As a developer, it's really hard to gain visibility when roblox shadowbans my game

Stop.

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I’m sorry if I said something wrong, but I don’t really see an issue with what I said…?

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I thought this was just a thing that happened for years, I didn’t realize my game wasn’t available to players on platforms where it gives this warning. That’s kinda horrendous if it’s true, although I’ve always been able to find my games when I search them up on the platform even if they have the warning

Apparently has been a thing since 2013
https://forum.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=83880754
I remember following that up with support but no one in the company had any idea about it. Neither did John who got back to me after being asked about it by support.

Smh when they tell you “mobile is the future” and “you have to develop for mobile, it’s growing so fast!” and then shadowban developer’s games. Why not help us create a better experience for mobile in our games instead of just removing our games (surely the former would be more profitable)?

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Might just be me, but I received that warning on my game months ago, and right now Phone and Tablet players are outnumbering Computer and Console players. There’s been no indication that it’s anything other than a simple warning.

Many games that used to load fine on my phone now crash on launch. This came to my attention because a game I maintain has a playerbase restricted to extraordinarily low-spec mobile devices, which one day (from July onwards) wouldn’t load the game anymore.

Please have some public or dev-only resource somewhere listing the results, benchmarks and specs for the automated performance regression tests done for every release. This is especially crucial for supported devices that weren’t meant to play Roeblokes at all (3 year old Android devices sporting 1gb of ram).

Nobody should get their game shadowbanned over poor performance they had nothing to do with.

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What kind of delivery system was used to inform you of this?
Please don’t tell me D:
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If so, that brings up another problem: we need a separate tab (or something similar) for these kind of development-related messages (things related to games under review, devex, and this, etc)

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While this is unfortunate, I can understand why Roblox has a shadow banning feature, and it should definitely stay in place. However, I think there should be a better notification system and an appeal system for when you’ve fixed it.

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Roblox wants their platform to appear compatible with all devices so they will only want games that perform well to appear on those devices.

If a new user downloads roblox on their tablet and the first three games they enter crash they will most likely delete the app and not come back.

With that being said monitoring the game’s page on devices makes sense but it is very destructive to not inform developers when this is happening. A developer can’t improve their game if they are not informed it has a problem.

Most companies lack transparency but simply having an automated message to developers with a list of what disqualifies them would clear up all the confusion.

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I wasn’t warned by roblox, I just found it while trying to check player stats on my phone :confused:

How is this so different from someone finding roblox.com on their desktop and maybe the 1st three games they play crash?
They don’t shadow ban desktop games afaik

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A side feature request is to have the ability to set minimum system requirements for certain games.
The sole reason I’m not bothering with mobile devices at all now is because devices with extremely low physical memory simply instantly crash. Obviously performance is still bad if you don’t have a half decent CPU, but having to ensure the game doesn’t consume more than 250 MB of memory on a mobile device (which thankfully are at least a bit more conservative with memory usage) makes me abandon plans to make games mobile compatible.

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Desktops and laptops are generally far more powerful than mobile devices. A game I made that would’ve crashed computers years ago, now performs just fine (albeit not at max settings) on a bad laptop in my school’s computer lab. I don’t think the same could be said for mobile

I am learning about all this right now. Last night I put Roblox Titanic on mobile (I have samsung s7 so I have been able to playtest it fine), however the average visit time is less than half of computer/desktop so something is obviously wrong. I get group wall comments saying it’s crashed etc. Going to have to take it off mobile or risk being shadow banned, unless it already happened. Then once a new more efficient ship is in the game a few months off that will be a lot less stress on mobile, I hope the shadow ban isn’t applied still. What Sharksie is saying makes total sense, not being able to update roblox that the game’s performance has improved.

I think average visit time being less than PC/console is a given, not necessarily indicative of a larger problem, since mobile players tend to play games for a very short amount of time in general.

But yes I agree, if this Shadow Ban has the effects that we’re talking about, then there should be an ‘appeal’ system in place.

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Tablets and phone devices can handle MUCH less than the average pc or laptop. Most computers can load most games, most phones can’t load most games.

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We appreciate the feedback provided and have since started exposing stats. For crash rates. More on this will be on its way as we continue.

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