Roblox players can no longer use the game's marketplace to sell bodies and heads to one another for free, as all such cosmetics listed on the virtual storefront will now have a mandatory minimum price requirement. The feature that allowed select Roblox players to sell character skins was originally introduced in mid-August.
Roblox Corporation never actually rolled out this ability to all players, having instead opted to limit cosmetics vendor status to members of its User Generated Content (UGC) program. Joining that exclusive Roblox community is no easy feat, as the developers have been rigorously reviewing each individual application since first launching the UGC program back in 2019.
Roblox Is Back Online After Major Service Disruption
Hit sandbox game Roblox is back online after suffering its third major service disruption in two weeks, which frustrated many a fan.
Starting October 26, the hit sandbox game no longer accepts storefront listings for bodies and heads offered to Roblox players for free. Instead, all cosmetics of that sort will now come with a price floor of 75 Robux. That's the equivalent of $0.60, going by the $4.99 price tag attached to the game's most affordable currency package containing 400 Robux. The developers are giving content creators one week to conform to the new rule. Any body or head listings retailing at below 75 Robux will be automatically migrated to the new minimum price come next Thursday, November 2.
The developers are also soon planning to introduce a flat 750 Robux fee for all new body and head submissions. That charge is set to go into effect before the end of the year. Since Roblox is taking a 30% cut from all avatar skin sales, implementing a price floor for such cosmetics should allow it to boost its revenues, or at the very least help keep its operating costs down by filtering out low-value transactions from its server load. Individual sales aren't exactly costly to validate, but those numbers do add up when one has to service over 210 million users every month, which is how many players Roblox had as of mid-summer 2023.
The social media reactions to this newly introduced change appear to skew negative; many Roblox players expressed unhappiness with the decision to monetize avatar skin sales more aggressively, arguing how such a move will merely inhibit marketplace activity.
Yet the controversial change is not exactly happening a vacuum, as the hit sandbox game has long been looking for ways to better monetize its user base. Its sustainability was already called into question in 2022, when Roblox lost over $900 million despite experiencing player growth.
Roblox is available on mobile devices, PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox One.
Source: Roblox Corporation
