Further Changes to Playing Ability of Experimental Mode Games

Hey Developers,

A couple of weeks ago, we made changes to how Experimental Mode games are displayed on the sort in order to encourage developers to ensure their games are more secure. This week, as we mentioned at RDC, we are continuing to roll out changes to Experimental Mode games, focusing on making the platform safer for all members of our community.

The following is a summary of the changes:

  • Experimental Mode games can no longer be played by users over 13 and can only be played by friends of the game’s creator.

This change will accomplish several goals:

  • Enhancing the safety of our community
  • Putting an emphasis on secure development earlier in the learning process of developing Roblox games

We have additionally been in contact with developers impacted by the CreatePlaceAsync issue through the Developer Forum. If your game was impacted by CreatePlaceAsync and you haven’t heard from us yet, please feel free to email devrelations@roblox.com and we will work with you on the issue.

This change is live as of now.

Thanks,
Developer Relations Team

63 Likes

It was already like this for under 13 users relatively recently. Now it applies for over 13 too.

18 Likes

Doesn’t this mean that a lot of history just got effectively destroyed? A lot of really old places with inactive/banned creators? Historical classic places like JJ5x5’s Thrillville?

Rest in peace.

And much much more.

157 Likes

Well crap this just killed 25 of my older games that I was trying to not have to update until the new one came out. Guess I’ll just go explain to everyone that roblox did this and I can’t do anything about it.

37 Likes

I think more needs to be done to show people the dangers of not having your game set to FilteringEnabled, as right now many people I speak to don’t really understand the difference and blame Roblox for being annoying for no reason.

I’m not saying the changes in the thread shouldn’t be made, but they also take attention away from the fact that people just shouldn’t be using experimental mode even without restrictions on it.

38 Likes

What if we have a box to tick in settings that is by default set to false however is along the lines of:

“I want to be able to play all experimental mode games and understand the consequences that may occur.”

108 Likes

This is something that I can absolutely second. While I like this change in terms of it pushing people to use FE, I think it may be better to let people know those dangers. That’s a huge detail that, if people understood why they should use FE, would push people forward without harming their playerbase until they’re able to fix the problem.

13 Likes

Sadly I’m sure many children would blindly press this and as parents have little understanding of technology Roblox would still be blamed.

11 Likes

What if you also have to be 13 to tick it? :thinking:

24 Likes

Might as well force all games to become experimental mode disabled. What’s the point of even having the option if it’s just going to be unplayable by anyone besides your friends (which you’re limited to having.)

Edit: added “disabled”

28 Likes

Cool, can you now fix games that are tagged as experimental mode DESPITE all of them having filtering enabled on?

This just killed one of my games despite being fully FE compatible

25 Likes

I feel now would be a good time to bring back up these two potential solutions that /u/QuiteAmazingStuff posted on Reddit.

image

Even that first one would be a better way of handling this than completely removing the history that these old places hold, though if posible the 2nd one I feel would be a great way to keep everything alive.

117 Likes

You’re kidding…? No more historic Roblox games. Forget about being backwards compatible and making sure you don’t break anything - let’s just remove the games entirely.
Why not just force the switch to filteringenabled? I want to visit Wit’s End. I want to visit Dodge the Teapots. I want to visit Thrillville, and King of the Hill.

Just force the switch to FilteringEnabled. Don’t make all of those old games COMPLETELY unplayable.

I understand the need to keep people safe, but just force the switch in that case. I seriously do not see the point in completely making all of these games null when there are other solutions like the ones @CaptainJadeFlames posted about.

69 Likes

Time to say goodbye to classics such as:

A Pirates Life
Banland
Be Crushed By A Speeding Wall
Chaos Canyon
Cruiser: Hyperspace
Daxter33’s Paintball
Deception Infection
Dodge The Teapots of Doom!
Egg Hunt 2014 (Drzewko)
Glass Houses
Haunted Mansion
HERE, where the world is quiet
King of the Hill
Lost Thoughts Fortress
Mission to the Moon
Ninjas vs. Samurai Pagoda Battle
Nuke The Whales
Pinball Wizards
ROBLOX Museum
Rocket Arena
Sandbox
Santa’s Winter Stronghold
Survival 303 Original
Sword Fights on the Heights
Thrillville
Ultimate Build
Ultimate Paintball
The Underground War
Vidre Cova
Welcome to ROBLOX Building
WipeOut Obby
Yorick’s Resting Place
Zombie Tower

You will all be missed dearly.


Sort of strange how Roblox haven’t taken measures to update their own games, like Welcome to ROBLOX Building and Glass Houses, to make them playable again. Since the official Roblox account doesn’t accept friend requests, there’s not much hope we’ll be able to play them again.

I don’t agree with this decision. Let us play classic games again. Please, do something about this.

165 Likes

Exactly, I think that if everyone understood FilteringEnabled properly, they would just use it. It’s perks massively outweigh it’s cons in practically every aspect. Some light pushes such as only allowing 13+ players use experimental games, and featured games having to have FilteringEnabled on etc would have been fine, but right now everyone hates Roblox, and I’d say that in part it’s Roblox’s own fault that people feel that way.

19 Likes

That second one seems like a really reasonable solution.

7 Likes

I feel like preventing 13+ users from joining experimental games is an unacceptable destruction of older, unmaintained games.

Please reconsider this decision. 18+ users at the very least should be allowed to play experimental mode games to preserve these historical games.

Even just forcing all old games to FE is more acceptable than locking them all forever. Many old devs have moved on. They will not enable Filtering on their own. If a developer wants to close their game if it doesn’t work with FE forced, that’s their decision. If a developer wants to disable filtering afterwards, that’s still their decision.

Let us at least JOIN old games. Even if some don’t work.

55 Likes

If I had to guess, Roblox is trying to slowly phase out experimental mode. With access restricted to these games from all users, it makes sense to stop supporting it. There seems to be a lot of confusion for new programmers about the differences between experimental mode and non experimental mode anyway.

8 Likes

Daxter33’s paintball, for me.

13 Likes

What about a method of playing experimental games with FilteringEnabled on? Players can join a game in a ‘Secure Mode’ or something along those lines, and although many scripts would be broken, at least it’s not entirely closing the game for good.

6 Likes