16+ Testers Unable to Join my Experience

[4_crock (crock)]

As the title states, I am unable to get my testers into my Experience.

Every tester that has tried to join has been Age-Verified 16+ and has Team-Create Playtest Access. Even adding testers as Trusted Friends did not resolve the issue. The testers also verified that their account settings are set with the least-restrictive content restrictions and that none of their other privacy or security settings should cause this.

The Experience itself is published and Configure → Settings → Audience is set to Limited with only the ‘Playtesters’ box checked. I submitted the Content-Maturity Questionnaire and the game received a Mild maturity rating. In Audience → Reach, it displays that the current reach is “Ages 16+ and Trusted Friends”, which all of the testers qualify for. It also confirms the content maturity as Mild and shows the publishing reach to be All Ages. The Team-Create Playtest Access is confirmed in the Creator Hub as well as on Roblox Studio. I have gone into Audience → Access Settings and ensured that every single setting is set to the least-restrictive value. In these Access Settings, Age is set to All Ages, Region is set to All Regions, all Device Types are allowed, the game is Free to Play, and Access Control is Fully Open.

I am completely able to join the game, but none of the testers have been able. Clicking the game’s link directly does not allow them to join, nor does the email they received notifying them of their Playtest Access.

We were able to find one workaround, but it does not actually work for complete testing. First, I made sure a tester was 16+, added as a Trusted Friend, and had Playtest permissions. Then, I would join my game, invite that tester to a Party, and select the join option (having them follow me into the next server). This did allow that tester alone to join the game, but I had to remain in-game or it would kick them out. While this does let me get testers into the game, it is not a practical solution and it does not allow for complete testing. We have small server sizes as a core part of the game, so it is highly restrictive to only have one server for testing and limits us to only a few testers, which significantly reduces our ability to run testing.

It is seriously interfering with our ability to release updates as this is an issue with all testing places as well as our official dev build. In the group-owned test world, we paid the 100k Robux to allow all ages to play, but testers still cannot join over a week later, including 16+ ones with playtest permissions through the group. Currently, Studio Edit Permissions would be the only way to give anyone the ability to test the game, but that’s not a viable option either.

I’m hoping that there is some sort of mistake on my end, but after spending over 2 hours trying to find a fix and looking online, I am still experiencing the issue. I started experiencing the issue in my place last night, although we’ve been experiencing it with our main test world for over a week now.

Screenshots:

Thank you, any help is appreciated!

A private message is associated with this bug report

[4_crock (crock)]

Quick Update: We were able to get testers access to our In-Dev game. The expedited review was completed, but the game is still set to Limited with no clearly-relevant settings different than in the other test game. Testers still cannot access my game, which the above screenshots show the settings for.

Before this, the In-Dev game had Playtest access given out through a tester role in the community’s Creator Hub roles. That was kept, but Playtest access was given out through the normal Team-Create and that seemed to resolve the issue for that game.

I cannot recreate those steps for the other place, however, as it is owned under my account and I have already given Playtest access to testers through Team-Create.

[4_crock (crock)]

With the existing workaround of inviting Trusted Friends to a Party and having them join from there, it turns out that they do stay in game. In fact, whether I leave the game, leave the party, leave both the game and party, or remove their playtest access entirely, they are able to stay in the server. They cannot rejoin the server or anything, only remain in it once I have dragged them in.

This does not seem to be a viable workaround either way, as I can only bring 4 people at a time into the game (the server size is 5) and I’m only able to open up one server. If I bring 4 people into the game, I can leave and they remain in the server, but I cannot open a new server. With 4 people in the server and no one able to join on their own, I have to drag them in, which requires that I fill the 5th spot of the server, making it impossible for me to drag more testers in.

I’m going to test now by dragging 3 testers into the game from my party, leaving the game and party (should keep the testers in the original server), and then making a new party with 2 other testers and joining the game. Since the original server will only have room for 2 more players, joining the game in a party with 3 people may reserve a new server and allow me to hold some testing between two separate servers while I have no other options except to not hold testing.

It seems to have worked. I am able to start two separate servers with the process I described above, but it is a horrible system and I have to redo it every time I update the game. It’s better than no testing at all, but I still have no idea how to fix the root problem.

I want to quickly note that I have fully published the game and have no prompt to pay a publishing fee. I have Roblox Plus and the All Ages Publishing Permissions from the screenshot above, so I don’t think that’s the issue.

[trainfan25 (Pappy4Trappy)]

I have the same issues and it is incredibly frustrating. I also face the problem where actually, it would be ideal to grant our testing game access to ages below 16 seeing our main game is playable for all ages - some of our testers are below 16. Could someone help provide a clear resolve / answer to the dilemma?

[BloxyKroket (BloxyCrazy)]

I also have this problem, although I’m not ID verified. But that doesn’t seem to be needed to give access to Play Testers, Friends or 16+ users. It worked only one time when i randomly decided to Publish my game and my Play Tester was able to Join. I Published it again and then it just didn’t work anymore!?

[4_crock (crock)]

Randomly now, it seems that the testers are able to join. I’m not certain how, but the issue seems to be resolved for now.

Thank you!