Roblox Unveils New Features and AI Integration at Developers Conference 2024

Roblox Developer's Conference 2024: Everything Announced - IGN

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'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. Roblox 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. The 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. Alongside 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.

Roblox introduces new earning opportunities for creators, teases generative AI project | TechCrunch

At the annual Roblox Developers Conference, the company announced on Friday a series of upcoming changes coming to the platform in the next few months and years. Most notably, Roblox is adding more ways for creators to earn money through their experiences, and the company is unveiling a project that will power generative AI creation on the platform. The company is introducing a new program that will give creators a higher share of revenue for their paid experiences on the desktop. Creators will now receive 50% of the revenue for paid experiences that cost $9.99, 60% for experiences that cost $29.99 and 70% for experiences that cost $49.99. The change marks a significant increase in revenue sharing, as creators currently earn about 25% of the revenue for their paid experiences. Roblox chief product officer Manuel Bronstein told TechCrunch in an interview that the company believes this change will encourage more traditional game developers to bring their games to the platform. The company also announced that it's partnering with Shopify to allow creators to sell physical merchandise directly within their experiences. Roblox plans to pilot this integration later this year with select creators, brands and e-commerce partners. To further support creators, Roblox is going to roll out a "Price Optimization" tool that will run tests to help developers identify the best price for in-experience purchases. In some cases, the tool may suggest that developers lower the price of an item to get more sales, benefiting both the developer and players. In the same vein, the company is going to start experimenting with regional pricing recommendations to allow developers to tailor their prices to local markets. In terms of AI, Roblox announced that it's working on a 3D foundational model that will power generative creation on its platform. The model will be open source and multimodal and allow creators to generate 3D content using text, video and prompts. "A creator could say I want to create a world that is in the Scottish Highlands with castles and a stormy day, with a dragon background, and I want all of this in a steampunk steam style. And then the output will be the full scene creation," Bronstein said. He noted that generative AI is currently focused on pictures and videos, not 3D creation. But, in Roblox, you need 3D objects, so if you see a tree, it needs to behave like a tree and also be visible from all sides. Bronstein noted that Roblox isn't trying to replace the creative process but instead focuses on enabling more people to develop and create games. For instance, you may be a great developer but struggle with the artistic requirements for game creation. The 3D foundational model aims to make it easier for anybody to get started on the platform, while also helping current teams speed up the process of game development. Plus, just because you get an output, doesn't mean that you will implement it right away. Developers will likely fine-tune and modify the AI-generated content, Bronstein said. In addition, Roblox revealed that it's rolling out a new technology called "Harmony" that will help developers automatically optimize their experiences for different devices and network conditions. While Roblox already has social features that allow users to interact with each other, the company is introducing new ways for users to do so. For starters, it's adding "Parties," which is a new way for a group of friends to move around Roblox together as a group in a private chat. If a user is under the age of 13, they can chat via text. If a user is older, they can use voice chat. Users in a Party can chat with each other even if they're playing different games, and if they all want to play the same game, they can send invites to each other. The company is also introducing forums later this year to give users a dedicated space to share feedback, discuss gameplay and report any issues they encounter. To make its platform a destination for people to discover new music, Roblox will roll out a new "What's Playing" and "Music Charts" feature where people will be able to find trending songs from breakout artists. Roblox is also planning an integration with music distribution service DistroKid to give artists a way to upload and share their music on the platform. All of the features announced today are part of Roblox's ambitious goal of having 10% of all gaming content revenue worldwide flow through its ecosystem. Although the company didn't provide a timeline for when it aims to reach this goal, Roblox believes the changes it is introducing will help it achieve the milestone.