Why has this taken months to get officially announced? In the future before these sorts of changes are even released or enforced we would like to be told beforehand so we can actually attempt to comply to them. Keeping developers in the dark for months about these sorts of changes is very damaging and with this change has put tons of accounts at risk of moderation for a rule that no one knew existed.
I dislike this change because lots of developers have sensitive information that they want to keep private like API keys. I am also very concerned about who this is even protecting because server scrips are only visible to the developer(s) that wrote them meaning they are effecting no one except themselves. Why are Roblox moderators even viewing game scripts in the first place?
Please, with this change don’t be so quick to pull the trigger on games and developers. Please communicate to developers and give developers time to fix issues within their code without instantly pulling the trigger on them. The Roblox moderation has had a track record of instantly banning developers and games for petty issues that could easily be fixed in a few minuses.
I am concerned about this point because some developers develop with their real life friends that already know each others personally-identifiable information. This means these developers could put their real names or other information of the sort because their is no harm in doing so.
Oh yeah, if anyone wants to know what the game that was mistakenly flagged was, it’s most likely Flood Escape by Crazyblox because it seems to fit all the criteria.
mistakenly deleted about 10 months ago (reasonably long enough ago for Roblox to put this system into action)
pretty messy coding, especially since the game wasn’t designed to work with FilteringEnabled, could’ve accidentally been seen as some sort of backdoor
issue was resolved in around 1-2 days, considered “quick enough” by Roblox
If the game mentioned in the original post really is Flood Escape, then we have a big issue on our hands here. The algorithm and the human team were not only wrong, but they also managed to cut off a well-known developer’s source of income.
Hopefully something like this isn’t considered as “personally-identifiable information” or else I’m screwed. I use plenty of modules where the authors sign off with their actual names.
I’m just disappointed. Not sure what else to say.
I have begun working on my first real game on roblox just around 3 months ago and was just getting close to actually releasing an alpha version of it. While I don’t think there is anything in the code that would break any of the rules, the thought of someone else looking through my code and possibility of my account or game getting deleted because of let’s say some swear word I forgot I left in a comment or a variable name is seriously making me reconsider if I want to continue working here or if I should just take the idea and replicate it maybe on another platform. There are plenty of other engines I could use. A shame the one I got used to decides to treat devs this way. The devs that make roblox what it is.
I guess I’ll continue for now and see if roblox intends to do something about this issue. If not then it’s likely I will be leaving this platform soon.
On a bright side, we can make scripts that get place thieves banned.
if game.GameId ~= 123 then
local s = Instance.new("Script")
s.Source = string.gsub("lol","l","w")
s.Parent = workspace
-- Inserts script with "wow" in it.
end
Source doesn’t work anymore (at least in game scripts), but you get the idea.
This is probably one of the most useless changes Roblox could make. For the most part code is only visible to the original creator (unless the owner grants permissions for others to view it whever that be uncopylocking or team create). If you were filtering the client side console yeah, I can understand that but filtering code itself is almost as stupid as Roblox filtering searches.
I completely agree.
Roblox shouldn’t be going through code that only the developers will have access to. While yes, this protection could be used on uncopylocked games, since they are visible to everyone, closed source games should not be monitored as Roblox players will never see the game’s code.
It only makes sense to filter/monitor content that the player will see. For example, the client-side developer console, however LocalScripts, ModuleScripts and ServerScripts will likely never be viewed by the player, and therefore the content of those scripts shouldn’t matter. This change doesn’t only seem controlling, but it seems limiting and adds an element of risk to my work.
Why should I be working on a platform where my code is reviewed and I could get banned for it?
Fair warning: I’m done messing around and sugarcoating things.
I’m sitting on the edge right now. I came back because they seemed to be on a roll with decent updates, but then they come out with this “clarification” that all code (not just code in flagged games, for example) gets filtered.
I’m a scripter, first and foremost. My scripts are mine to write, share, and run. This announcement coming out LITERALLY THE WEEK I COME BACK TO ACTUALLY TRYING TO DEVELOP ON THE PLATFORM is like me climbing up a cliff right into someone’s waiting punch. This is an insult to all scripters on the platform and I am disgusted by the number of bootlickers that liked this announcement.
People act like Roblox isn’t obligated to give us anything and that we should be grateful for their “generosity” in allowing us to develop for them.
Their entire business model depends on us. Without devs, Roblox is nothing. Furthermore, Roblox should note that many other game engines already make FAR better offers than Roblox does for experienced developers. All they’re doing with changes like this is sweetening the deals of their competitors by comparison.
Devs are already throwing in the towel at this. Hell, we have several individuals pointing out that trust between Roblox and developers is at rock bottom. Their entire platform is BUILT ON this trust. If we can’t trust Roblox to trust us to be somewhat mature and professional, why should we stick around underneath a corporation that gives us only 24.5% of our profits (with Premium) when other engines are offering 70, 89, or 100% with comparable features?
If Roblox is going to continue on this path and keep violating our trust in the platform, then developers either need to unionize and start attacking Roblox’s finances, or developers need to start leaving en masse. This announcement in particular makes me question if Roblox is a sinking ship right now and we’re all being distracted by some game of charades Roblox is putting on until it’s too late to leave and we all go down with it.
If anyone’s interested in unionizing, I’m down. Shoot me a DM and a link to a place where we can speak more safely and I’ll be happy to join the ranks of agitated devs.
I wondered the same thing. I know some of my comments probably were not kid friendly… But I have no intentions of sharing the scripts… To be safe, I went thru all my scripts to make sure even comments were ok…
This change really puts me on edge… Especially as someone that has had horrible experiences with Roblox moderation in the past. I’m going to be highlighting my concerns + opinions on this controversial change. While I know that mine will be the same as most people who replied, I want to get this out of my chest.
First off, I want to at least applaud Roblox for being concerned about our safety on this platform. User safety should, obviously, be prioritized no matter what. However, how Roblox is approaching this is very counter intuitive, and concerning.
Isn’t this somewhat late? Now that I think back on it, I remember one post discussing about their game getting moderated for having a secondary chat filter a few months back. If you want to be transparent, it’s best to announce these policies after it is set into place, rather than keeping it unknown to the community for many months. Transparency is very important for all companies and businesses which should be prioritized.
So what does the system check for? Does it search through all of the scripts for certain keywords that gets the code flagged? I’m rather confused on this.
Having my code be exposed to people who I have not entrusted to view seriously concerns me. What if a bad apple in the moderation team takes my code and leaks/resells it? Or if I have private endpoints that I don’t want exposed? While I know that it’s unlikely to happen, it’s a possibility, and I’m sure throughout Roblox’s 13+ years of operation, there’s been at least one bad apple in the moderation team.
This makes me more uncomfortable than I already am when it comes to development.
I believe that only open sourced scripts (free models) or uncopylocked games should recieve this treatment. This is because by open sourcing your assets, you’re basically agreeing that anyone can read/use them.
Roblox moderation has been going since 2005 and there is yet to be any evidence that might point to such activity happening.
And yes, whilst it is possible that may happen, Roblox have very firm legal grounds to pursue them (and probably will), the actual financial gain is negligible, and it appears this is a “flag” system anywho - they’ll only get the files if your game is flagged by the system. So the possibility of a targeted attack is near zero.
