Creators behind paid video games or ‘experiences’ on Roblox will get a bigger slice of the revenue generated through user purchases on desktops via real currency. Roblox CEO David Baszucki said that the company will give these developers 50-70 per cent of the revenue from paid titles. Roblox’s new affiliate link programme, announced at the company’s annual developers conference in San Francisco last week, will further give video game developers a 50 per cent cut of any purchases made by a new Roblox user below $100 in the first six months - provided the user signed up through the link. Currently, developers of freemium games on Roblox get a 30 per cent cut of purchases made by users with native Roblox currency. Roblox recorded over 79.5 million daily active users last quarter and intends to grow its user base to 1 billion. In order to reach this goal, the publicly-traded company is trying to attract older users by offering more premium, paid experiences on a wider range of devices including mobile phones and consoles. “We believe we’re setting the groundwork for a more expansive range of type of content on the platform,” Baszucki was quoted as saying by The Verge, adding that there is “a huge effort within the company to support 100-plus-player open-world sports or battle royale-type experiences on low-end devices.” It remains to be seen how app store fees charged by Apple and Google will affect Roblox’s user growth plans. Besides revenue sharing, Roblox made a few other big announcements at its 2024 developer conference such as an upcoming feature called ‘Party Mode’ that will let a group of six users talk to each other and switch experiences together. The immersive online gaming platform is joining hands with e-commerce platform Shopify to let creators sell actual products within experiences.
