The 2024 Roblox Developer’s Conference has already taken place and gave fans a glimpse into the future of the platform, which is aiming for 1 billion daily vigorous users. Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki said the team hopes to achieve that goal by focusing on helping creators build their businesses, scaling creation and access, and connecting people.
Roblox still has a long way to go to reach its goal of one billion daily vigorous users, as the game recorded an impressive 79.5 million daily vigorous users in June 2024, but Baszucki believes this approach and plans will transform the gaming landscape into a place where “10% of all gaming revenue will flow through the Roblox ecosystem and be distributed to our community of creators.”
These plans include a up-to-date party system that lets friends easily play their favorite games together, the development of a “Roblox-created 3D core model designed to support generative AI game creation on the platform,” and up-to-date commerce capabilities that will facilitate creators earn more and even sell their physical goods to more fans.
Roblox introduces up-to-date party system
Roblox’s up-to-date Party system is set to launch in October, and aims to encourage friends to play and communicate with as few barriers as possible. Anyone over the age of nine will be able to employ the feature, with Party launching first with the ability to text each other in the app. Voice will be added later this year for phone-verified users aged 13 or older.
The Party feature will work both inside and outside of the Roblox game. Early next year, the Roblox team will add an API that will allow developers to improve the Party system, allowing players to be teleported to the same starting point, placed in a private lobby, or even pre-paired with the same team.
Another way Roblox is trying to bring people together is by renaming Roblox Groups to Roblox Communities. These spaces will be a place where players can participate in the Forums to share feedback on their experiences, talk about their favorite games and moments, and report issues that come up.
Music is another area Roblox is looking to expand into, as the team will be creating up-to-date ways for players to discover music and connect with artists beyond listening to the songs included in Roblo. Platform features like What’s Playing and Music Charts will be added, while integration with music distribution service DistroKid will be a plain way for artists to upload their work or find music to include in their projects.
Affiliate Program for Creators and Transparent Algorithms
Roblox has announced a creator affiliate program that will reward developers who can bring up-to-date users to the platform. Creators will be able to share a unique link that will earn them money when someone uses it to sign up and buy Robux. Creators will earn a portion of the revenue that the person “generates from their Robux purchases” for the first six months.
The first iteration of this program, which will allow creators to earn up to 50% on qualifying purchases, is open for applications now. The team expects all eligible creators to be eligible by mid-2025.
Creators will also be pleased to know that the Roblox team is improving the way users find their content. Today’s selections on the homepage and Marketplace will highlight even more experiences, and sponsored ad impressions on the Roblox homepage increased from 1.6% in March 2024 to over 8% in June 2024.
Additionally, the team promises “an open and transparent view of search and discovery on Roblox.” This means creators will have a better idea of what the team values and how they can craft their experiences to be as apparent as possible.
Roblox AI and scalability across all devices
The Roblox team wants the platform to perform as well as possible on as many devices as possible, and a up-to-date technology called Harmony aims to optimize the game to achieve this goal. Harmony includes client-side balancing and optimizations for CPU, GPU, and RAM. In the future, this will be expanded to the architecture Roblox supports for “server authority for competitive games.”
AI, which has been a part of Roblox for a while now with Assistant, Texture Generator, and Avatar Auto Setup, is set to be taken to the next level with a up-to-date incubator project that launched just a few months ago. This 3D modeling foundation will be open source and multi-modal, and will “power 3D generation with text, video, and 3D cues.”
The goal is to let game creators create their dreams in any style they prefer—photorealistic, anime, low-poly, or steampunk—and generate objects and scenes that fit them. Game creators will even be able to have AI create an entire world and provide feedback to fine-tune it to their liking.
Additionally, Roblox will soon allow game developers to host high-performance, open-world, sports, or 100-player battle royale games running on devices with 2GB of RAM.
We facilitate creators build their businesses
In addition to helping developers create newer and more ambitious projects, the Roblox team is working to ensure those same creators earn more money for their tough work. A up-to-date in-game pricing optimization option is coming in the “coming months.” This up-to-date tool will conduct pricing tests and recommend the “most attractive pricing strategy.” Regional pricing recommendations will also be tested.
Early next year, creators will be able to sell physical goods from within their games, and the Roblox team will be working with various e-commerce platforms like Shopify to make the process easier and more productive.
Finally, developers will be able to price their paid experiences at real-world currency value on desktop and earn an even larger share of revenue than before. This means experiences sold for $9.99, $29.99, and $49.99 will receive 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. This change will roll out to desktop this year, with other devices hopefully getting the feature in the future.
Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and further TikTok.
