User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC for short) is a feature that allows selected users to publish their items and sell them to other users. It is mainly associated with accessories in the Avatar shop, but can also apply to classic clothing (Classic shirts, Classic pants, and Classic T-shirts), and assets in the creator marketplace such as Models, Decals, Audio, and Plugins.

Accessories
User-created accessories can be viewed under the Community Creations category in the Avatar Shop. It was released on August 15, 2019, to certified users on the site.

Roblox has reached out to reveal that they will sometime in the future depend on content created by eligible users rather than prioritizing assets made by the official account, which is managed by admins to publish items as a default.

Currently, users are allowed the ability to create accessories through applications that are opened at some times on the Developer Forum. They must submit a portfolio of items, along with some examples of creation process documentation. After applications are closed, they are reviewed and certain users are chosen for that application.

History
The feature was initially announced at RDC 2015, but its confirmation was declared at RDC 2019. Before its release, Roblox had confirmed that this feature will only be allowed to certain users who had previously worked with Roblox for modeling and texturing purposes, with many suspecting that popular Roblox video content creators in the official Roblox Video Stars Program will have access to it.

On December 6, 2019, it was revealed that star creators will be given the ability to request user-generated content items to be created per ' tweet. Some select star creators were given the ability to request an item early to test the feature. Roblox avatar shop managers originally let MeganPlays' item be created to test the feature, but her item was quickly turned into a blank item uploaded by the Roblox account. A copy of the item was later re-uploaded onto the avatar shop the afternoon that the original was deleted, and can currently be purchased. Currently, star creators can only create one accessory per month. The items are uploaded by the Roblox staff account after being approved, and are transferred under the star creators' assets.

On September 23, 2021, it was revealed that Roblox was testing a new feature for UGC which would allowed UGC creators to upload accessories through groups. Later on September 27, 2021, it was released to the public. Only UGC creators with high enough permissions are allowed to upload accessories through groups.

On October 14, 2021, it was announced during RDC 2021 that in the future, UGC items would be available for all users, be able to create bodies and heads, UGC creators being allowed to make their items go Limited, as well as implement UGC items into experiences.

Uploading and managing accessories
It costs 750 Robux to upload any type of accessory. When uploading, the accessory must have Plastic material. Whenever a user publishes an accessory, they can input customized descriptions, a Robux price, and much more. However, releasing limited unique items and making existing items limited is still restricted to.

Creators cannot currently add scripts and such as,  and  to their accessories.

On April 13, 2020, Roblox began testing for the support of Thumbnail Cameras in UGC items. The feature is currently not public.

Premium is required to upload accessories, and losing it will cause all pre-existing accessories to go off-sale.

Glitches and bugs with UGC accessories
On June 30, a glitch affecting most (if not all) UGC accessories caused them to sporadically go offsale. This was patched the same day, and all accessories went back on sale.

Selected Developers
Currently, there are only known creators who are allowed to upload their accessory creations without request. Those selected users are:

Also, 9 selected accounts were/are used for testing accessories. These are:

Classic clothing
Users with Roblox Premium are allowed to publish clothing such as classic shirts, classic pants and classic T-shirts. It was first introduced on April 24, 2008, exclusively for Builders Club users before it was replaced with Roblox Premium. Clothing was later implemented onto groups through the audit log when creating an item.

Layered clothing
On March 7, 2022, Roblox enabled UGC creators to start publishing their own Layered clothing items. These creators may use a 3D modeling software, such as Blender and Maya, to create layered clothing. Once completed, the clothing can be exported as a .fbx. but must must contain an inner mesh cage and an outer mesh cage, the cage layers within the clothing must have the same UV maps, and the clothing must be weighed and parented to the correct bone or armature.

Creator marketplace items
Users can also create items within the creator marketplace with Premium. In December 2019, announced plans for paid plugins. The announcement also revealed plans for many other marketplace types to become paid access. The paid plugins update was implemented later that same month for users.

Copying from pre-existing items
The UGC accessories feature has mostly been criticized due to potential copies of pre-existing avatar shop items by Roblox, low effort, or unoriginal ideas. Some notable example being some early hats by (BiggestHead, Illuminati, Despacito Spider, and Triple Headstack).

UGC has also specifically been criticized by the trading community for fears of limited and limited unique items dropping in value. This originally began when the Downtown Denizen Fedora was uploaded by and had subsequently been claimed by a portion of the community to be a ripoff of The Classic ROBLOX Fedora, despite the Downtown Denizen Fedora using a noticeably different mesh and texture on closer inspection.

Oversaturation
In addition, some items can also be oversaturated, like the Cartoony Rainbow items by. Not only that, but more recently, due to the rising popularity of the game Friday Night Funkin' , the avatar shop also saw a rise in items relating to the game, including a whopping 8 hats out of the same character (Tricky, who was actually from Madness Combat, but had his own Friday Night Funkin' mod).

Cancellation of Roblox's official sales
Another concern about UGC from traders and collectors in general is the fact that Roblox appears to have canceled their official sales, which were known for bringing back popular 'classic' items such as the Workclock Headphones and Bighead as well as releasing new retextures of popular item meshes like Domini and Valkyrie Helms among other highly demanded items such as limited unique colored faces. The lack of these has led to disappointment from many users including prominent community members such as and even some UGC creators who used to participate in sales themselves.

Waist accessories
  A trend among UGC items are waist accessories designed to look like a giant object, so a user can disguise your avatar as that object and fool other users into thinking their avatars in-game are part of the game map. A notable example is BOX. Because of how this can disrupt gameplay, scripts have been published in which they remove these kinds of accessories from avatars wearing them. As of recent, many of these items have been taken off-sale, and a new rule was added that items may not cover more than 80% of a player's body.

Copyrighted Items
There is also a rising concern of certain items being extremely similar to other intellectual properties, or IPs, in a sense that they end up being similar enough to potentially warrant legal actions under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). This, however, is ultimately at the discretion of the IP holder.

Two notable examples in relation to user-created accessories include the Demon Plushy Bear and Demon Plushy Bunny back accessories by, which are based on the characters Monokuma and Monomi respectively from the Danganronpa franchise. The items had received a mixed reception, with many Danganronpa fans praising the items for being created, while other players were concerned about the extremely strong semblance to the characters, including being from a mature-rated and sometimes adult-rated franchise. The two accessories are currently content deleted and he is now banned due to violating the copyright rules, and LuxEyes' publishing abilities for UGC items have subsequently been revoked, leading to their departure from Roblox entirely.

Recently, as of 2021, due to the rising popularity of the game Friday Night Funkin' , there have been items relating to the game and mods for the game. While they were mainly criticized for oversaturating the catalog, they were also thought to have been a copyright violation. However, the creators of Friday Night Funkin'  and creators of the mods allow the use of their characters, or permission was obtained to use the characters.

UGC accessory creator concerns
On December 14, 2019, users in the Roblox Video Stars Program were granted the ability to publish UGC items at a slower rate than selected developers, presumably in response to YouTube's regulation changes regarding COPPA (effectively reducing ad revenue by a sizeable amount for kid-friendly content creators). This has been met with disdain by some users as they feel that Roblox is favoring video creators as opposed to developers, big and small alike. Additionally, some Star Program creators have been accused of uploading low effort items, with the most notable instance being the Golden Parrot by.

The user JohnAvia was accepted as part of the UGC program, after posting many UGC concepts onto Twitter. It was then discovered all of their UGC concepts were plagiarized from other artists, which resulted in backlash against them. Their items were quickly content deleted and they were removed from accessing further accessory uploads.

Clothing spamming
It has been criticised how clothing can be mass uploaded and sale of shirts, pants, or t-shirts, often stolen from other creators on the platform. Frequently, the clothes are those of a popular designer or clothing set, though it could also be clothing that has been taken off-sale. A player with Premium may create a copy of a piece of clothing that is on-sale so that they do not need to spend Robux on that item.

Texture ripping
There has also been some instances of clothing textures ripped from real-life photos, or other programs and platforms such as games or items made by creators for online worlds, being re-mapped to the Roblox clothing template and uploaded. Some of the creators of this content have disputed with Roblox clothing designers and submitted takedown requests due to copyright infringement.

Clothing theft
Clothing theft has also been criticised for stealing clothing designs from original creators. This usually happens when a specific clothing has gotten popular over time. there was away to steal clothing, by simply putting the clothing ID to the previous number of the ID, but this was later patched by Roblox on behalf of the complaints, but clothing that were released before the update was made can still be stolen by thieves.