Why Roblox Developers Undercharge (And What It's Costing Them)

The Price Is Wrong — And It's Your Fault

Most Roblox developers are undercharging for their game passes, and the reason isn't what you think. It's not because players won't pay more. It's not because the market has spoken. It's because developers are benchmarking against the cheapest competitor in their genre and then anchoring there, convinced that anything higher will tank their conversion rate. The result is a race to the bottom that nobody actually demanded, and a platform-wide habit of pricing that makes games look cheap before a player has even clicked the store button.

I'll be honest — I did this myself. My first Roblox game had a VIP pass priced at 75 Robux because I'd looked at three similar games, seen they were charging 50–100, and landed in the middle. I thought I was being strategic. I was just averaging bad decisions.

Where the Benchmarking Bias Comes From

Here's the thing about comparing your prices to competitors on Roblox: the games you're comparing yourself to probably copied their prices from someone else who did the same thing two years ago. There's no original market research at the bottom of that stack. It's anchoring all the way down.

This isn't unique to Roblox. Indie developers on Steam do the same thing — I spent five years watching solo devs price their games at $4.99 because "that's what games like this cost," never stopping to ask who decided that or whether it was still true. But on Roblox the distortion is worse, because the visibility of competitor pricing is so immediate. You open a few store pages, you see 100 Robux everywhere, and 100 Robux becomes the water you swim in.

The psychological mechanism here is well-documented. Anchoring bias means the first number you encounter shapes every judgment you make afterward. When every game in your genre charges 100 Robux for a VIP pass, charging 400 feels aggressive — even if the value you're delivering is objectively better. The anchor has nothing to do with value. It's just a number someone else picked first.

What Players Are Actually Willing to Pay

Roblox players are not as price-sensitive as developers assume. I know that sounds like something I'm just asserting, so let me be specific about why I believe it.

Games like Adopt Me! and Blox Fruits consistently sell passes in the 800–2,000 Robux range. These aren't outliers. They're the top of the chart. Players in those games spend that Robux without a second thought — because the games have built enough perceived value that the price feels proportionate. The same player who balks at your 200 Robux pass in a low-effort experience will happily spend 1,000 Robux in a game that's made them feel something.

According to Roblox's own financials, average bookings per paying user have grown year over year. Players are spending more. The platform isn't trending toward free — it's trending toward players concentrating their spend on games that earn it. If your game is good, you're not competing with the 50-Robux pass across the street. You're competing for a share of a player's total spend, which is larger than you think.

The conversion rate argument — the idea that lower prices mean more buyers — also breaks down when you run actual numbers. At 75 Robux with a 5% conversion rate, you're making 375 Robux per 100 players. At 300 Robux with a 2% conversion rate, you're making 600. You can take a 60% hit to your conversion rate and still come out ahead. Most developers never test this because the benchmark told them not to bother.

Price Signals Quality — Whether You Want It To or Not

There's a second cost here that's harder to measure but just as real: cheap passes make your game look cheap. Price is a signal. When a player sees a 50 Robux VIP pass, the implicit message is that the developer didn't think the experience was worth much. That's not fair — plenty of excellent games have modest pricing — but perception operates on shortcuts, not fairness.

I raised the main pass in my first Roblox game from 75 Robux to 350 Robux about four months after launch. I expected a drop in sales. Instead, I saw a modest decrease in volume and a significant increase in revenue — but the part I didn't expect was a noticeable uptick in session length among pass holders. Players who'd paid more were investing more. They'd made a bigger commitment, and the game felt more worth their time because of it. The sunk cost effect works in your favor when you price like you mean it.

This tracks with what indie developers have known for years about premium pricing on Steam: the $15 game gets more hours logged per player than the $3 game, on average, because the purchase decision carries more weight. Roblox isn't Steam, but the psychology of commitment is universal.

How to Actually Fix Your Pricing

Stop benchmarking horizontally against your genre and start benchmarking vertically against what your passes actually deliver. Ask yourself: if this game were a mobile app, what would this feature cost as an IAP? If it were a live service PC game, what's the comparable unlock worth? You'll often find that Roblox developers are charging a fraction of what equivalent value commands anywhere else in the market.

A few concrete steps worth taking:

The developers leaving the most money on the table aren't the ones with bad games. They're the ones with good games who decided, without much evidence, that their players couldn't afford to pay for them. Test that assumption. You'll probably be wrong — in the best possible way.