I wonder if I’m at all to blame for this approach. I’ve been encouraging people to build with the templates, but my hope is that by seeing what I do with them on stream they’d be encouraged to make something unique out of it. Putting in at least a dozen hours of work into making a gallery, building some quests, and customizing the space into something that stands out as their own. I wouldn’t expect any of these sorts of template based games to rank highly unless they had a lot of work put into them.
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It’s thanks to you and Panda’s guiding using templates that I’ve even managed to get up my experience.
Criticising people for using templates is just… elitist… Just because one is good at GM and VE doesn’t give anyone the right to say templates suck and shouldn’t be included.
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I think and hope most peoples frustrations lie in templates being used with no real additions made. I’ve gone into experiences where they have published just a template, nothing placed themselves no quests, just a template being published.
I also hope from KamiSawZe sentiments that people see how he has taken those templates and takes time to educate and teach people how they can expand upon what is given and create something different. As you said You have used the templates. I assume you using the templates and tuning into the streams that you are also adding some of your own additions to those templates.
If someone took a voxedit template, uploaded, minted and then placed for sale just the template with no additions/edits I for sure wont spend any SAND on buying that asset. But I have for sure spend SAND on assets I know have used the templates but they’ve edited them and made them different.
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100% agreed.
I wonder though, where do ppl draw the line in terms of marketplace practices. Like if someone were to sell a character of 1 skin colour, and then launch another that’s the same character but different colour. Does that count as low effort?
It’s low effort, but the market can chose to simply not buy it. But if TSB was paying for page-views in the store and someone was farming views to get more rewards, then the low effort is being rewarded. We want to reward genuine player engagement - but we can only really wish that is because a game is high effort. Platforms like youtube and twitter also have a problem with rewarding low-effort, high-engagement content. This is a broader issue that many platforms still need to figure out how to solve. I hope we at TSB can lead the way.
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No, I don’t think you’re to blame for this. Uploading templates was always going to happen, I don’t even really blame the creator for publishing them. I think it’s like you mention in your next message, mostly up to the platform to figure out how to not reward these experiences.
If a creator was to use a template and puts effort to make a game and then wins rewards with that, no problem. The problem is literally publishing 20 different templates that took no effort to make anything in and winning more rewards than creators that built something from scratch.
To be completely clear, @TobeyU , I hope you don’t think I said that templates suck (you can reread my comments if you’d like). But of course I don’t think they should be treated the same as experiences built from scratch.
For context, we at Tuschay Studios spent around 600-1000 hours getting ready for the first half of this Builders Challenge. We got five games ready in that time: Funguy Frenzy, Shroom Boom, The Worst Game Ever, Funguy Family Fort, and Floor is Cake. Then while the builders challenge was going on for the last seven weeks we build two more games: Mushroom Dragon Temple and Funguy Farmer. So imagine the frustration when you take all this time to make games and then you come to find that templates with no effort put into them actually just make more rewards. I ask myself “why did we waste our time?”
So that’s where I draw the line, if you’re wondering. And let me reiterate, this isn’t something that creators should self-police. This is something that TSB needs to monitor and prevent from rewarding. It’s been like this for years with Game Jams as Andy mentioned. Why should this be treated differently?
I’d love to play your game, @TobeyU , which one did you publish? If you’re a new builder I welcome you to join our social channels and on Twitch so we can help you build more dynamic experiences.
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Point made well, thanks again for clarifying.
Umm I’d like to stay anon with my experience. I’m ranked top 200 but I think that if people were to see and pass judgement (not you,maybe), ughh… quite frankly I’d like to avoid it. Tbh I did get help from helping others too. We see it as a form of raiding each others experiences.
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This is the most robust, clear, honest, and accurate analysis of the current situation and overall quality of the Builders Challenge.
My soul is tingling as I read this. What you’ve laid out is so close to objective reality, and that is not an easy thing to do.
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Is it inappropriate to say that bombs have just been dropped? I mean here in the forums.
If it is, I’ll rephrase.
Edit: damn post removed
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I thought be moved from Twitter to the forum to make discussions easier for the community. Not so that you had control over censorship.
Comments/Opinions from the community should not be deleted if you don’t agree with them.
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Dear Creator Community,
We hear you. The recent release of the Builders’ Challenge 2 rankings for weeks 3 and 4 has sparked significant discussion, and we understand your concerns and frustrations. It’s important that we address these issues directly and reaffirm our commitment to fairness and integrity in our contest.
Why are things taking so long?
- The BC was released with light rules. We therefore need to navigate what we believe is right or wrong, address it under an objective lens, and establish it as part of the way we run things going forward.
- This issue touches several topics tied to the nature of Web3; such as ownership of an asset, and play to earn. While some of those ideas are in contrast with the spirit of the BC, they are nonetheless a part of our industry.
- Alas, several people are on vacation during the first two weeks of August. While all of them are still spending time on this, it makes communication, reviewing data, and requesting approval, longer than usual- especially with several time zones.
Addressing the rankings
We identified experiences that used Guilds to boost their engagement metrics. Although our previous rules did not explicitly address this specific tactic, we have determined that it conflicts with the general principles of fair play and the spirit of the competition. To ensure clarity, we will update our rules to explicitly prohibit such practices. The new guidelines will be posted on the forum within the next 24 hours, together with the affected experiences, the decision on the affected experiences, and the updated rankings.
Anti-Cheat Measures
We review every experience using multiple anti-cheat filters, ranging from very strict to more lenient. We then directly check the top 50 experiences. We remain vigilant, continue to monitor all submissions closely, and value the integrity of each creator. Our goal is to maintain a transparent and fair contest for everyone.
Leaderboard Visibility Issue
We also want to address concerns about certain experiences not appearing on the leaderboard. Please make sure to adhere to the following rule: “Account Activity: Your Game Maker account must have been opened on seven different days to demonstrate genuine engagement with the platform.” This rule ensures that all participants are actively involved.
About Duplicate Experiences
We have considered the feedback regarding duplicate experiences and recognize the issue. We realize that some builders have actively built and put time and effort into creating experiences and feel that duplicate experiences are eating into their pool. We are developing a solution that does not remove the existing duplicate experiences while allowing builders who have launched something new and unique to feel like they are not being penalized. Exact details will be provided by the end of the week. We are reviewing our policies and will implement stricter guidelines for future similar events.
About Removing Posts
We very rarely remove posts that the community flags as inappropriate (either via the forum and at times by messaging us). Once a post is flagged, it is reviewed against the forum terms and conditions and eventually removed. When doing so, we contact the poster to let them know. We do not censor or remove posts based on our perspective.
Transition to the New Earning Model
As we reflect on our journey, it’s important to recognize how we moved from the Game Maker Fund to the Builders’ Challenge model. The GMF was pivotal in providing consistent support to creators and fostering high-quality experiences under our guidance, helping to build a strong community of skilled creators and exceptional content.
As our platform and community have evolved, we recognized that the GMF model was no longer sustainable as a long-term business strategy: it relied too heavily on the taste of a few decision-makers, made it more difficult for new creators to emerge, and was not necessarily correlated with market and audience needs. The Builders’ Challenge model, which bases earnings on engagement metrics, represents a strategic shift towards a more self-sustaining system. As some of you pointed out, we built it aligning with industry trends, ensuring that creators are rewarded based on the real impact and engagement their experiences generate.
We realize that our vision for the Builders’ Challenge is not yet on target, as there is too much competition across creators for a limited pie over a short period of time. While we are learning a lot from it and distributing rewards to the community, this system needs a significant overhaul with the next iteration. We appreciate your comments about Game Jams, multiple tiers of creators, and timelines. As discussed previously, the next iteration of this event will be built based on your requests on this forum. In mid August, we will share with you the goals that The Sandbox is trying to achieve and gather feedback from the community on how to roll it out in the fall.
Thank you for your comments, time, and dedication. Please know that as a company, it might take time for us to align, react, and respond, but we always listen and try to improve.
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Thanks for the reply. I would also like to add that I expect a minimum level of seriousness and continuity from TSB. If you have established rules they shouldn’t be changed every week… Initially the competition started with a limit of minimum 10 unique visits, a rule that was abolished because the community complained, now the community is complaining and other rules will be changed. In the two weeks the rules has be changed twice, explain to me how it works… at each ranking some rules will be introduced or removed because people are complaining?
Make a decision and carry it forward to the end, don’t change the rules at each event because lately they just seem like decisions dictated by complaints rather than a real long-term project.
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It’ll be interesting to see what is defined as guilds. As it seems, most experiences have their own regular group of players.
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That’s right. All the rewards I give to participants (55 contests/ 30% /80% reward pool) are defined by the regularity and their daily play rate. The more a player participates, the more he is rewarded.
Every day I update the “DAY” variables (day1, day2, …day70) to have a faithful follow-up of their participations, I already have a folder full of screenshots, some do it almost every day on several experiences.
The difference between a guild and a community is an important question.
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If you are a Studios you have a community, if you are a simple sandbox user with a land and part of a group of people that visit each other you are not anymore allowed to play the builder’s contest! This is what I understand reading this post.
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Since when does Sandbox also mean Guilds?
On what basis do you say that Guilds exist?
You don’t have a system within TheSandbox that you can create a Guild, so I’m wondering where you get this information of people having a “Guild”.
There are private creators, individuals, and studios.
But this does not mean that one must decide whether an experience is valid or not.
I see a sort of “war” between those who publish the most experiences and those who, having worked on it for hours, months and days with an expense of 0, claim to be the best.
Yes, the expense is always 0, it costs nothing to create on TheSandbox, any external expense is borne by the owner.
So speaking as a player, Land holder and so on, we have gone from a competition open to all, to give a way to encourage new players, as well as old ones, to create experiences, to having to decide who is worth it or not in the rankings.
From a previous comment, where a guy shows 10 computers in a room, with TheSandbox game open on all PCs (maybe some not) complete with the same initial graphics…
It makes you think a lot…
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It would be strange, why open the BC concept to everyone in this case. It would then be better if this event was reserved for studios?
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wen rewards? 
Happy that this is getting addressed.
Great breakdown of issues and how they are going to be tackled, this really does lose its weight thought when even then 24h promises are not achieved.
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Hello everyone!
@AndyRichy, you’re right—we need to do a better job of keeping our word. Sorry for the delay here, I know this has been frustrating.
The summer holidays and time zone differences have slowed us down more than we anticipated, but that’s on us, and we want to do better. We’re finishing up a final review of the revised rules to make sure they are clear and don’t cause any more confusion. They’ll be posted today.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. 
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