Source: https://www.roblox.com/games/6536060882/Gucci-Garden
By James Liu
Roblox has returned with another official Gucci collaboration! This time, they’ve pushed out a series of items and a game(?) to go with it. Players can buy Gucci bags, glasses, and hats for their virtual avatars through the Gucci Garden, a weird, fever dream sort of virtual art museum. Players join the game and spawn in the “museum” from a gift shop of sorts where all the items can be purchased, then walk into the various “exhibits” (?) ranging from a pool party to a subway, all with various videos and Gucci items hidden for players to obtain. While in the museum, the player starts as a plain grey marble statue before being painted various colors upon visiting different exhibits. After returning to the gift shop/spawn area/lobby, the player’s painted statue appears for anyone to look at.
While extremely trippy, weird, and with no directions whatsoever, the biggest part about the collaboration isn’t the game or the fact that Gucci collaborated with Roblox to begin with. There’s an official Gucci group on Roblox which had a collection of limited edition shirts and pants to buy quite some time before this round of collaboration. The biggest part of the event was the fact that the items on sale went limited, impacting the item trading system. “Limited” items on Roblox are a special category of items that are no longer obtainable, be it as a limited-time event reward or by going off-sale naturally, and are thus in a limited supply. However, these items can then be sold to other players for Robux by Premium members or traded for other limited items. There are also “Limited U” items that were released with a fixed amount to be sold to begin with and even have a number for what exact copy a player has. Limited items are the only items that a player can own multiple copies of as well. However, the biggest thing about limiteds is that many are extraordinary symbols of wealth on the site.
Limited items are without a doubt the most valuable things on the platform. If 100 Robux is about 1 dollar, some of these limiteds are worth tens of thousands of dollars in real money. Fedoras, Valkyries, and Dominuses are some of the most sought-after items on the site, costing upwards of millions in virtual Robux. While some make the Robux needed to buy one of these valuables through groups, games, or other means, others take advantage of the trading system. Buying low and trading high, traders steadily acquire valuable items and amass wealth in a sort of virtual stock market. For the longest time, official Roblox items have been the only tradable goods in the game, but the Gucci Garden event seems to hint that this may change soon and allow User Generated Content (UGC), or items made by players for the catalog, to be limited. The question of the impact of user-made limiteds has been around since UGC was first introduced, but it seems like Roblox is ready to let the community run wild. Will it ruin the trading system entirely as tons of new limiteds flood the market and ruin prices? Will it be a breath of fresh air for traders as they have new, high-end limited items to shoot for instead of 7-year-old hats older than their accounts? That’s a question I’m probably not qualified to answer as someone who’s not big into trading on Roblox, but the answer will probably come soon as the Gucci Garden event seems to be the first sign of Roblox expanding the UGC system to allow for the creation of community-made limited items.
