People keep asking us at Gamefam - what does it mean that Roblox is creating new incentives for paid games on the platform?
It shows the deep ambition at Roblox to age up into an all-ages, AAA gaming platform, kudos to our Roblox friends!
🔥 Hot take: Within 10 years, paid games could make up a notable portion of Roblox’s revenue, as graphical fidelity, developer sophistication, and audience aging up converge.
🔮 Our prediction for paid games on Roblox in the next 1-2 years:
- There will be a hit Roblox paid game in the next 1-2 years selling 1-2M copies @ the $10 price point
- It will be in a niche genre that the gaming industry doesn’t pay attention to
- Something like Gary’s Mod, Backrooms, Lethal Company, Content Warning, anime, or an innovative shooter subgenre like Battle Bit
💸 The business case today for paid games on Roblox:
- Paid games have existed on Roblox for many years
- The real change announced is that on Roblox games with a $10+ price have a higher developer rev share than free games
- Paid games on Roblox have not gained scale because it is currently an F2P platform; a good parallel is selling video content on YouTube
- Similary, the mobile app stores have not successfully built a scaled paid games business despite many great attempts
- Ipso, paid games are likely to be specific to Roblox’s PC and console user bases, representing <25% of total users today
There are two notable successful paid games in Roblox history:
🏚 Welcome to Bloxburg (Embracer-owned)
- Casual social house building and role play game
- Sold through hundreds of millions of paid access passes
- Price point was $0.25
⚔ Deepwoken
- Hardcore, community-driven RPG game
- We estimate 10-20M unit sales at a $4 price point since 2021 (feel free to sensitize visits per payer and get your own estimate using RoMonitor)
- Developer has long history and major community cred
- Amazing product, consider checking it out on YT as the learning curve to play is significant
✅ Conclusions:
While the Roblox platform today is extremely valuable for small teams to create big multiplayer products, the product-market fit for paid games at scale was not there historically. How fast this will change remains to be seen. Over time, if developers build it, the audience will grow and Roblox could provide serious competition with Steam, in certain segments and genres
Looking forward to watching Roblox grow into this new space and playing the great games that will come out of this innovation. 🎮
More future casting to come at our official Slush Gaming Side Event - The Future of Gaming: UGC is Changing Everything - in November!
