Emmanuel Hurtado was recently quoted in a GamesBeat article examining Roblox's upcoming plan to charge creators a fee proportional to their products’ respective traffic and engagement whenever they host promotional material inside their experiences on the platform.
The article, "Roblox moves to take a cut of all brand integrations on its platform," reports that starting in 2027, Roblox will require creators to pay a fee for any branded content used in their games. This is a major deviation from the platform's current policy of allowing creators to strike independent deals with brands with no restrictions. Roblox claims that part of this change is tied to prioritizing user safety and that its implementation ensures that promotional content is properly disclosed and age-appropriately moderated. However, critics have interpreted it as a possible violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law, which protects creators’ ability to maintain fully independent relationships with advertisers.
“If there’s essentially a ban on having an independent relationship with marketers, that definitely wouldn’t fly,” Emmanuel tells GameBeat. “What I could see Roblox pivoting to, if there was any concern about it, is that they could just have this portal and quote-unquote ‘incentivize’ developers to go through it by offering perks.”
