Can Roblox players unlock paid items for free now? — Beyond The Blox transcript

Adam: Tix were really interesting 'cause you used to get 'em for free as a daily reward every time you logged into the platform each day. I think it was roughly 10 Tix to one Robux. So you could, in theory, earn one Robux every single day. Fedor: I remember chatting to some developers at this past RDC and they were telling me about how ridiculous it was because they'd get like a Tix bonus whenever somebody would join their game.

So when they rolled out, the DevEx program, they were like realizing just how much money they'd gotten just from people joining the game without even like monetizing anything at all. Adam: Welcome back to Beyond The Blox. This week rewarded video ads rolled out to everyone. Developers got better tools to reimport meshes. Content sharing APIs were released to make our own versions of Roblox Moments, Fedor: and today's picks in the marketplace are going festive.

Script sync is now in beta. Game page videos got an upgrade and Roblox have opened up the ability to add game passes to Robux purchase prompts. Adam: But first, we are your hosts. I'm Adam. And I'm Fedor. Unfortunately, Anthony's off sick, but we've had loads of new announcements this week, so we're gonna dive right in with rewarded video ads. So rewarded video ads have been in. Beta for a little while, but they've now been rolled out to all ads eligible creators giving more developers the ability to earn revenue, by letting players watch ads in exchange for rewards. so as the player, you might see more of these rolling out across experiences where.

For example, if you fell off a level in an obby and you wanted to continue where you were, maybe previously the developer would try and sell you something for Robux. but if you don't have any Robux, you just had to settle for not having that reward. rewarded ads is another way of the developer giving you something valuable, without you having to spend anything. You just have to spend maybe. 30 seconds of your time watching, a video ad.

We've seen this format across mobile games for a very long time. so it was just a matter of time before it came to Roblox. And like I say, this is the rollout to everybody. so any public experience, any public game with at least 2000 monthly visitors with no freeform user creation or AI interactions. Can basically add this feature to their game. So yeah, I'm quite excited to add this one, I think is a really nice way to bridge that gap between, being able to earn things for free in your game, while still keeping rewards valuable, and, paying the developer for the time to implement that.

Fedor, can you think of any ways that you are gonna add this to your games? Fedor: Yeah, overall I'm pretty excited about this feature. I think there's always a fine line between, adding ads in a way that isn't intrusive. I know for. at least when I initially got into Roblox, a big reason that I really enjoyed the platform was because of the fact that unlike a lot of mobile games at the time, which would just fill your screen with ads relentlessly, Roblox was relatively free of those, like once you were in the game, your experience wasn't gonna be interrupted. but I think this feature doesn't really conflict with that at all because it's always a choice that users are making to specifically watch that ad.

It's not like it's just gonna appear on your screen and you, have no choice about it. I actually attended at RDC, I attended a panel with Hassim and I believe the developers of Evade where they talked a little bit about this feature and how they were using it in their games. and what you said that like in Evade they had a system where people would have to pay Robux to Respawn after dying, which was really great if you were a developer or a player who just has 15 Robux lying around. and you really want to get back into the action, but if you're a player who just doesn't have the ability to get more Robux at the time, you're completely locked out of that system.

And that really just hurts your engagement with the game and it hurts the developer. and it's really a unilaterally non-beneficial situation because if you were to hand out these things for free, there's really no value to them. So this is a really interesting kind of compromise. Where you're still giving players the ability to engage with some of these premium features without actually having to pay off. And they also mentioned some really interesting analytical insight where once a player had received a taste of these special advantages that you normally get exclusively through Robux, they were significantly more likely to engage with the game because they'd already felt that they'd committed something, even if it wasn't actual Roblox currency.

But a video ad. 'cause I know that at least when I buy something in a game, that's like a, an additional level of commitment for me. So overall, I've definitely got some interesting ideas about how I can implement this into the various games I'm working on. Generally, like, you said, competitive things where, there's already a dev product that lets you like, come back or, gain an advantage temporarily. video ads could be super powerful for that to drive up a little bit of monetization.

But also I think more importantly, like increased user engagement and their commitment to that game without necessarily needing to spend money, because that's just not something all players can be doing. Adam: Absolutely. Yeah. On a similar sort of thing to players feeling committed to the game. one other example that I think was given during the RDC talks was giving players a trial of something that they would otherwise have to pay for.

If it is something that is a recurring cost or it's like a subscription or something, you could give them a rewarded ad for, I dunno, a day, or 10 minutes trial with this particular thing or, however long it might be, whatever it's worth to the, developer. And that people then don't have to spend their money, try it out, see that they like it, and then. Maybe you don't necessarily have that option to keep watching rewarded ads, but it's given you that taste and then that converts players to, to actually spend robots on particular features as well.

So that's quite interesting. One way that I think I'm going to add this to one of our games is, we've got in-game currency that you can only purchase using Robux or you can earn by, visiting regularly. if you visit every single day, you start building up this visit streak and that gives you some of this premium currency. a third option could be. Rewarded ads. yeah. And the developer can see roughly how much they get from each rewarded ad.

And so you can factor that into how big the reward is that you're giving players, in a, in, return for that. So yeah, very, interesting feature. hopefully we don't see it plastered absolutely everywhere. generally I think, people have worried about that with other features that Roblox has rolled out. When subscriptions were announced, people were worried that everything would become A subscription and we haven't really seen that.

We've seen a quite measured rollout of it. I'm hoping the rewarded ads is similar and also Roblox can control whether or not a rewarded ad is actually available to show. so you won't always guarantee that you can show a player a rewarded ad. You have to. Check first. Do we have an ad to show them? Roblox says yes, and then you show it to them. So there is at least some control there to stop it becoming those very spammy mobile ads.

Oh yeah. That would just throw ads at you again and again in the hope that you pay to, to remove them. So yeah. Really, interesting feature. that was all that there was on that really just a PSA, that, that's, now out for everyone. Fedor: Yeah. speaking of doing, repetitive things again and again, something that I've had the displeasure of doing again and again is reimporting my assets into studio. for those who aren't in the know, or, haven't spent time with the 3D modeling workflows and Roblox Studio. the way that asset creation works is that, you go from a concept in your head or some sketches or whatever, you usually put that together in a 3D modeling program like Blender or Cinema four D just because ROBLOX is modeling tools aren't quite yet where, they're not quite on par with these more complex tools.

And then what you do is you export the mesh assets out of that modeling program. Into Roblox Studio where you do the final polishing touches, you slap on your textures and you weld everything together. if it's a car you set up that the wheels are gonna spin and that it's gonna be connected to the body and there's gonna be a physical part that defines how heavy it is. And something that happens and has happened, unfortunately to me quite a bit, is I'll go through that.

Rather tedious process of setting stuff up. And then I'll look at the mesh and I'll be like, shoot, I messed something up. maybe there's a face that I forgot to, to fill in and there's just like a hole in my car. Or the texture is messed up and there's just like a random red square somewhere. and as a developer. it's this crushing moment where you're like, damn, do I really want to go all the way back to the start of the pipeline, redo everything, re-export and redo in studio? and there's actually been moments in some of my games, like I have a game course versus trunks where the back of the truck, this is like a pretty successful game at this point.

The back of the truck has like weird holes in it because I went through all of the process of rigging it up. It finally worked in the, like the physical implementation that I wanted it to, and then I realized that the mesh was messed up and I. This was like the end of a three hour day. I was like, you know what does not matter. I do not concern myself with that. But this feature, it seems like Roblox has finally heard our prayers and are, and our cursing of the engine, and they have implemented reimport at least into a beta for now.

So basically what I've just described, what Roblox will now do is maintain a link between the mesh files on your local computer and the actual assets you've imported into studio. So that means that, let's say I do have my truck with the messed up geometry and the face that I need to fill in, instead of having to go back, fix that face, and then just basically start from scratch, I'm able to just fix it in my 3D modeling pl software like Blender, export it.

Hit the reimport button in studio and then like magic, everything is gonna be updated without overriding, my geometry data and my welds and my, textures and all of that wonderful stuff. There are some limitations about this. it currently doesn't work on rigs and avatars and characters, which is a surprising twist for me. I figured that is like a, big pain point with adjusting bones and stuff, but it seems like they haven't quite gotten that down.

I'd imagine they're working on support for that, and maybe once this beta is over, they'll have that. But overall, a massive quality of life fix for 3D modelers all around. So I'm very excited to see this used. Adam: Yeah. this is huge. I think there's a lot of stuff that you might want to do in Roblox Studio after importing a mesh, like you say, I think. The common ones that have come up on mine is like naming the parts.

If someone didn't name them nicely and Blender, you name them Roblox. That for Fedor: sure. Adam: cube one, cube two, Q3, cube four. Exactly. Yeah. Everything's just crazy names. and even if you have named them nicely, Roblox has still got a weird kind of naming convention when it brings things in that you might not want. It might not work with your scripts. So there's renaming of things, colors and materials. If you're not relying on textures and you're not necessarily relying on PBR, If you've colored a whole bunch of parts, material them.

Anchored them, set the collisions, all of those sorts of things. Yeah. It's just so annoying when you reimport that. So this is, quite exciting for sure. One part of it that you said that maybe limits its utility was you said it, it remembered the file. and that's how it, it does the reimport. Does that mean that you couldn't later, open studio on a different computer where maybe that meshes somewhere else and be able to import it and.

Also, if I fixed something and saved it, instead of overriding the original, I save it as V two or V three. does that not work perfectly with this import system? Yeah, Fedor: to answer your question about different computers, it does seem like that probably will be a bit difficult to do, is the file is definitely the source of truth there. So then if you go onto another computer that just doesn't have it. That is going to be tricky.

Like you'll still, obviously the files are uploaded onto the Roblox Cloud, but. Going back, would be, as in going back to the original file, if you don't have the original file, is difficult to do. Adam: No, that's, interesting. It's an interesting look behind the curtain of, how this works because we saw it at RDC without sort of the technical detail behind it. And I did wonder how does it know what's changed? is it.

Can I upload? Absolutely any model, any mesh and it's trying to map that to the original and, what kind of crazy things would happen if I just picked one that was totally different? Fedor: It seems like the way it works is that each instance will have a reimport path that is like automatically set off, when you hit the reimport button. And then it does read like your file paths are never saved in the place file. And you can have different reimport paths on different devices for the same instance.

So you could have a mesh on my MacBook here, and then I have that set up and then I goes back to my computer. But I would still need to bring the original mesh over, I'd imagine, to make any actual changes. But I could have those links going separately. Yeah, for sure. And it seems no. Interesting. that's your question. Yeah. It, relies on like mesh pathing and naming to figure out how to match stuff up. So if you try to import a giraffe into the place of a car, there's probably not gonna be much overlap in the naming.

Like I said, Jeff, that makes a lot of sense still in beta and I'm sure there's gonna be rolling stuff out, to improve this, but. any feature that lets developers spend more time working on creating beautiful and fun games as opposed to, reimporting the same asset 20 times is a massive win. In my book, Adam: on a similar sort of theme of developer tools, we, also got, there was loads of announcements this week for developers, but this next one was about the content sharing APIs that have.

Also made it into beta. So this is related to what we've been speaking about in a couple of other episodes with Roblox Moments and kind of sharing highlights, sharing captures that players have captured within your game. So these content sharing APIs are essentially Roblox now releasing Intubator. All of the APIs that were behind Roblox Moments, including open-sourcing the Roblox Moments source code as well in case you just wanted to go and get inspiration from there.

So this will let creators fully build kind of in-experience, content creation, sharing and discovery systems for video content. So we already had capture and sharing APIs to capture video and capture images and prompt the user if they'd like to share those off platform or save them to their computer. Now we're getting the upload API, which will let you prompt players to publish their captures from your experience to Roblox as cloud platform of this content.

We also get recommendation APIs so that you can build a recommendation system within. Experience. So I think before we've talked about, this could be highlight reels from a race, in my bowling game it could be, highlights of some of the best, best strikes and stuff that people have done. You could build a recommendation system to. surface that content that people have been publishing to other users within your experience as well.

And like I say, the moment's experience source code is out there. So if you're not quite sure how best to implement this, you can go and take a look at that as well. You. We'll have to answer a couple more questions on the maturity and compliance questionnaire, which is getting quite large now. and these are to let Roblox know whether or not there is, a continuous load and autoplay feature for your recommendations. and also just to let them know if you're planning to use the upload API for.

Media sharing because some regions might restrict access to those. and I think the continuous load and autoplay one is so that if your game is the type of one that someone might get addicted to, like scrolling TikTok and they might be in there for hours just scrolling through all this content. that might affect the age rating and availability of your, experience as well. What do you think about this one, Fedor? Fedor: Yeah.

I think when they announced that at RDC, Roblox Moments was this thing that kind of appeared out of the blue and everybody was very curious about it for a little bit, and then they launched it and it I've more or less forgotten about it. there's. There's been. There's been there. I've had some really interesting ideas about how I could implement it into my game, but it seems like there's just not that much usage of the system.

Like I was just checking. The Roblox Moments game has about 500 players at the moment, which just isn't a big enough demographic for me to spend the resources implementing all of this stuff into my game where like the maximum, if I were to get the entire Roblox moments. Listening or viewing body to get into my game, that'd be a 500 player boost, which just doesn't feel that significant. So I think the opening of this API to other games is gonna be really exciting because I think generally developers know best how to implement these kinds of features for players.

Demonstrated by the success of other TikTok style games like FlipIt, which in comparison's at 10,000 players right now. I think so, definitely. I think I'm very curious to see if this entire Roblox moment sort of ecosystem gains, like scale and viewership as developers implement their own versions of that. Because I'm still very curious in implementing stuff. It's just that if there's so little people viewing, I'm not sure if it makes sense for me as a developer.

Adam: Yeah, definitely. as you say, I think the opening of this, it, you, can almost create an ecosystem per experience with, the opening of this. So if I wanted to roll this out as highlight reels for my game and I only wanted you to see that content get recommended, we have, the option to do that. so yeah, it's really interesting to see. I'm curious to see how developers roll this out in some of the really big games where.

There probably is enough content that users are capturing that you could have a really meaningful recommendation. API. yeah. Yeah. I think there's, some games that definitely lend themselves towards this type of thing. Fedor: Speaking of evolving recommendation algorithms, our next headline is gonna have us feeling the holiday spirit. do you have some extra Roblox you're looking to get rid of in this upcoming month of December?

In this, in that case, the Roblox catalog team has just the update for you because they're launching, the. Deprioritization of the today's Pixar over the month of December in favor of festive themed catalog sections. Essentially, if you have been around on Roblox for quite a bit, like you and I, you'll remember the sales they've done. I remember the fond memories of opening up Roblox on Memorial Day around Christmas Day and seeing.

A whole bunch of new stuff sold by Roblox just for those specific days. unfortunately this isn't quite that as this is going to be still very UGC creator driven, but just the idea of the catalog sort of becoming themed two different things at specific times of this festive month, I think is going to be pretty fun. So the current themes they have lined up is. Black Friday, which will ca showcase some monochromatic items that are dark as cold.

They'll have ugly sweaters, which will feature exactly what you think. Ugly sweaters, snow business, which is just any kind of snowy item. Jelly elves, which are holiday clothes for all merry makers. Evergreen Pine themed style clothing, like Christmas trees, holiday party, with the fest. Looks for fanciful gatherings. Such a gift with boxes, bows and gifts. Solid glow. And then welcome 2026 for looks that'll help you bring in the new year.

So overall, I think this is a really fun thing they're doing. I personally. Really have, like I said, fond memories of the specific themed sales that Roblox would do. So I think this is a really great take on that while still emphasizing that UGC creators should be at the front of this instead of, Roblox from an items. So yeah, I think a very fond fest of. Adam: Yeah, it should be quite interesting to see what gets picked there.

I think Roblox have been trying to experiment quite a bit with the algorithms and how they use today's picks versus other forms of curation. We saw during Halloween, they were trying out different things with experiences and the Halloween spotlight took over from today's picks. on, I think on the marketplace during Halloween, there was like a whole. Halloween section as well. Yeah. that you could click into. But yeah, this seems like a much, much further, I dunno, much broader rollout of that across all of the winter period.

Fedor: Just a quick note, they're actually looking for people to submit. nominations for these various categories that I listed out above. So I think we can drop down the link to the form that'll let you submit some of your favorite items, fitting these themes in case you wanna show off your favorite holiday party swag or, the best looking Black Friday image. Adam: yeah, that's quite interesting. Yeah. Opening up the finding of these items, the curation of them. so definitely, we'll pop that in the description.

I've still not got into. Creating avatar items. but it's a very interesting ecosystem that I wanna, I want to look into. I'd be curious to know how today's picks has been working up till this point. if you are a UGC creator who's watching this, let us know what you think of this in the comments as well. you'll probably have some more interesting insights then than I could bring to it. Fedor: Absolutely. Yeah. Adam: Perfect. we'll go into our Roblox trivia segment to break up the, long list of announcements that we're going through this episode.

So let's have a look at last week's question. Last week we asked you, Roblox used to have a second currency alongside Robux. We asked what was it called and when was it removed from the platform? So I think we both knew what that Absolutely, yeah. That currency was. And we also saw. Aiden Park on YouTube also, guess, and it was tickets or Tix as it was often shortened to which were those little golden, rectangular tickets.

You can probably still find them on various bits of Roblox merchandise, and if you go on a deep dive in YouTube to. To the early days. but when was it removed? What were you thinking on this? yeah, Fedor: so actually, I distinctly remember Tix being around, I spent quite a bit of time playing as a guest, which is a whole nother throwback that I think most people won't even know existed. But I do remember Tix being removed shortly after I joined.

My guess would've been 2016 and I believe that is the correct answer. Adam: Yeah, 2016 Tix were really interesting 'cause you used to get 'em for free as a daily reward every time you logged into the platform each day. I think you got 10 Tix every time you logged in and those, you could buy avatar items, you could buy things in games, whether that was game passes or other things. developers had the option to sell in Robux or Tix.

And, do you remember the exchange as well that you used to be able to save up your Tix and exchange them for Robux and vice versa? Yeah, but Fedor: it was a market, wasn't it? Where the exchange rate was determined. Yeah, It was, so fun. Adam: It would, fluctuate. It was so interesting. and it was roughly. I think it was roughly 10 Tix to one Robux. so you could, in theory, earn one Robux every single day. and also as a developer, if people were buying things in Tix, used to get those. but yeah, it was removed in 2016.

And the main reason I think for that was, Robux was now something that developers could cash out for real money. It had actual value behind it. And giving everyone a login reward, they could exchange for Robux, just wasn't compatible with that. so unfortunately we did see it phased out in 2016 and Roblox's DevEx system came around in 20 15, 20 16. And yeah, that exchange method was gone. Fedor: Yeah. I remember chatting to some developers at this past RDC, 'cause I wasn't really a, I'd only played Roblox in the time period when Tix were around and they were telling me about how ridiculous it was because they'd get like a Tix bonus whenever somebody would join their game.

So when they started rolling out the DevEx program, they were realizing just how much money They'd gotten just from people joining the game without even like monetizing anything at all. And it was this very, funny moment for a bit. yeah, definitely makes sense why they got rid of it, even if it was a very fondly remembered community thing. Adam: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm trying to think. When I think you, this was the way that devs got headless horsemen back in the day, right before you could exchange things for money, was you got one Tix per visit of your place.

So if you were someone who got a million visits, a million Tix, a hundred thousand Robux like you could earn quite a bit. but like I say, it had no monetary value back then, so it was just. Internet points and, things for your avatar. Okay. onto the question for this episode, Roblox announced a major economy milestone in 2025. So this year, how much did creators globally earn from DevEx? From March, 2024 to March, 2025.

So over those 12 months, March to March, how much did creators globally earn via DevEx? Fedor: I don't really know. I definitely remember hearing some very impressive numbers and being like, oh, wow. I make a tiny fraction of that. How great. but it was. Definitely, I wanna say in the hundreds, millions. Is that crazy? Maybe less. I think so, Adam: potentially. I, no, I think it must have been at least that, right? Like the quite a bit top creators on the platform. some of these big studios like Valex, adopt Me Studio and, those sorts of things.

Uplift, that's the one. we know that they get millions of dollars to be able to support all the staff that they have as being one of the biggest ones on the platform. Obviously the curve drops off real fast. But, if they're earning millions and you think that there's, thousands upon thousands of developers who are earning enough to cash out, I dunno, I'm feeling it could be close to the big 1 billion. Which would be insane.

I'm gonna put my guess around there. You can put your guess at a few hundred million. Yeah, we'll see what everyone else guesses in the comments this week and maybe whoever's closest, get a few extra internet points, get you a few Tix, really. so yeah, let us know on the comments what you think. how much creators earn from DevEx from March, 2024 to March, 2025. Fedor: I'm trying really hard to get a wonderful segue going, but it's just not happening.

Speaking of massive creator milestones, we've got a milestone that is pretty massive for me as a programmer, which is the introduction of studio Script sync into beta. So discussing this pre-show. I was a little bit curious because this was a, initially an early preview a year ago, and then it came into, I think a, another sort of stage of the early bless, early preview. and then now finally it's in beta. but the thing that matters most is essentially what studio script sync means for developers now is that you have the ability to sync all of your scripts in a specific game.

Onto your local computer to be able to modify them in any kind of editor you want to use and then bring that right back in without having to use an intermediary. bit of software like Rojo, which is the biggest one. I think the biggest change for this is just how easy it is to use, in comparison to Rojo. I know a lot of my, actually rather like advanced programmer friends who don't like using Rojo just because of how Much config there is when you have to set up a new project, like you have to go link stuff up.

And then if you're working with multiple people and you want to have that in GitHub, you've gotta have like separate branches and separate places. And I've worked on projects where it was set up by somebody who really knew what they were doing and it, worked brilliantly. But it's also very easy to mess up because you're pulling the source of truth off the Roblox platform. Like the sort of unfamiliar, for those not in the know source of truth basically means like, where is the ultimate kind of like where's the true correct code? if you make a change on your computer, does that override the stuff in studio or does the stuff in studio override the stuff on your computer?

And what Rojo does is that whenever you set up studio, it just looks at your computer, which is typically connected to some sort of cloud management thing, like GitHub, and then just pulls that in, which means that if you try making changes in studio, it's just gone. Absolutely. And that has the potential to lead some newer developers into really weird like merge conflicts and a whole lot of scary software development stuff that isn't really in line with Roblox as vision of easy to pick up, easy to learn, easy to create. and this file sync solution basically just lets you keep the source of truth in studio.

And then whenever you want to edit stuff in your editor, you just pull it all out, you make your changes, and it all automatically syncs back in, just like that, at a press of a button. Which I think is overall really exciting because there are a lot of benefits from using an out outside editor. Just, being able to customize your themes and everything looks a little bit nicer, and you have some more powerful auto complete or time tracking tools.

So overall, I think this is a very exciting change for those who aren't looking to do like a whole massively set up tech, over-engineered setup of GitHub and source control, because a lot of the time it's nice to have an external editor, but all of that hassle just in case it worth it for developers. So overall, a very exciting. Adam: Yeah, for what it's worth, I have that absolute over-engineered setup. source control, all that sort of stuff. but more out of necessity of wanting to use my own IDE my own editor. if you pay for things like Windsurf or Cursor, those kinds of AI editors, you very much might want to edit there instead of in studio.

Even though Roblox has been doing some good updates to the Studio script editor over time as well. but yeah, I think it's interesting that Roblox becomes, or remains the source of truth with this, especially because they added, the ability to use kind of drafts and commits to your scripts in Roblox a little while ago. so this is building upon that you don't have to go and set up, as you say, a, GitHub repo, to be able to share files.

This sounds like it'll still work nicely, even if you've got multiple scripters in your project, you'll just have to really buy into using Roblox's own systems. So yeah, this feels a lot better. I think Rojo still has a place. Oh, absolutely. I think Rojo What you can do with that extends far beyond scripting, which is why it's quite complicated. Why there's a lot of stuff that can go wrong with it, especially if you mess up your config and, oh no, it's overwritten.

Everything that was in my replicated storage folder or whatever. Because you told it to, because Rojo can manage instances in the workspace, it can, absolutely everything. But as you say, for just paring that down, Roblox's vision of everything being really simple and you can just. jump straight in without much prep and without having to know all of these software development lifecycle things that exist in the corporate world.

Yeah, this feels like a really, nice step. Fedor: Yeah. I'm a really big fan in Roblox as new approach to third party tooling. Now it seems like they're really emphasizing. A building up their own APIs and their own in studio capabilities, like you mentioned with the commit and drafting stuff, with the better modeling workflows we're getting in studio, but they're also keeping those bridges open to those external tools because there are gonna be those power users who do wanna manage their entire workspace and every single instance in a GitHub repository.

I for one don't understand why you would want to do these super complicated workflows, but for a lot of people it makes a lot of sense. So overall, I guess for players, what this really means is that just development is, once again, a lot more emphasized on building fun games and making them visually attractive and making them, just great for players instead of having to, like you said, realizing that I've just overwritten everything in replicated storage and it's all gone.

And now I get to spend the rest of my day working on figuring out how to undo all of that instead of, Working on a fun new feature for my player base. So overall, just great quality of life improvements for developers, which should hopefully translate into more fun games for players. Adam: talking about more fun games for players. hopefully this next update will help you find some of those fun games a little bit easier.

This is video previews for the games page. So previously we've had the ability to. Upload a trailer or something to YouTube, maybe a bit of gameplay. I think we could only go up to 30 seconds or maybe 60. but you had to pay some road books, and then link that YouTube video to your experience. And then people, when they visited your experience or your game page, they could watch that video. This replaces that system. this is the new video previews for experience and.

Creators will basically be able to upload short gameplay clips that will autoplay before the static thumbnails that you have on your game page. You won't have to go to a third party place like YouTube to upload it. You'll be uploading this directly to Roblox. so that's quite exciting. And the other bit that's exciting is they're free. so you won't have to do, the paid system that we had before. I believe the payment was to pay for a moderator to go over to YouTube and watch the video and make sure that it was appropriate.

I assume because this is going through Roblox's systems, maybe it's through their AI moderation and therefore they can save, that cost and don't have to pass it onto the creators. Moderation can still take 24 hours for this though. so that is worth noting. And you'll have a quota of three uploads. Per month. so I do think there is still a human element behind there, otherwise they wouldn't limit it. Interestingly, a limitation on this, the videos must show real in game gameplay without any misleading edits, off platform footage or heavy post-production effects.

So it's not quite a perfect replacement. some, creators would've produced some really nice trailers in the past that probably would've had. not necessarily misleading edits, but would've been quite heavily edited. A lot of post-production, maybe even wouldn't show gameplay, but would show an animation they've made in Blender or some other VFX tool. it sounds like Roblox does want to avoid that and want it to be more.

Auto played gameplay footage of the game that it's representing to make sure there's nothing misleading there. So I think there's pros and cons. I think for the player, it's all pros. I think this is a, very good update. It'll prompt more creators to upload this gameplay footage and will be more representative of what you're about to see in that game. So you should get a nice idea of whether or not it's for you before joining.

Fedor: Yeah. That, that, that note editing component is really interesting and I'm curious to see how strict they're gonna be about it, because I see both sides of that coin. Because on one hand, in the broader gaming industry, I know there's this very big trend at this point. Of studios showing off. for years now, these beautiful cinematic trailers where it looks like a movie and we finally got hyper-realistic video games and it looks great.

And then you get into the actual game after spending however much money on it, and it just looks nothing like that. So I definitely see the emphasis on this. Yeah, you have to Adam: look out for the small print, right? Exactly. You have to look out for the small print on the video and not actual gameplay footage written really tiny at the bottom. Fedor: It's very difficult to read. So I definitely see the player perspective on this, but I also know a lot of people who take a lot of time and take a lot of pride in making these really nice looking trailers that are representative of the game, but also do have a, like very, like a serious production budget where they do have animated bits.

They cut between gameplay and then like drone shots and all of that just to show off the game in its full, visual and gameplay capacity. So if it's completely restricted to just gameplay footage, that feels a little bit unfortunate for them. So I'm gonna be very curious to see how strictly the monitor that, and how strictly they define heavy post-production or otherwise misleading edits because that. It's like a vague definition.

So definitely curious to hear what that means. Like obviously if you're just showing footage of GTA six on your game and then trying to get people to buy it, like obviously I get that. are we allowed to have a fun drone show? Are we allowed to have some fun little cinematics showing off like a new update that you've just released? Definitely very curious to see where that line is drawn. Sand. Adam: That's it. Yeah, I think we can confidently say that, just cuts between different bits of gameplay footage.

Absolutely fine. Edits that, maybe invent something that looks nothing like the game. Definitely not fine, but where is that line? Because I think the drone shot one was an interesting point. There's probably bits in your game that will be easier to show someone. By either setting up a custom shot or maybe just manipulating how your game works for the trailer. Not in a misleading way, but just in a, get the information across really quickly way and yeah, it's unclear whether it has to be actual footage. taken as a player in your game versus, the, wording they've said is that it needs to be real in engine gameplay without misleading edits.

Not necessarily the exact gameplay that they're gonna see. but we'll have to see, we'll see where the lines draw, and I'm sure creators will produce videos all across the spectrum and push the limits and we'll see. We'll see where they land. but this, should be really interesting, I think with it being free and being three uploads, per month. I think that gives a lot of scope for creators to add, videos to their games, so we'll, just have to see.

Fedor: Yeah. speaking of free things, I certainly love free things, and I think a lot of players love getting free bonuses along with their Robux purchases. Which is exactly what this new opt-in passes for by Roblox page feature is all about. You might have actually seen this in testing for a couple of experiences. I have over the past month seen this on the by Robux page, but if you haven't, basically the way this feature works is that Roblox will look at a game that you as a player have recently played, and then when you go to buy Roblox on the Roblox website.

Developers from that game will have the option to opt into a feature that awards players with a specific game pass or developer product from the game along with the purchase of Robuck. So basically just a free bonus based off Theo Robux you buy. So if I say played emergency response to Liberty County and then I went to go buy Roblox to buy some other game pass in that game, Roblox might notice that. Hey, I've been playing a lot of this game and now I'm buying Roblox.

How about we offer him some free little in-game upgrade in addition to the Robux that he's going to go spend somewhere else? so overall I think this is a really creative expansion of the buying Robux experience. I remember back when it was just this very bare bones UI where you just picked out the amount you want, and then if you had premium, you'd get a slight bonus. They've really done a lot with making that conversion, a lot more tempting for users and giving developers a little bit more ability to engage with that system.

I think this is a, really fun feature where, users will get to have the ability to have a little incentive to spend money on Robux and developers obviously don't have to, give out their game passes. This is something that they opt into, so it's really only happening if they really want to do this. So overall, I think as a player, this is exciting because it's like, Hey, I'm already gonna go buy the Rob robot now. I get something free in one of my favorite games.

That's great. And as a developer, I think it's likely going to see increases in conversion inside your game because like I said, players already get something in your game. They've just gotten Robux. Where are they gonna go spend it? Probably in the game where they already have a bunch of free stuff they wanna go check out. So I think this is very much a win-win situation for both developers and players, which is exactly what I love to see.

Adam: It's, it's obviously a little bit opaque as to what the algorithm is. Obviously the, more you. Spend in a particular game that is opted into the system, I think the more likely you're probably gonna see the game pass for that one. But for example, I've just gone to my Robux page and it's offering me a Steeler Brain Rock game pass if I buy some Robux. and maybe I've played it once or twice, but it's definitely not the most, the most commonplace that I go into. should, Hey, at least you're getting one.

It should be interesting to see. They're not showing me Fedor: any kinds of bonuses at the moment, which is very unfortunate. Really interesting. It could, as you say, up until now it's been a bit Adam: closed. there's not been very many creators who have been bought into this. I know that there's welcome to Blackburg and a few other of those kind of scale of games have been. Part of this program as they've been testing it. but as you say, it's now rolling out to everyone, which is quite exciting.

I think I saw that Roblox recommends creating a dedicated pass for this feature rather than losing out, giving people something that would be paid for free. actually creating an exclusive pass that, is specifically for this feature, which is quite interesting as well, encourages people to. Buy Robux in the hope that they get this exclusive pass that they can't get otherwise as well. But yeah, creators, as you say, they won't earn any commissions on this.

So I think it is just a really nice discover, not even a discovery tool 'cause they've already found your game, but a way of bringing them back and getting that retention. I think I'll definitely create a pass for this and submit it. I don't think there's any loss, as you say, it's a win-win. So I think everyone should give it a go and see how often that gets recommended to your players. that's all we've got for you this week.

Come back next episode for the latest Roblox news and features. Fedor: This episode we've talked a lot about algorithms and we'd love if you could appease the YouTube or whatever's platform algorithm you have here by liking, sharing, and letting us know your thoughts in the comments. Along with your answer to the trivia question, how much the creators globally earned via DevEx between March, 2024 and March, 2025 Adam: Beyond The Blox is produced by Seb Jensen.

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