[Action Needed] Upcoming Changes to Asset Privacy for Audio

Tragic. It’s sad that even SpongeBob is no match for evil music people. :sob: :sob: :sob:
Edit: #pleaserevert

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I had a lingering feeling something like that was the reason, everytime an update like this happens it usually because of copyright or a lawsuit

I think Universal should honestly be ripped to shreds. I already can’t stand their scumbag business practices but this just crosses every line there is. Roblox should stand against them in the lawsuit instead of trying to preserve profits with this terrible update.

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The thing I don’t get is; If the point of this update is to protect developer audios, Why is it that it wouldn’t be a better idea to have a new option that decides if an audio is private or not?

Going above and beyond, if the true undisclosed reason behind this is the copyright madness, wouldn’t this update only amplify it? People would start uploading their copyrighted songs (And yes, bypassed ones) in masses due to the free audios.

What does this update even fix for developers or Roblox?

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To add.
Something I should had added is most small devs, don’t have the money to just hire music creators, which is why they use already existing music, or SFX.

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I’ve done further research into this, and it looks like the real cause is Roblox having absolutely no legal backbone.

I read through this absolute joke of a court case, all accounts made by the plaintiffs are greatly over exaggerated and could easily be defended in court, but Roblox prefers to be as submissive as possible to these tyrannical music companies.

In the case I see multiple accounts of claims that wouldn’t even hold up in the current year, ranging from vague twitter comments, app store reviews from 2018, and referring to occurrences as old as a music contest in 2009.

The plaintiff has absolutely no proof of damages from the usage of boombox gamepasses (one of their main points throughout their claims), Roblox actively removes copyright infringing content, it’s nearly impossible to upload anything from popular artists nowadays even using tricks like distorting or slowing the audio.

The other main issue with all of this is that Roblox is a platform, not a publisher. Safe harbor laws should protect Roblox from this kind of large-scale legal harassment, considering that they take down content when given reasonable notice and commit to their best effort of moderating copyright infringing content upon uploading.

I really hope Roblox does something other than backing down immediately under legal pressure for once, they literally rebranded their entire platform from “games” to “experiences” because they got briefly mentioned in a court case between Apple and Epic Games.

Stop being so god damn submissive Roblox.

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As a game developer who uses almost entirely user - uploaded audio in my games, I do not support this change. This would cause all music and many sound effects to become unusable as of March 22 unless they are uploaded by the creator of the game in which they are being used. Although most of my games do not utilize music extensively, many of the sound effects that I currently use are longer than 6 seconds, and it is very likely that the users who uploaded these audio assets will not bother to manually set all of them to “public” after this update.

A relatively simple solution I would like to propose is not making previously uploaded audio assets private automatically.

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:raised_back_of_hand: Can agree on that. I make NO income, which means that i can’t hire anybody and that honestly sucks.

Exactly what I thought. This will make uploading copyrighted / bypassed áudio much easier. They should have kept the fee, despite being a massive incovenience for us developers.

I believe the reason they went privated is so nobody can look it up, consequently not displaying any copyrighted stuff to those big companies.

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So true! Honestly ! This is what most companies do when DMCA breathes on them.

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Roblox only cares about their bank, and who is threatening to their bank. I feel like Roblox is going to revert this update due to the massive backlash and players/developers quitting.

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this post is absolutely based pretty funny how roblox just instead of really doing anything they just go lol bye!

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Yeah, this. 100% agree. The case went as far as to take an awful, old amazon review clearly made by a kid and make some sort of example, going as far as trying to say “It teaches kids piracy is okay!”

The entire thing was so clearly made as a desperate scheme to make money. It’s about as bad as the time UMG started copyright striking several random Twitter posts for having memes with their music in it, causing several people to be suspended thanks to incredibly questionable DMCA claims.

Roblox has literally no spine when it comes to the legal side of things, they’ve already proven that before. I’m not surprised they don’t fight back though, they just want whatever fills their pockets more, not what helps their developers and players, who are the people who make them their money.

This update probably isn’t going to be reverted since it’s due to a legal case, despite how easy it would be for Roblox to win.

I’m going to quit on March 22nd.

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Hey, Im wondering if I could use this message in a petition? Please reach out to me if I can, as it really shows how much developers will be hurt. Thank you.

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Not defending their actions, but…

I mean, Universal had every right to sue.

Imagine a billion dollar company having a lot of your music on their website, free for anyone and everyone to listen to. Plus, the billion dollar company is making money for each and every audio upload and you’re not making a dime from it! AND on top of that, Roblox has no legal backbone

Hell, I would sue too.

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yeah its getting fustrating to wait for an actual response

ok i cant edit it so ima just reply to it.

while this was a really big exaggeration, i find it greatly discouraging to know i have to wait a full 30 days to upload more music for maps and weapons if im already at the limit of 10. (and yes, i know you can give the random company more personal info to sell in the form of your id but i really would not like to do that.)

Same here tbh, I’m honestly tired of this platform. Getting a game popular is near impossible if it isn’t some simulator anime garbage anyways so I’m gonna try to actually learn a skill that can help me in the job market, alongside with being able to make a decent game that doesn’t rely on the infrastructure of the world’s most submissive corporation.

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It might be 2k for people who have their ID verified

Roblox once again proves they truly don’t care about their developers. Next time, please spend more time thinking about potential solutions instead of pulling out half-assed ones in a panic; this accomplishes nothing for anybody.

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