Roblox Weekly: July 9–15, 2023
Meta Quest app coming soon, Connect 2023 workshops and challenge, and changes to Limited item holding periods on the Avatar Marketplace!
Welcome to Roblox Weekly, a newsletter series covering the latest and greatest news, announcements, and events that happen on the Roblox platform. Let’s recap everything that happened for the week of July 9–15, 2023…
Roblox Coming to Meta Quest
It’s time to experience Roblox in a whole new way. Roblox is coming to the Meta Quest VR headset, with an Open Beta on App Lab releasing in the coming weeks! The Open Beta on App Lab is a vital time for our developers to experiment, learn, and iterate on their VR experiences before Roblox is ready for full release on the Meta Quest Store. This will give you the opportunity to gather feedback from VR users who join your experience. Please note, the Open Beta will only support Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro devices.
In preparation for launching Roblox on Meta Quest, a new “VR” option has been added as a new device type on the Access page of the Creator Dashboard and the Game Settings panel in Roblox Studio.
For now, experiences published to ‘Desktop’ will continue to be available on PC VR. In the future, only experiences published to ‘VR’ (i.e., the ‘VR’ checkbox is checked) will be available on PC VR.
Connect 2023
Welcome to Roblox Connect 2023! From now through July 21, Creators from all corners of the world will host workshops covering both introductory and advanced content on the Roblox platform. You can view the full schedule and full details about this virtual event on the Creator Events page.
Participate in the Connect 2023 Challenge
Get ready to showcase your skills and creativity in the Connect 2023 Challenge! Creators will have a limited time to create an experience that matches the theme which will be announced on July 28th @ 10AM PT. There are 3 categories that submissions will be judged from:
- Most Immersive Experience
- Most Unique Game Concept
- Best Video Pitch
Each category will have a top 3 selection. The top 3 teams in each category can win the following:
- 1st place: $600 GoGift card per team member.
- 2nd place: $400 GoGift card per team member.
- 3rd place: $200 GoGift card per team member.
17+ Experiences Now Live
Starting this week, Creators can now make experiences exclusively for users 17 years and older. If you are 17 and over, you can verify your age to start engaging today. Content suitable for 17+ may contain intense violence, heavy realistic blood, moderate crude humor, romantic themes, unplayable gambling content and/or the presence of alcohol.
To make it easier to find these types of experiences, Roblox has added a new “Exclusive for Ages 17+” sort to the Discover page. Note that if you are below the age of 17, you will not have access to this sort.
Changes to Limited Item Holding Periods
In an effort to help minimize disruption to the economy in the event of an account being compromised, Roblox will be making the following changes to holding periods for items on the Avatar Marketplace starting July 20, 2023:
UGC Limiteds
- Up to a 30 day holding period after the original sale (no change).
- Up to a 7 day holding period on all subsequent resales (down from 30 days).
Trades
- Up to a 2 day holding period when an item is traded (originally no holding period).
- Up to a 7 day holding period when an item is resold (originally no holding period).
Note: Any existing holding periods prior to these changes will be unaffected.
Coming Soon: Avatar Unification Plugins in Studio
Roblox avatars have come a long way, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop using the old ones. Coming soon, the ‘R15 Migrator’ & ‘Roblox Classic’ Studio plugins will allow creators to unify avatars to ensure their support for years to come.
With the R15 Migrator, creators can convert existing R6 character models as well as their animations and scripts into fully functioning R15 bundles.
Roblox Classic will allow experiences currently forcing R6 avatars on their players to embrace the forwards-compatibility of R15 by allowing features such as dynamic heads and layered clothing whilst still retaining the aesthetic of the R6 character model.
Creator Marketplace Search Improvements
Some improvements have been made to Search in the Roblox Creator Marketplace, including semantic results to better understand user intent, a list of recent searches, and improved discovery for Group assets.
Semantic Search Results
Semantic Search supports long queries, detailed/descriptive queries, multilingual queries, and more. This search experience is now available for models, audio, meshes, and images in the Creator Marketplace.
Recent Searches
Recent searches are now quickly available in your search bar to navigate to the content you need.
Improved Discovery for Group Assets
Previously, group assets were not discoverable by default and required enabling content from unverified creators. Now, group assets will be discoverable based on the ID/Phone verification status of the user who last updated the asset.
Streaming Enabled by Default for All Templates
Starting today, Content Streaming is enabled by default on all starter templates for new experience creation in Roblox Studio. Streaming allows Creators to create massive, detailed worlds with join times reduced by about 20%, and 2x fewer crashes due to out-of-memory. You will find controls for modifying Streaming behavior under the Streaming Workspace properties, shown below. You can use this panel to tweak the way streaming works for your new experience, including modifying the minimum and target streaming radii, as well as the ability to turn Streaming off entirely.
New Most Visited Experience of All Time
“Brookhaven RP” has just recently surpassed “Adopt Me!” as the most visited Roblox experience of all time, sitting at over 33.5 billion visits. Until today, “Adopt Me!”, developed by Uplift Games, has sat at the top of the most visited list since April 4th, 2020, overtaking the top spot from alexnewtron’s “MeepCity”. Check out the full list of most visited places.
Roblox to Announce Q2 2023 Financial Results
Roblox Corporation (NYSE: $RBLX) this week announced that it will report the company’s second quarter 2023 financial results before the opening of the U.S. markets on Wednesday, August 9, 2023. Roblox will also be hosting a conference call to answer questions regarding its financial results. The conference call will begin at 5:30AM PT / 8:30AM ET on Wednesday, August 9, 2023.
Staffing Changes at Roblox Corporation
This week, a few staffing changes have been announced at Roblox. Chief Business Officer Craig Donato will be resigning at the end of the Summer, while Christina Wooton has been promoted to Chief Partnerships Officer. Wooton was previously the VP of Global Partnerships, a position in which she held at the company since 2018.
And that’s a wrap! Thanks for tuning in to this week’s Roblox Weekly. Come back here next week to see what Roblox will be up to next. To keep up to date with the latest and greatest Roblox news, follow Bloxy News on social media.
