As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to let users know the “true” release date of an experience.
I often work on an experience for months, sometimes years, before releasing it to the public. This means that the “Created” date doesn’t line up with the actual release date.
The community assumes the “Created” date of that experience is the release date. They expect anniversary celebrations + events around the creation date.
Option A - Add a “Release Date” section to experiences. Hide the “Created” date. Allow a developer to set the “Release Date” to any date that was after the “Created” date.
Option B - Allow a developer to set the “Created” date to any date between an experience’s original creation date and the current date.
Why This Is Important To Solve
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would more easily be able to plan anniversary events for my community.
They would not be confused when the “Created” date rolls around and nothing happens. They would not be confused when the actual release date occurs and an event happens.
I don’t really agree with option B for an assortment of reasons, but option A is almost perfect.
Having a seperate section for a release date allows users to know if a game was made earlier than another game from the normal created date section (to avoid stolen games claiming to be the first, and avoiding confusion with users, so on and so forth) while still being able to tell the true release date as such for a game (assuming there’s some way to identify that the release date is a user set value to avoid the issues listed before)
Having the seperate release date section could also be set for a future date for games in alpha/beta with a planned full release date (or in turn changed to a future date for that reason at any point)
Option A would be excellent as long as the creation date stays visible and can be clearly identified by all as the true creation/origin date.
If it’s clearly an uneditable creation date to avoid any potential confusion, then the release date could potentially be left unrestricted for users to set the release date whenever they like.
Maybe some games that don’t care much for release dates could set it to much earlier dates for a little extra flair on their game pages (eg setting it to the year the game is set in for those war roleplay games)
I’d really love this. So many of my places were published over old unused baseplate slots that I created several years ago, making me have to state the actual release date in the description due to the “Created” date always being way off. I would have made a feature request for this already but I can’t create new topics here.
The original “Created” date shouldn’t be editable. It reflects when the place asset was created, which is more of an internal thing than actual useful information to most players nowadays. Adding a separate “Released” date would be best.
I don’t know about hiding the “Created” date, but having both a “Created” and “Released” date might be confusing to players. Roblox already hides the “Created” date of most assets anyway. It should at least stay visible to developers on the Creator Dashboard.
The “Released” date shouldn’t have to be after the “Created” date, though. What if you’re reuploading an old game?
I agree with Option A, the amount of times people have misjudged games based on the creation date is shocking.
Option A allows people to receive better criticism from other developers, for example the game XYZ was created 2/10/2021 but made public 6/12/2022, Devs don’t have to assume the period of time the game was being made as Option A gives more of a better view to see how long the game was developed and how long it took to be released.
I personally believe the ‘release date’ could be based off when the game first went ‘fully public access’ (not private, friends only or group members only) rather than self-assignable.
There just should be a section where it says place creation date and then a release to the public fairs. That will fix all of the issues and prevent stolen games.