, Some Numbers

• Combined, the Top Five highest grossing users have earned 1,222,621 Robux in Paid Access alone.
• The Highest Grossing builder to utilize this service has generated 591,291 Robux from Paid Access.
• 712 builders have generated over 100 Robux from Paid Access.
• 120 builders have generated over 1,000 Robux from Paid Access.

Analysis

So far, enabling this service has surprised us in many ways. The top earning Paid Access games are radically different titles–don’t take my word for it either, have a look for yourself.

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A couple weeks ago, we launched a beta test for Paid Access – an experimental configuration setting that allows builders and game developers to charge players once for permanent access to their places and games. Yesterday, we enabled the feature on ROBLOX.com, but not before making significant changes to its inner workings based on your feedback.

1. All ROBLOX builders and developers can sell access to their creations. There is a 90% marketplace fee on Paid Access sales for non-Builders Club members; Builders Club members have the standard 30% marketplace fee.
2. The price you choose is configurable (from 25 ROBUX to 250 ROBUX).
3. There is an entirely new game sort (“Top Paid”) for games that sell access, meaning another way to rise to the top. This is in addition to Paid Access sales factoring into the Top Earning sort, which displays by default on the Games page.

The overarching goal of Paid Access is to increase the quality of content on the Games page. After all, players will only spend ROBUX on good games, and we have the ability to “quarantine” any game that is not as advertised, is broken, or otherwise unplayable and refund any purchases still in escrow. This will mitigate scamming and false advertising.

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You’ve probably noticed over the last month that we’re making significant moves to give you new paths to success and encourage creation and discovery of quality games. While we’ve already launched thumbs up/thumbs down game ratings and the Top Earning sort, we’ve got even more to come – including a new feature for profiting off great games: paid access.

Paid access gives ROBLOX game creators the ability to require that players pay to access their games. Think of it like selling a permanent subscription to a MMO — players pay once and receive unlimited access to the content. The benefits are myriad: you have an opportunity to generate more Robux, paid-access games will have their own category on the Games page (meaning another opportunity to rise to the top), and the feature further encourages high-quality content (players won’t pay for access to a bad game). It will also tie into our Top Earning sort, thereby diversifying the techniques you can use to get noticed in that list. The decision to take advantage of paid access is entirely up to the game creator.

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