About our upcoming Global Compliance System

Updates Announcements
#153

Roblox has made a political and controversial statement - that what they’re doing is okay, and that businesses should be able to work any business partner regardless of the ethics involved. Regardless of if Roblox’s belief is true or not, I think it unethical to forbid people from explaining why they believe that Roblox’s move is wrong. I hope you can understand, if someone wanted to explain why a government was unethical, they would have to mention facts about what that government did or is doing. Censoring such content delivers the message that Roblox doesn’t care about ethics (though since I’ve heard many vouch for the character of those who work at/with Roblox, I only suspect Roblox’s policies may be having questionable consequences).

You say that this site is to be a development resource. But many of those removed posts contained valuable discussions for development, addressing questions like “when should I use this feature?” and “what will Roblox look like in some time and how might that impact me?”

Based on what was removed (I copy/pasted some of them when they started disappearing), my new understanding of the “no politics” rule on Roblox is:

  • No criticizing, implying, or stating opinions or facts (historical or current, regardless of if they are sourced or well known) about a government, regardless of if the topic is relevant, and regardless of if it would be unethical to say nothing – not even if it the information is extremely valuable from a business perspective (ignoring ethics)

Is that really Roblox’s stance? I can’t believe it, but I’m rereading some of the removed posts and can see some that talked only about facts or just about financial viability concerns (of course a government was mentioned/involved, but often not disrespectfully).

Some explanation would be appreciated.

[Edit: Seeing the same conversations unfolding that were already deleted/moved, I get the feeling that I’m not the only one who could use more clear instruction on what is and isn’t allowed.]

I noticed that a lot of people are in agreement with coefficients and I’d like to ask why?

Like, is it just that you don’t want to think about ethics or politics while browsing Roblox? (I did find it made the thread easier to read since the topic matter was light - it also had a higher concentration of a people asking about edge cases, which one could argue is better.)

I wonder if a better option would be for Roblox staff to say “I see this is a controversial topic that involves politics. Let’s fork this thread so that there’s a public place where people can discuss/debate the relevant ethics and politics (letting this be a special case where reporting facts/concerns about a government is acceptable), especially encouraging people to think about different solutions and compromises.” Maybe no good could come of such a thread; I only know that I was appreciative of being introduced to various views on what is ethical and why – I don’t want to use a feature and hurt people through ignorance.

33 Likes
#154

Roblox might be forbidding us from discussing that concern. Fortunately, we have more immediate problems that we can more safely discuss instead.

Roblox’s Terms of Use were updated December 9, 2019. I expect none of us were notified of this, meaning we all had 30 days to check for changes before they came into effect (upon our next usage of any Roblox service or site). Since we’re talking about this on a Roblox site and it’s been more than 30 days, we’ve already agreed to hand over to China the full rights to do whatever they want with any game that we ask them to publish - including to modify it to contain messages you do not agree with or to make derivative works, publish them, and give you nothing in return.

You had a few objections:

What do you mean? We’ve already agreed to let this happen (if we opt-in). You don’t “police” behaviour that you authorize.

I came across another section since my last post that reinforces the idea that they can freely modify your game:

2.6 Review of Your China UGC. Any Distribution Entity may review, filter and modify UGC as it sees fit before determining whether to distribute Your China UGC to any China Player for publication on the China Game in its sole discretion. The Distribution Entity’s determination in this respect shall be final.

(Section 2.8 says that they can modify it further (or take it down) at any time and for any reason.)

So they have their own website (and they fully control what’s published on it), they have your game (if you opt in to have them review your game for publishing it), and they have your permission (through the Terms of Use) to modify it.

8 Likes
#155

Because the “no politics” rule has been in place on the forums for a while. It’s not like they added it right after this post.

1 Like
#156

I don’t see a problem with this? If you choose to opt your game into Roblox China, they get to review it?

1 Like
#157

The terms you’ve outlined describe China’s rights to your work, but Roblox still reserves the right to not host clones of existing games, even though China is given the right to publish them.

It seems messy to allow somebody else to edit my game. The only way this makes sense if there’s a completely separate “Roblox” where entire games are published independently so that China may make changes to them without affecting the real version.

2 Likes
#159

This is concerning. I don’t think that developers want any entity except Roblox doing anything to their IP.

Question @ anyone:

JUST TO CLARIFY:

If I do not opt-in to the compliance system for a specific country, does that ensure that the specified country can not access my IP in any way, shape or form?

IP = Intellectual Property

12 Likes
#160

That’s great and all, but my post had no reference to politics. How much of a generalization is this definition exactly?

3 Likes
#161

That’s exactly what they have - they won’t edit your original game on roblox.com, they’ll be (potentially) modifying a copy of it that they can then host on their website (someone already posted this), “roblox.qq.com” (that’s the “qq.com” site with subdomain “roblox”, ie not part of “roblox.com”)

As you update your game, they might choose to review each update before publishing the new version - they could probably use version control if they had modifications they wanted to merge in (if they felt your game as worth the effort - again assuming they had a change they wanted to perform).

If a “derivative work” can be as simple as modifying a few GUIs and maybe the title, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be able to merge your updates into their derivative work, too (if they were so inclined).

If Roblox could modify the Terms of Use to prevent these possible cases (or make it clear that they are already prevented in some other agreement between Roblox and the China platform), or else explicitly tell everyone (ex on the opt-in screen) a summary of the rights that are handed over when opting in (and what the worst case possibilities include), at least then I could be reassured that they’re trying to look out for us. Also, China probably wants the ability to remove whatever they want, but I think it’d be easier to work with them (from a non-ethically-considered business perspective) if they at least didn’t have the right to add new content to the game without an additional agreement with me. I would also want to know more about what “derivative works” they’re allowed to create and how that impacts everything; “they can do anything” is an unacceptable contract.

6 Likes
#167

I can’t speak for DevEng (I am not them) but it’s possible your reply was removed as housekeeping. It doesn’t make much sense to leave replies that only make sense with the context of messages that don’t exist anymore. It could also be been for any number of other reasons (it isn’t in the DM I am a part of so I can’t read it).

I encourage you to send a DM to Developer Engagement about it if you have questions about why your post was removed. They’ll be happy to clarify.

1 Like
#168

On the topic of Roblox’s Chinese subdomains, I was busy going through roblox.qq.com and roblox.cn recently and I noticed that they have a separate version of Roblox Studio, as seen in the video below:

This comes from roblox.cn/creators.html.

6 Likes
#169

Knowing blood isn’t allowed to be red in some countries, this could help us evade some issues :+1:

5 Likes
#170

My big concern here is you fail to mention any of the changes to TOS in the original post, nor do you explain them in such a way that most developers on Roblox would understand. Ignoring all the political and ethical issues with expanding to certain regions, I do not recall seeing any notification that TOS were updated, and while this is not technically required on sites which include a “by using this you agree to these TOS” (which is dumb but that’s US laws for ya), it is generally good practice to inform us that if we were to publish our games in regions which allow us a significant boost in players, of all the rights to our content we are giving up in the process.
If the opt-in page does not list these clear and openly rather than behind a “you agree to these linked TOS” I will not be impressed.

10 Likes
#171

i thought it was the same. so it is an another platform for Chinese?

#173

As long as Roblox honors the developer in their decision where to place their game around the world, along with those developers having the sovereignty to choose to opt-out, I don’t think anyone will have an issue with this.

#174

They did say it was “up to the developer to enter these markets” I’d assume the compliance is done by the developer.

1 Like
#175

Yep, that’s the plan. “We will only be enforcing local compliance in those local markets. With that said, it’s ultimately up to you whether or not your game should be available in any given market.” It’s all voluntary to move to these new markets. And I am almost certain Roblox as a company won’t be responsible for filtering developers games.

#177

Most likely, since there is a separate website from roblox.com for the Chinese.

#178

Hi AOT, yes I know hehe I was just posing a question about the degree to which we, as developers, should be responsible for determining availability of our product in a global market when we already do so much work to create. If global compliance implemented country-specific API for every country, there would be quite a lot of refactoring existing source code in our project to handle these cases.

#179

What is stopping other users from making copies of your game and then releasing them to Chinese audiences? If you refuse to open your game to Chinese markets, is there any mechanism to prevent people from making “Chinese clones” of your games? If there is nothing to stop this, wouldn’t every developer be forced into releasing their games to China if they do not want a copy to make money off of their work in that region?

19 Likes
#181

Hmmm, implementing this in a game that allows for difference in compliance is going to be hard. Some content are going to be locked for some regions and creating a way so that every content can be experienced by all players will take some time to implement. This takes some precious development time and I don’t think it is currently worth it to market to China. I seriously wish that Roblox publish data so that developers can better target an audience and demographic.

3 Likes