Roblox Safety, Pricing & Social Updates
This week on the podcast, Fedor, Anthony, and I dove into a massive week of Roblox news. From significant safety overhauls to new monetization opportunities and the sunsetting of Guilded, there is a lot to cover for developers and players alike.
Here is a breakdown of the key topics we discussed and what they mean for the future of the platform.
A New Snapshot on Safety
Roblox released a major "Safety Snapshot" outlining their recent efforts to make the platform safer. The headline that caught everyone's attention was the removal of unrated experiences. As of September 30th, over 100 million unrated experiences are no longer playable.
While 100 million sounds like a staggering number, we discussed how many of these were likely empty "starter places" or abandoned projects from years ago. For active developers, the fix was simple: just fill out the experience questionnaire. However, there is a valid concern for the preservation of classic games where the original creators have long since left the platform. Roblox has mentioned they are working to preserve some of these, which is a relief for those of us who appreciate the platform's history.
On the moderation front, real-time voice moderation has expanded to seven new languages, including Indonesian, Polish, Tagalog, and Russian. As Fedor noted, this acknowledges the massive international player bases that have existed for years. It is great to see safety tools catching up to the global reality of Roblox.
Regional Pricing for Developer Products
Earlier this year, we saw regional pricing come to Game Passes and Avatar items. Now, it has finally arrived for Developer Products.
This is a huge quality-of-life improvement for developers. In the past, if you wanted to offer fair pricing to players in different economies, you had to manually script complex systems to detect a player's region and offer different product IDs. Now, Roblox handles this automatically.
The goal is to optimize demand. A price that feels standard in the US might be prohibitively expensive in Brazil or India. By lowering the price in those regions, you might make less per sale, but the increase in sales volume can make up for it. We have seen mixed results with this in our own games so far—sometimes the volume offsets the price drop, sometimes it doesn't—but having the option built-in is undeniably a step forward.
The Share Link API
Social features got a boost with the announcement of the Share Link API. This allows developers to generate custom deep links that can launch players directly into specific parts of a game.
This goes beyond just joining a server. Anthony brainstormed using this for his bus simulator to let players join a specific route or shift directly. Fedor brought up the idea of "challenge links"—imagine setting a high score and sending a link to a friend that drops them right into the challenge to try and beat it.
This API, combined with the upcoming "Moments" feature, could really change how games grow virally. Instead of just telling a friend to "play this game," you can drop them right into the action.
Monetizing 3D Models
The Toolbox has been a staple of Roblox development for nearly two decades, largely known for being free... and often full of low-quality or broken assets. Roblox is looking to change that by allowing creators to sell 3D models for real-world currency on the Creator Store.
This is a controversial but necessary evolution. For serious developers, the current Toolbox is often unusable due to the time required to filter out bad assets or check for malware. A curated, paid marketplace attracts high-quality artists who deserve to be paid for their work.
Does this mean the end of free models? Unlikely. The culture of sharing simple assets will remain, but for high-quality, game-ready assets (like vehicle kits, detailed environment packs, or complex systems), this provides a legitimate way for asset creators to earn a living without relying on third-party sites like itch.io or Patreon.
Goodbye Guilded, Hello Communities
Finally, Roblox announced the sunsetting of Guilded, the communication platform they acquired a few years ago. By the end of 2025, Guilded will be no more, with Roblox shifting focus entirely to on-platform "Roblox Communities."
For many of us, this was inevitable. Despite some neat features like better announcement channels and calendars, Guilded never really competed with Discord for the average user. Most developers I know only used it for the "fancy" announcement channels or because we felt we had to.
Moving these features directly onto Roblox makes sense. If we can have robust forums, announcements, and community tools right where the players are, that is a win. However, until Roblox offers true instant messaging and chat features comparable to Discord, it is likely that gaming communities will continue to live on Discord for the foreseeable future.
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