Rec Room plans to pay out more than $1 million to creators in 2021 and “it could end up being several times that,” according to a company representative.
Rec Room’s “Creator Compensation Program” allows players meeting certain requirements to cash out their in-game tokens for real world cash. Requirements include being 18 years of age or older, but parental consent can allow kids age 13+ to get paid for their creations in Rec Room. The program also restricts payouts to players who have made at least 1 million tokens (equivalent to about $400) earned from selling inventions and keys to other players. You’re also required to have an active Rec Room Plus membership.
According to the company, there are more than 2 million creators in Rec Room with creations built in the same app that’s available to anyone across mobile phones, consoles and VR. Late last year Rec Room launched on Xbox and brought its Rec Royale mode to Oculus Quest 2.
A thread on Twitter from Rec Room’s Shawn Whiting outlined the progress of the Rec Room platform paying out to creators:
We’re planning to pay out at least a million USD to creators this year, but the uptake on this program has been very fast. It could end up being several times that.
In the last 90 days the amount of money players are spending on user generated content in Rec Room has grown 14X.
— Shawn Whiting (@ShawnRecRoom) March 3, 2021
Rec Room is competing with Roblox for mindshare among kids with cross-platform support and a way to turn play in virtual worlds into a part-time or full time job. Roblox, meanwhile, is about to go public with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Roblox was first released in 2006 while Rec Room came out in 2016. The platforms have some major differences but there’s overlap in their overall in approach to an interconnected network of worlds that can be customized by creators.
