Dress to Impress (DTI), the Roblox game inspired by Top Model, has taken the world by storm. The game allows users to express their creativity by making their own outfits based on a chosen theme generated randomly in-game. 

Players enjoy the fight for a spot on the podium while experiencing the rush of scrambling for the perfect outfit before the clock runs out. 

The game has been a massive hit, with over 2.7 billion visits and an average of over 200 thousand players joining every day, according to a Roblox spokesperson. 

But good things never last forever. The culture of the game has recently become toxic, with users deciding they’re not going to play nice anymore. This is the story of a good thing gone wrong.

Dress to Impress debuted on Roblox on Oct. 8, 2023, but the new and immersive gaming experience didn’t gain much traction at first. 

 The creator of the game, Gigi_DTI, wanted to gain more attention and used user feedback to make frequent updates to improve the game. The content was funny, and soon, many players were going on Roblox just to play DTI.

The themes such as Childhood Stories, Y2K and Gyaru made the game even better, since people were able to take them in their own direction. Players experimented with layering outfits, hair styles, and dressing up as references for the countless themes.  

Clearly things were going well for the game with social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram helping it gain popularity. Additionally, the openness of the DTI community resulted in an increase in players joining the game. 

However, People eventually started to vote unfairly. In Dress to Impress, users are allowed to rate one another from 1 to 5 stars.

Many users noticed that people who were not on theme or who had just joined were making it to the podium, while others who fit the theme better weren’t making the top three or even top five. 

Players blamed this on the younger children who play Roblox, as they aren’t old enough to understand the themes, stating DTI should have an age limit in order for the game to be played properly.

People were voting only one star for each outfit, making others feel like the effort they were putting in their outfits didn’t matter.  The DTI culture became toxic as people began to argue and threaten one another.

Players started creating farming servers, where users gave 5 stars to every player.  People also created their own group chats to gain more stars. There are regular, VIP, free-play, private and pro-servers.

These different servers were supposed to be seen as a solution, but instead, they created more problems since people felt like DTI was losing its competitive spirit. Furthermore, the pro-servers weren’t as accessible to players as the regular servers because they did  not have 3000+ stars. 

Now, Dress To Impress is struggling to stay afloat in the Roblox world, and many people are hating on the game. 

The creator tried to bring attention away from the server dilemma by adding a hijab to the game, allowing people who are Muslim to also play and have fun. 

Most people loved that the game was becoming more diverse; however, trolls decided to use it disrespectfully, causing the ‘water Muslims’ to start to trend. ‘Water Muslims’ is a term used in-game to describe players who use the hijab with revealing outfits, disrespecting Islamic culture and harming Islamic people.  

Despite everything that has occurred, Dress To Impress creators and moderators continue to fight every day to make a better experience for the players. They’ve created better updates such as the Brat update, inspired by the singer Charli XCX, in order to bring back the original element of entertainment that once ruled the game. Players hope to see a brighter future for DTI, with not just inclusivity but acceptance of others’ differences.