Almost every UI element that is provided by default can be hidden or disabled. Everything but, this little button on the left hand of the screen when you go in-game. I get that Roblox wants to show their branding and that’s totally cool but, this is completely jarring. It’s not padded correctly. Margins don’t even make sense. The emblem and simplicity of it is completely ugly. Please allow us to hide this one element from view so that space can be better utilized by our own artistic styles. If this can’t be hidden, at the very least, make it better suit the styles on the platform. The platform hosts a variety of styles and having a transparency & gradient icon slapped to the corner of the screen doesn’t cut it.
Its purpose is redundant to the 1% of people who do not have common sense & join games aimed to give a player goods for free at a capacity that doesn’t exist. Even for those players, it appears to not be as secure as some make it out to be because, those people are still being scammed.
Clicking ESC on the keyboard enables the same thing as if you were going to directly click it.
It’s pretty easy to tell if it’s Roblox or not without that being there and I’d appreciate at the very least that there would be an option to hide it in-game for desktop or have it redone to cater to more styling freedom. Having shown by default is fine for very limited styles but, having it forces and allowing to just sit there idly (& awkwardly) suggesting very ugly styling choices doesn’t promote creative thinking. Instead, it promotes “how do I make my ui match the UI on Roblox”. For me, any UI that doesn’t match or doesn’t feel correct gives me a sour taste in terms of a “player’s experience”. I could probably imagine a lot of developers may feel the same way.
Edit: I forgot to make this clear but, this is meant in the context of only PC / Desktop computers. Mobile and others should still have this logo since it’s the only way to exit without force quitting the entire application.
This is categorically false and undermines the entire request.
It provides critical safety features and consistent way to exit a game. We’ve seen plenty of bad actors on the platform exploiting purchase dialogs and all sorts - trapping users in a game will happen.
You know when you click on that, it is opening the core UI, that you can report players, edit your settings, and leave the game. What’s to stop you (if you could hide it) making your own button, showing your own UI, and doing all sorts. You could fake the user leaving the game and then pretend it logged them out, asking them to re-enter their password. You could pretend you’re a different app on their computer or phone altogether.
Remember that a lot of players are very young. And a lot of people play full-screen. Some keyboards don’t even have an escape key, and many players don’t know that escape opens that menu. As an experienced Roblox player who likely plays on computer, and is older than 13, of course your experience is that you click esc followed by L, or you press Alt + F4, or you click the X when you’re not in full-screen, but that’s your experience and the way you use the platform. That’s not the same for mobile, not necessarily the same for other operating systems and peripherals, and that’s not the same for every player.
Not all phones have a back button, and asking users to kill the entire Roblox app every time they want to leave a game isn’t great either. The Roblox button is a constant symbol that you are in a game - that you cannot trust anything on the screen with your personal data - as well as a homing beacon to access the core safety features.
I can understand asking for some ability to style the button differently, but suggesting the button could be removed or replaced with your own is just not going to happen.
Safety should, and does, take priority over vanity.
You can literally press that shiny red X button if you truly wanted to leave. I don’t think in my 10+ years of Roblox, I’ve actually left using that menu. I’ve always just pressed X on the actual window. Roblox or rather exploits that deal with purchase dialogs can be exited via that X simply because it doesn’t deal with the application as a whole. Just the particular game. I still see where you’re coming from though.
The only way to know that you exited a game is if the actual window closes. You could actually have a fake button now if you really wanted and place it next to the other one. Then, you’d have a 50-50 shot. Either way, you can press ESC and get the real menu if you’re not sure. Before that button existed, I’ve always used ESC and at this point, sad to say, I wouldn’t trust that button completely as of now.
Mobile and other platforms other than a computer should always have that button since I’m not sure if there’s any other way to exit… especially on mobile. I should’ve made that clear and that’s completely my fault. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ve reflected this in the original thread.
The only keyboard that doesn’t have an ESC key that I know of is the IPad pro magic keyboard. For those that do not have the key and have a magic keyboard, you can do CMD + .. Some keyboards use Ctrl + [. Almost all keyboards have the functionality supported but, may not be the same visually.
I am not asking for removal. Just for it to be hidden out of view as an optional thing.
Majority if not all of these concerns are really dependent on the user having some sort of knowledge about what security means and how to spot foreign prompts, etc when you’re in a game. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to do this since, I highly doubt that people use this button as a way to know. If I was a kid, as you say, I would be trying to find free robux and free premium because my parent or rather myself lacks the money to do it myself. I would be desperate. That being said, if I was given the opportunity (without any prior knowledge), I would take it simply because, it seems easy.
Given how small, how tucked away and other methods (such as clicking the red X; which is the safest option to leave a game if you were placed in that situation), I think the effective rate of that button being used for safety rather than pure convenience is quite low or rather, lower than people think.
While I do actually sympathize with users that may not be as bright, there’s really so much you can do before security becomes excessive and an intrusion to a game’s creativity. The fact remains that with or without this button being here, the risk still exists and users unfortunately still fall for it.
Changing the icon outside of what people are used to can be easily replicated and poses more of a security risk. At the the end of the day, any element on a screen is really a judgement call but, this in particular would be on a theoretical tight-rope.
You’re making large, invalid assumptions about the device and the player, which just aren’t true for everyone.
Not everyone is on a Windows computer, playing in windowed mode, or with knowledge of the shortcuts. Would you know all of the Mac shortcuts, for example.
Roblox tries to be as platform inspecific as possible, up to the point of not even telling you, the developer, in game which device the user is on. Suggesting that the core UI be different across devices goes against that principle.
Even if we assume every player is on Windows, full screen gameplay removes the X. If you don’t know the shortcut, the Roblox menu is the only way to escape from full screen. I know tons of people who have their mind blown by the shortcut Ctrl+C to copy after years and years of right clicking and selecting Copy.
You cannot rely on a high level of computer literacy in your players.
Even if you were in fullscreen mode (which I am most of the time), ESC is a better alternative than clicking that button. Both have the exact same functionality. The only difference is that one is visually there and the other is toggled by a keyboard action.
Same response as above.
This is sad but, I agree.
All your other points bring up valid reasons that I previously overlooked. I just wish that there was a way to move it or something so I can better fit it with the UI of my game. Often times, it’s imperfectness drives me crazy because it simply doesn’t match. It’s generally quite basic and ugly to the eye as well. This is what I was aiming at. A way to move or rather, fit it better with design styles in games.
If users are still getting scammed with this button in place, it’s not longer a claim. It’s a fact. Security should take priority but, it shouldn’t imply redundancy.
How do you imagine mobile users will return to the app from a game that has hidden this button?
If this is desktop only, it’s pretty gross to make this only disabled on desktop, then you still have to design your UI around the button on mobile, so what is the point? It is recommended practice to use the same UI for both mobile and desktop whenever possible.
It would only affect desktop players. Hiding it on mobile would make no sense. I made this clear in my post.
Mobile design always differs (for games that care about mobile) from a desktop app. You’d be doing this regardless. You could slap things together like it was meant to work on desktop and mobile but, the user experience would suffer since the screen size is smaller (icons are better suited on mobile where lengthy text would be, etc). A game’s UI is not exactly as responsive as a website. I wouldn’t expect a game’s desktop UI on Roblox to automatically fit on mobile and even if it did, I wouldn’t expect it to make sense for the user. That alone would warrant me to redesign for mobile and to design based on that button since there is no other choice when dealing with mobile devices.
User context is the fundamental reason why both devices are vastly different. Desktop design deals with larger screen space, a keyboard and a mouse for input. Mobile on the other-hand has significantly less screen space and is based on touch. If you take what you have on Desktop and essentially make it more “friendlier” on mobile, you’re making the user experience on mobile feel cheap because, you’re trying to emulate functions designed for desktop on mobile. Instead, it would make much more sense to focus on what features matter most and iron it out.
This button makes sense on mobile since it’s the only way to leave a game without force quitting the application all together. It’s the only viable way. There is no alternative. On desktop, this is not the case. There is an alternative. There’s two ways to access the same menu. Both ways have the exact same functionality. I could see why people would think it’s there for safety reasons but, what if I made a carbon copy of that button and place it on the left of it? What if I place it to the right of it? What if I placed the same button anywhere else on the screen? You’d be taking more a risk choosing between two buttons (which in almost any case, a person would chose the one on the left which is the fake one) rather than hitting a key and not having to deal with choosing. The fact that I can do this proves that the security functionality of this one button is purely subjective. The actual functionality of the ESC key is to close, quit or exit an operation so, having this menu binded to this key makes sense. However, having a very ugly UI element on the top left corner of the screen purely there for “redundant” security measures for the very naïve minded-people and frankly clutters the screen in a very ugly and non-appealing way is not exactly favorable. In addition, not every game out there is geared to scam people. A lot of games on the platform are perfectly fine. But, the very few that exist and the very few that fall for it and eventually get scammed probably never use the menu for security purposes and instead are focused on entering sensitive data to get free robux or premium. I personally do not think something like that warrants a very ugly icon that can’t be removed. Surely, there’s a better a way to enforce something like this.
The button’s most basic state: It’s a dark box, transparent with a logo that has a gradient. Unless I had a style that could work with a gradient and transparent black box that is rounded, this would never work. This is my main issue with it. If it was just the Roblox logo and white (fully transparent background), it would better suit the majority of styles on the platform and be more friendlier to creative choices made by developers. Perhaps even when you hover over it, it could show some sort of box. As a developer, it’s incredibly time consuming to work on a game, put in a lot of hours and then, have to deal with UI styling issues over a box I can’t remove. No other platform that deals with game development and is taken seriously has an issue like this. Developers want freedom. That’s the main differing reason why a developer would pick an engine or platform to develop with. Less fees, strong community and creative freedom to fully express what they want to make. When you force a button that is claimed to be “security” and it’s barely used as such because, players are still falling for scams in-game, it makes the argument to keep said button a restriction against free will and completely goes against developer freedom.
Not everything on the platform should be exactly the same on every device. Not every platform out in the world is exactly the same. Twitter for instance has a different layout on mobile than it does on desktop. Operating systems like IOS, MacOS and WatchOS all have different layout purely because user context matters. Games on this platform probably see a positive difference in engagement when a game cares about user context on a mobile device vs. one on a desktop device. While that statement might be true, it doesn’t mean that “whenever possible” includes to carbon copy everything from another platform. Hiding an icon for only desktop players as an optional thing is not as disgusting as your post makes it appear simply because, moving or hiding certain functionality in the scope of UI has been done before. It’s not a new concept. It’s not foreign. It’s simply a stylistic choice. One of which should grant a certain level of freedom when the same functionality exists via a key that was designed to handle this exact purpose.
tl;dr - Button is ugly. Make button better fit other styles than just one. Having two methods for the same purpose is redundant. The claims above point to the button as a “security” measure is lackluster as can be seen by the number of users who keep falling for scams in game. It barely serves its purpose and another (more secure method imo) exists thus, it’s a pain to deal with stylistically since that’s all it really is. A friendlier design or the option to hide it would go a long way. ESC is a better choice to push since that’s what the key means in literal terms. Alternatives of this key exists on virtually every keyboard if it doesn’t exist on the keyboard itself. However most times that it doesn’t exist, it has to do with mobile devices (& peripherals that interact with mobile) where this button would still exist for obvious reasons.
That button serves a huge purpose, a better solution would be if Roblox made different styles of that said button, and then they should let us choose which style we use in our games…
Here are some examples of some styles…
Old/Classic Style (Still looks like this on some mobile devices.)
New Style
“Home” Style
“ESC” Style (It should just say “ESC” lol) ESC
“Return” Style
“Backspace” Style
“X” Style
Note:
Every “Style” image I provided above is from Roblox’s textures folder, they wouldn’t even need to create much new images, they just have to make an option, for example in StarterGui or Workspace (It doesn’t matter where that option is…) for us to choose an Escape Button style…
The argument I see being brought up here is “security and familiarity”.
The first, this was the exact same discussion when the chat service was opened up. Many people argued that developers could remove the filtering and damage the platform, however games which remove the filter call get themselves moderated very quickly.
For familiarity, I don’t want every single game’s UI to look the same, it gets boring, and locks away developer freedom.
