2024’s Roblox Developer’s Conference has arrived and has given fans a glimpse into the future of the platform that is setting its sights on 1 billion daily active users. Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki shared that the team hopes to achieve that goal by focusing on helping creators build their businesses, scaling creation and access, and bringing people together.Roblox still has a ways to go to reach that one billion daily active user goal, as the game saw a still impressive 79.5 million daily active users as of June 2024, but Baszucki believes this mindset and the plans they have in place will transform the gaming landscape to a place where “10% of all gaming revenue will flow through the Roblox ecosystem and be distributed with our community of creators.”Some of these plans include a new Party system that lets friends play their favorite together with ease, the growth of a “Roblox-created 3D foundational model to power generative AI creation on the platform,” and new commerce opportunities to help creators earn more and even sell their physical merchandise to more fans. Roblox is introducing a new Party systemRoblox’s new Party system is set to launch in October and aims to get friends playing and communicating together with as few barriers as possible. Anyone above nine years old will be able to utilize this feature and Party will launch first with the ability for players to text each other in the app. Later in the year, voice will be added for those who are phone-verified users aged 13 or older.Party will work both inside and outside of Roblox and, early next year, the Roblox team will add an API that will let developers improve the Party system by letting them teleport players to the same starting point, put them in a private lobby, and even pre-pair them onto the same team.Another way Roblox is attempting to bring people together is by rebranding its Roblox Groups to Roblox Communities. These spaces will be a place for players to participate in Forums to share feedback on their experiences, talk about their favorite games and moments, and report issues that arise.Music is one more area Roblox is looking to expand into, as the team will be making new ways for players to discover music and connect with artists beyond just listening to the songs included in a Roblo experience. Such platform features as What’s Playing and Music Charts will be added and an integration with the music distribution service DistroKid will be the simple way artists can upload their work or find music to include in their projects. Creator Affiliate Program and transparent algorithmsRoblox has announced a Creator Affiliate Program that will reward developers who can bring new users into the platform. Creators will be able to share a unique link that will earn them money when someone uses it to sign up and purchase Robux. Creators will earn a share of the revenue the person “generates from their Robux purchases” for the first six months. Applications are open now for the first version of this program — which will enable creators to earn up to 50% on qualified purchases — and the team anticipates all eligible creators will be able to utilize the program by the middle of 2025.Creators will also be happy to know the Roblox team is improving the way users find their content. Today’s Picks on the homepage and on Marketplace will highlight even more experiences, and impressions on sponsored ads on Roblox’s homepage have increased from 1.6% in March 2024 to over 8% in June 2024.Furthermore, the team promises “open and transparent insight into search and discovery on Roblox.” This means creators will have a better idea on what the team values and how they can craft their experiences to become as visible as possible.AI and scaling Roblox to all devicesThe team at Roblox wants the platform to run its best on as many devices as possible, and a new technology called Harmony aims to optimize the game to achieve this goal. Harmony includes client-side balancing and optimizations of CPU, GPU, and RAM. In the future, this will extend into Roblox-supported architecture for “server authority for competitive games.”AI, which has already been a part of Roblox for some time with Assistant, Texture Generator, and Avatar Auto Setup, will be taken to the next level with a new incubation project that was launched just a few months ago. This 3D foundational model will be open source and multimodal and will “power 3D generation through text, video, and 3D prompts.” The goal is to let devs create their dreams in whichever style they prefer – be it photorealistic, anime, low-poly, or steampunk – and generate objects and scenes to match. Devs will even be able to have AI create an entire world and give the AI feedback to finetune it to their liking.Additionally, Roblox will soon make it possible for devs to host a high-performance, 100-player open world, sports, or battle royale-type game and have it run on 2GB RAM devices. Helping Creators Build Their BusinessesAlongside helping devs create newer and even more ambitious projects, the Roblox team is working on helping these same creators earn more money for their hard work. In the “coming months,” there will be a new option to optimize in-experience pricing. This new tool will run price tests and recommend the “most attractive pricing strategy.” There will also be testing done for regional pricing recomendations. Early next year, creators will be able to sell physical merchandise from within their experiences, and the team at Roblox will be parterning with various e-commerce platforms like Shopify to make this a smooth and easy process.Lastly, devs will be able to price their paid access experiences in real currency value on desktop and earn an even higher revenue share than before. This means experiences selling at $9.99, $29.99, and $49.99 will get a 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. This change will roll out later this year for desktop and other devices will hopefully get this feature in the future.Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.
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