The company announced a series of changes coming to the platform over the next few months and years as part of a series of presentations at the annual Roblox Developers Conference on Friday. Most notably, more ways are coming in which creators will 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 an even greater share of the revenue generated by their paid experience on the desktop. They will, for example, get 50% from paid experiences worth $9.99, 60% for experiences valued at $29.99, and 70% for experiences worth $49.99. This reflects a gargantuan spike in the share of revenue, considering that creators of such paid experiences currently attract about 25% of the revenue.

Roblox chief product officer Manuel Bronstein told TechCrunch that the company thinks this will encourage more traditional game developers to take their games to the platform.

The firm also announced it will be partnering with Shopify to let creators sell real, physical merchandise directly within those experiences. Roblox plans to pilot that integration later in the year with a set of creators, brands and e-commerce partners.

Apart from enabling creators, Roblox is also to introduce a "Price Optimization" tool, which is to allow the game to run tests that would help developers find the optimal price for in-experience purchases. Such might come back suggesting the developer lower the price of an item to get more sales according to the suggestion of the tool, which would greatly benefit both the developer and the players.

The company is going to start experimenting with regional pricing recommendations for developers to tailor their price to local markets.
The company is going to start powering generative AI creation
On the AI front, Roblox has issued word on work on a 3D foundational model that will power generative creation on its platform. Open-source and multimodal, the tool will allow content creators to generate 3D content using text or video prompts.

"A creator may say I want to create a world that is located 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 creation of the scene," said Bronstein.

He said the generative AI is currently focused on pictures and videos, not 3D creation. Well, 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 said that Roblox is not about replacing the creative process but allowing more people in developing and making games. For instance, you might be an excellent developer but have problems with the artistic requirements of creating a game. This 3D foundational model would go on to give it an easier path for anybody getting started on the platform and accelerating the process for existing teams in game development.

On top of all that, just because you get output doesn't necessarily mean you're going to implement it right away. Developers are likely going to refine and alter the AI generated content, Bronstein said.

Harmony, a new technology that Roblox is rolling out, will allow developers to automatically optimize their experiences for a variety of different devices and network conditions, Roblox also shared.

Making Roblox More Social
Already, Roblox has social features through which users are able to interact with each other. The company is introducing new ways for users to do so.

Firstly, it's adding "Party", a new way that allows a group of friends to walk around Roblox together as a group in a private chat. If a user is under the age of 13, they can chat via text. A user above the age of 18 can use voice chat. Users in a Party can chat with each other even if they are playing games other than the one the group wants to play in; they can invite each other for the same game they all want to play in. The company is also introducing forums later in the year, providing users with a space to give their opinions and discuss gameplay and report any issues encountered.

Roblox is planning to turn its platform into a source of discovery for new music. In this respect, it is introducing a new "What's Playing" and "Music Charts" feature where people will be able to look up trending songs from breakout artists. On top of that, the metaverse platform is also eyeing an integration with music distribution service DistroKid to give the artists a way to upload and share their music on the platform.
All of the features announced today are part of the ambitious plan that Roblox envisions: 10% of all gaming content revenue flow through its ecosystem around the world. The company did not provide a timeline to reach this goal, but Roblox believes that changes it is introducing will help it hit that milestone.