Roblox cozies up to creators with promises that it’ll recommend their games

Discovery is one of the most vital aspects of digital content platforms. YouTube and TikTok‘s recommendation algorithms have attracted a lot of flak, but without that discovery tool, creators’ content wouldn’t be surfaced to people who weren’t already actively following them and/or actively searching for the topic they make content about. Conversely, one of the reasons creators have been hamstrung on Twitch is its relative lack of dependable discovery.

Enter Roblox, which has increasingly become a hub for game developers and content makers. It pays out hundreds of millions to devs each year, but recently faced allegations that it’s choking studios’ earnings by not introducing them to brands for sponsorship deals.

Now, Roblox has published a post letting devs know just how much it does (and plans to do) to recommend their games to its playerbase of ~380 million monthly active users.

“We understand that connecting your experiences with the right users is essential for your success. That’s why we’re committed to providing you with actionable insights and powerful tools to thrive within Roblox’s evolving discovery system,” the company’s discovery team wrote on its developer forums. “Our focus for 2025 is to refine and expand our discovery systems to better support your growth.”

Roblox’s plans are separated into two categories: ongoing improvements, and upcoming launches.

As for ongoing improvements, it plans to…

-Update its Home page, where it says 90% of game traffic begins, to “be even more dynamic and personalized.” That includes introducing new content shelves and expanding existing ones. “This will increase the visibility of your content to targeted audiences,” it said.

-Make improvements to its recommendation algorithm, “optimizing for long-term user retention by prioritizing organic recommendations.” It says it will update devs’ backend analytics to show them how the algorithm is functioning, and teach them how to optimize their content for it. It also promises that “in the coming weeks, we will provide you with a deep look” into the algorithm.

-Improve search and genre-specific discovery. The new search will “blend results” from across Roblox categories like games, avatars, people, and forums. It also now has a “Recently Visited” shelf, so players can see what games they played last (and maybe be more likely to click back into them).

-And finally, like YouTube, it wants to deprioritize low-quality content. “We are continuing to focus on reducing the visibility of low-quality content, such as experiences with misleading titles or thumbnails or content that violates community standards,” it said.

Upcoming launches include: a friend referral system where developers can reward players for getting their friends to try games; the ability for players to submit user feedback directly to devs; and a “major upgrade” to devs’ ad manager system.

The ad manager system is particularly worth noting because, again, devs’ recent concerns with Roblox are over monetization and feeling like they’re competing with the platform for brand deals. The fact that Roblox is giving them “more engaging ads, objective-focused setup, smarter tools, and more intuitive reporting” to make money through advertising could help smooth the dev x platform relationship.

It’s worth noting that people who develop games for Roblox’s platform are still expected to do the majority of marketing themselves. Unlike with a traditional publisher-developer relationship, where, for example, EA published Respawn‘s Apex Legends and now markets the game, Roblox developers have to be their own marketing teams. But these discovery features do show that Roblox is putting effort into helping devs find and retain new players.