Launching Regional Pricing to Help Creators Accelerate International Growth

• Roblox adds to the tools and support creators need to build a global business.
• Today, we’re launching Regional Pricing for in-experience items to better adapt to local market conditions and maximize earnings.
• For international users, this means that prices in Robux are more reflective of their local economy.
• Later this year, we plan to make Regional Pricing available for avatar items as well.

At RDC last year, we unveiled an ambitious goal to have 10% of the $180 billion gaming content market revenue flow through the Roblox ecosystem and be distributed within the Roblox community.* Many Roblox creators earn Robux by selling in-experience items, which provide users with special perks or abilities. Today, we’ve expanded their opportunity to earn with Regional Pricing, which allows creators to offer region-specific prices for their in-game items. Creators who opt in to Regional Pricing now have an additional tool to help build a global business on Roblox and aid in building a more globally inclusive playerbase.

We already provide developers with Roblox Studio to publish experiences globally in seconds and autotranslate their experiences. In-experience text chat also lets users see chat messages autotranslated across supported languages. Launching today, Regional Pricing provides one more way for creators to connect with a global audience easily. It automatically determines the optimal local prices for the in-game items creators sell in their experiences. Optimizing prices for each region helps creators serve their business goals and allows more international users to participate in the Roblox economy.

Regional Pricing offers users prices that are more reflective of their local economy, rather than paying the same price regardless of where they are. For example, without Regional Pricing, users in Vietnam or Brazil would pay the same price as users in the United States to access an experience’s economy. With Regional Pricing enabled, prices are automatically optimized for each user’s local economy and updated periodically as Roblox’s virtual economy—and the global economy in the physical world—shifts. Creators set the base price of their in-game items and retain complete control over which are priced regionally. From there, Roblox automatically applies the optimal region-specific prices for those in-game items as economic factors fluctuate.

Let's look at a specific example since these prices will adapt based on economic factors. Let’s say an experience’s creator has priced an item at 1,000 Robux in the United States. Without Regional Pricing, that item would be priced at 1,000 Robux in all countries. However, once that creator enables Regional Pricing, the creator would see a screen like the visual below, which shows the price automatically adapted based on the local economy. As shown, the item is priced at 700 Robux for users in Brazil and at 500 Robux for users in India. Users in each country now see pricing that reflects their local economy.

Early testing with select top experiences showed that pricing by region helped creators increase the percentage of users spending in their experiences by approximately 17% in Mexico, 26% in Brazil, and 52% in the Philippines by making items more attractive to users in those regions.**

Regional Pricing helps creators expand their businesses to a broader international playerbase, but it’s not the only pricing guidance tool for creators. We’ve found that pricing is unique to each experience—the right strategy for one won’t necessarily work for another. Launched last year, Price Optimization helps eligible creators determine the best prices for their in-game items.

Prior to Price Optimization, creators tended to price items based on what other creators charged. It was challenging to evaluate what might work best for their own experience. Price Optimization enables creators to maximize revenue by analyzing unique user behavior and transactions within a specific experience. This helps creators grow their earnings without impacting user engagement. To make this powerful tool available to more creators, we recently expanded eligibility for Price Optimization to all experiences with at least 60,000 transactions in the past month.

Since its rollout, Price Optimization has resulted in a median earnings increase of 4% for eligible creators who have run a pricing test.*** In many cases, these tests recommended that creators reduce prices on some in-experience items to make their offerings more attractive to a broader audience, driving higher earnings overall. One successful example is Slap Battles, which saw earnings increase over 15% by offering more competitive prices.

Tencell, the developer of Slap Battles, said, “The high scale of data in the Price Optimization tests lets us take the guesswork out of choosing how much to charge. It’s a win-win for players because they see lower prices.”

With the introduction of Regional Pricing and Price Optimization, we’re providing creators with the tools they need to build global businesses. Next, we’re working on Regional Pricing for developer products and new ways for developers to merchandise their items across more surfaces. We’re empowering creators to connect with a wider audience, drive growth, and unlock the full potential of their experiences.