They literally can detect copyrighted content right now, try it yourself.
The problem probably stands on bypassed audios containing copyrighted material and “two mono” tracks audio files that aren’t detected by the copyright bot, which don’t play in game anyway, but Roblox did earn from these copyrighted songs being uploaded, so that’s not good.
YouTube says it loud and clear, a platform where users can upload videos that may contain copyright material should in no way affect YouTube directly, therefore they let the video get claimed (manually if not possible spot on) by the copyright holder, which solves all issues, unless the holder wants it entirely removed, which would just result in it being deleted + the earnings being redirected.
The problem is that Roblox takes your robux before copyright is verified IMO, which should be changed, since they are earning off copyrighted material, I’m not sure if in this case a refund helps, technically it would.
But seeing the accusations against Roblox, there are some people who got mad for children playing songs in games using their boomboxes, poor big companies!
I have massive concerns with these new upcoming changes that will make or break my project.
The window to do any action should be much longer than two weeks. I have an ongoing developing experience hosted on my private Roblox profile with separate asset creators coming in to help out. The experience has been in development since 2016, a time where group games were still in their infancy. My largest regret on the Roblox platform was not taking up Roblox’s offer to automatically switch my experience to it at the time because, at the time, it made no sense since it had the same features as a private Roblox profile game. Over time, support for games hosting on private profiles has stagnated and even been removed. I’m glad more granular permission controls are coming, but when? This new permission system should have been made first, before this one. Because right now, I have almost 800 audio files uploaded by a dedicated sound designer that will be rendered useless in the foreseeable future. Even if he made them public, he will be limited in other capacities, such as being unable to use new audios in other experiences after the 22nd.
Like the animation change where only the same user / same group can use it, the users who decide to make experiences on their own profile are once again, cruelly left in the dust and treated as inferior.
EDIT: It has come to my attention that this change might have been caused by a lawsuit. If it was, then this is even more infuriating as Roblox had ample time to implement a system that would aid developers in transitioning to this new change, be it saying this much earlier or having a way to give ownership of audio.
Finally, I can now announce my full condolences to Roblox at this time.
The March 22nd deadline is non-negotiable and was set by a lawsuit involving copyrighted audio. No matter how bad this update is, Roblox has absolutely no choice now in reversing that decision, they are legally required to perform this action.
Furthermore, it has been confirmed by Developer Relations that Roblox has set their priorities to alleviate this update, which takes time. If Roblox could choose the deadline, they would have never done this so drastically, but they can’t. Their engineering team is probably has stressed out as we are.
TL;DR: Give Roblox a break, it’s not their problem.
But don’t worry! Roblox is going to “work with you to make this transition as smooth as possible!”, so everything will work out I’m sure!
That is of course considering the best definition of “working with you” that can be drawn from this thread are half-assed responses to genuine concerns from the community that are best summarized as follows:
“This absurdly annoying, poorly thought out piece of this update is completely intentional - we can’t do anything about it, deal with it. Don’t worry, we’ll make things better at some arbitrary date in the future, just trust us even though we’ve never delivered on our promises concerning critical features like this before.”
Hey, I have a question regarding this. If you were to use other peoples audio content. And later they decide to set their audio to private, it could really damage audio functioning’s in games. Lets say you have an audio for firing a gun, then someone sets that firing audio to private, the gun will be complete silence. Could you guys maybe add like a small period of time before it gets set to private, so people will have time to change the audio that gets set to private?
It’s like whenever Roblox pushes out a new update that happens to be really cool (such as layered clothing), they then release an update that is somehow worse than the previous worst update. The fact that they don’t care for what their community says about this update whether it be the Developers, players, or possibly even Star Creators/major Roblox Youtubers or anybody else for that matter is absolutely terrifying.
This update will cement an actual dark age for the Roblox platform, whenever genuine complaints about an actually terrible updates occur, everybody and their grandmother is just screaming into a void that can only echo back.
Remember how those gift cards said “millions of worlds”? Well many of them are about to be silent next Tuesday, and many developers do not have easy access to high quality SFX or sound artists, nor do many of them have the ability to become a sound artist. The upload limits may combat botting but they create much bigger of a hassle especially for this transition.
I’m warning you Roblox, your platform may be going to heck in a handbasket, even if this change is one of the only ways to cooperate with a legal notice. Bring back respect for your creators, and choose your next actions carefully, please.
It’s been several days and there is over 4,000 replies. The fact that this has to be one of the most controversial updates and there is no sort of response from DevRel is honestly infuriating.
This, the worst part was people supporting roblox, no one should have done that because that meant to roblox that the update was good so they would keep doing these crappy updates.
Will ambience audios be included in this mass licensed upload?
Will these ambience audios cover everything from birds, waterfalls, crickets, cicadas, cows, and any other bug/animal sounds?
If not, can people pay for licensed audios to be used within their games (sites that offer licensed deals to use their audios) after all audios go private without said audios being moderated, taken down/flushed out by some mass purging? And if needed, will there also be an easy way to provide proof of license before it’s taken down if the audio is questioned? Like some kind of “hey, this is licensed verified, don’t pull down”.
Creating a video game is a long, fun, but stressful process and finding the correct audios for every little thing makes a big difference in game play.
I think most of the people who have wanted to say something already have. No sense in going back to comment on a topic that I don’t think Roblox has made a single acknowledgement of the concerns over.
I’m assuming that with the new copyright detection combined with roblox’s absolutely awful moderation that licensing audios is pointless as it’ll instantly get shot down without a chance of being heard from support. If anyone does actually try and license audio, let me know how it goes.
(1969 - 2022)