As a Roblox marketplace shopper, it is currently too hard to be guaranteed that a UGC creator will open a gift item. Aside from this, it seems it is currently too hard for the Roblox moderation team to identify scams which root from gift items. I am not so sure about this second one, so take it with a grain of salt, but I can infer it based on my observations.
Let me elaborate the issues by providing context.
The past few weeks, UGC gift items have begun being published on the Roblox marketplace. They’ve especially been trending the past week as the Halloween holiday is closing in on us as of the time of writing this suggestion.
Gift items are generally hat accessories that are sold for robux with a promise of opening on a specific date. This promise is often made in the description of the accessory and less often on a group shout, on the creator’s social media or on the profile of the creator. When the opening date arrives, the UGC creator of the gift item will direct its purchasers to join an experience to claim what comes out of the gift (which is a separate accessory) for free through the same methods mentioned in the previous statement. The user will have to own the gift box in order to claim the accessory which comes out of it.
This may remind some OGs of Bloxtober Giftsplosions, which is an annual event Roblox used to host in the past, and while it’s conceptually similar, it’s not exactly the same.
Anyways, this sounds like a smooth and fun process, I mean, who doesn’t love to see and get what comes out of a gift box, right, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll occur which is the issue with this fun. Meaning, after reading the opening promise, you can purchase the gift…but, there’s a chance it’ll never open and that your money will partially go to waste (I am saying partially as while you didn’t get comes out of it…at least you have the gift box you didn’t really want). Many others and I have experienced such incidents. For instance, I purchased 3 gift items. Two of them turned out to be scams and the other is yet to open in the future.
This is only half the coin. The other issue roots in moderation. This is quite challenging to write due to the rule regarding callouts so please bear with me. Based on my observations (in my personal experience), it seems that scamming UGC creators are not held accountable for their rule violations, which is puzzling to me. Scammed users including myself have submitted many reports for weeks, yet I do not see any sign of resolution. The gifts are still existent, shoppers have not been refunded, and no moderation action was taken on the creators - they’re still even in the UGC program. I have been thinking that perhaps this is due to the extreme degree some scamming UGC creators go to cover up their scams and that moderators have limited tools to work around with cover ups. For instance, one gift creator: removed a gift description containing the promise of opening, disabled the comments section of the gift and even gaslighted their community by saying the gift opened through a group shout, and another creator: made a gift simply go off-sale, removed the same gift’s description containing an opening promise as well as blaming the gift not opening on their community through a Discord server representing the group that the gift was published under.
Based on this, I am assuming there is a limitation in which moderators cannot view accessory description history and/or that an updated gift accessory description with no mention about it opening is insufficient information for moderators to determine whether or not the gift actually opened.
Regardless, rather than concluding a blame on consumers for putting trust on their sellers and blaming moderators for their end, I am inclined to believe a policy must be formulated in regard to gift items so that consumers are protected from scams. I have had some solution ideas in mind to resolve this issue such as a tracking system in which UGC creators must log their gift item information somewhere for Roblox to follow, however this solution would not be sustainable in the long run as usage scale would drastically increase when everyone has the ability to create UGC accessories within this year and I doubt every gift creator would log their gift info. I was thinking of alternatively unallowing gift items to be published as a whole - I mean, giftplosion was discontinued, so as much as I do not want it to happen, why not discontinue these, but there must be a more optimal solution which can be thought of and constructed. Feature requests cannot be solution-oriented…so, I’ll leave solution brainstorming to the engineers and economy team. I’m not the best English writer, but I hope you now have a clear understanding of the issues.
If this issue is addressed, it would improve my shopping experience because I would purchase gift items without hesitation and the worry of losing money.