Deleting Uploaded Assets

[Corecii]

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to delete assets that we do not want uploaded to the website.

The most common use for this would be to comply with the Roblox rules.

Sometimes, a developer accidentally uploads the wrong asset. Sometimes they upload an asset, then the rules change. Sometimes a developer’s account gets taken over, and rule-breaking assets are uploaded onto their account.

In all of these cases, the developer should have the chance to acknowledge and delete the rule-breaking asset from the website on their own. They should not have to risk account moderation – or in the “account gets taken over” example, termination – when they are already aware of the problem and want to fix it.

I noticed this was an issue when reading this post. The user in that post realized that the asset they uploaded did not belong on Roblox, but they had no way to remove it from the website, so action was taken against their account.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would make developers feel safer with regard to changing rules and existing assets, account take-overs, and accidental uploads.

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To answer the inevitable “what if ‘hackers’ delete the assets on an account they take over”/“what if a rogue group member deletes assets”: assets can be hidden from all users when deleted, and the deletion can be reversed up to a certain amount of time (such as a month).

[EchoReaper]

This is more work than necessary on users’ part. Moderation just needs improved tools and processes.

Someone’s account broken into?

Look through everything done to the account (assets uploaded, games updated, items sold, etc) and take appropriate action (they may already do this).

Deleting an asset?

Need improved tools so assets created before rule publication don’t ban the user. Then users just need to report their own assets to delete them – no risk to their account.

Deleting an asset uploaded by accident?

I’ve been on Roblox for almost 10 years and have never uploaded the wrong asset. It’s probably used as an excuse more than it actually happens, so for those few cases the developers can just use the standard appeals system – that’s what it’s for.

[KingOfGenres]

I thought about it and my friend could’ve overwritten the asset, it’s his own fault but I did try to help him out as I felt like he should’ve gotten a warning.

[Autterfly]

I have like 2 pages worth of the same decal from 2 years ago or so; it’s safe to say uploading assets by accident (or even errors while uploading) do happen.

With my personal issue, Studio froze and refused to upload the decal through it, and it kept erroring so I kept retrying, and in the end it uploaded a bunch of copies at once.

And reporting your own asset? It’s already hard enough to get someone else’s asset deleted through multiple people reporting it.

[wravager]

Is there a reason for them not able to add “deleting” for assets. Is the asset id system prone to failure if an id is removed? Can assets only be added onto the list, not inserted, replaced, removed?

These are the questions we must ask.

[Corecii]

@wravager

Is the asset id system prone to failure if an id is removed? Can assets only be added onto the list, not inserted, replaced, removed?

I don’t think the asset id system would handle an item actually being removed or inserted into the “list” very well at all. For one thing, what about all the existing asset id references? For another, that’s a huge amount of data to change.

You don’t have to remove an asset id to delete an asset. Moderators delete assets all day. All you have to do to delete an asset is…

• Return a permissions error when the asset is requested (just like moderated assets)
• (Optionally) Clear out all internal data for the asset
• (Optionally) Set the name and description to empty strings or something similar
• (Optionally) Return a permissions error when the asset page is viewed

No need to mess with the asset id. Keep the asset id as it is and clear out all of the data for the id.

When a moderator deletes an asset, only one of these happens, but all four are possible without changing the sequential asset id system.

[iamnoamesa]

I support this feature but not for the same reason.

Let the moderation team handle moderation, and talk to the appeal team if something happens. The way I see it, the issue here lies in roblox’s moderation system, not the lack of moderation from the user themselves.

But I do support having the ability to delete uploaded assets, or at least to organize the page. Far too crowded, and I need to scroll for minutes to get to certain decals I uploaded months back that I need the asset id for again. Not sure if this is common with the other developers, but it definitely bugs me.

I’d think having the ability to delete assets could help organize the page by removing decals that you don’t want, but I’d much rather a feature to organize the decal page.

[Space_Baa (Baa)]

This would be nice for cleaning up our inventories

[TheEldritchDreamer]

Hi there!

The recent meme issue about knuckles got me thinking. People are getting banned due to them uploading this
meme before it was announced to be banned from Roblox. As they can’t delete their own assets, they had no other way out than being banned, which I think is unfair.

Maybe allow everyone who uploads assets to delete them if they wanted or needed to?
With deleting I don’t mean removing it from your inventory. Deleting literally means removing it from your account and the site forever. It may be tracked, but once it’s deleted, the asset shouldn’t be subject to moderation if it’s actually not allowed unless it’s something outrageously bad. But I doubt that’ll happen on Roblox.

This could prevent accidental issues as described above.

Just a little quote for those who don’t want account-intruders to delete your assets:

@ShapeDemBricks

In that case, the account owner:

• Shouldn’t have shared or hinted their account information;
• Should’ve enabled 2-step verification or any other protection;
• Should’ve made backups locally so that they can re-upload if they can reach back to their hacked account;

I mean if you get hacked, there’s a 99% chance you won’t get everything back anyway. So it doesn’t matter whether the hacker decides to remove your assets or not, you can’t get them back one way or the other anyway. Unless it’s a “super smart” hacker who doesn’t know that your email adress is still functioning allowing you to reset the password and log everyone out lol.

Suggestion from a friend: Allow the account owner to return deleted assets within an amount of days. This way, removed assets can be put back within the given time if for example the account owner was hacked or accidentally uploaded something.

[thisfall]

I’ve uploaded an assest that I didn’t mean to and got a warning because of it.

[YasuYoshida (Yasu)]

I really want this.

[iiau]

Been a while, but we desperately need something like this.

[Katzenpunk (Arne)]

I’m bumping this thread because I had recently had moderation action taken on my account for assets I had uploaded in bulk in 2011. The issue was resolved but after dealing with this, and me not being allowed to take my own asset management into my own hands, OP’s point cannot be stressed enough,

@Corecii

they had no way to remove it from the website, so action was taken against their account.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would make developers feel safer with regard to changing rules and existing assets, account take-overs, and accidental uploads.

It’s stressful, for me at least, to think that something I uploaded 7 years ago and forgot about could suddenly pop up one day and potentially ruin my development career.

In terms of people breaching accounts and wiping assets potentially, I’d recommend a 3-5 waiting period for the asset to be removed fully.

Edit: The other thread on this: Ability to Permanently Delete Our Uploaded Content

[ONLYTW3NTYCH4RACT3R5 (Chars)]

Following up to the 3 strike policy and the recent bans of a few developers, I am bumping this thread back up.

I believe this feature should be taken as top priority because, as of right now, there’s no way to delete the assets you upload and the risk of getting banned for something that you published years ago is very high.

Yes, you can ask your assets to be deleted by sending an email to support, however realistically it is very unreliable(due of how long it would take).

People should be able to delete their assets as easy/fast as how they upload them.

[DutchBloxxer]

In addition to preventing a ban for an old asset the feature to permanently delete uploaded content should be added. Just for that one image you uploaded which wasn’t intended for Roblox or when you don’t want that old image here on this platform anymore.

I think the only way to permanently delete your own uploaded assets is sending a GDPR request when you live in the EU.

I already feel the situations where someone accidentally deleted an asset. For this there should be a trashbin where your assets stay for a period like one week.

Or what about something like here on the Developer Forum when you deleted a post or topic but then with a longer period?

[KossmoZ]

I’m bumping this thread as a result of a similar situation to @Katzenpunk.
My account has been suspended for 3 days as a result of assets uploaded in 2014 - 2015. I had completely forgotten about their existence until now.

As stated, I simply don’t want past uploads to:

@Katzenpunk

potentially ruin my development career.

[FoxyFoxy67]

(I revived this topic because I can’t create my own.)
Hello,

I want to delete some assets from my account but it’s impossible, it is a REALLY good idea for Roblox.
Please Roblox add this it could be really usefull.

Why not make the trashbin system explained 2 topic before.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day,

[TecnoStarlight (Bodysuit Baby)]

The question is: what if the account gets compromised? The hacker could just straight up delete the hacked account’s assets before uploading rule-breaking ones. There would have to be a system in place to prevent this, such as a captcha system, deletion limit, or a cooldown system for deleting assets, to make it harder for bad actors to entirely modify accounts without getting caught doing so.

Assets such as decals, models, and audio can be archived to prevent people from using it. However, this also means you can un-archive it and restore it back to its former state.

[onboquo]

People should be able to delete their assets as easy/fast as how they upload them

I think it’s intentional that it’s not, and seems to me to be closely related to the way they make it easy to use Team Create / save to cloud and hard to save locally. For whatever mysterious reasons, Roblox really wants as much of your work as possible to exist on their servers, and only on their servers, and for everything you create to persist there forever. They grudgingly allow workarounds for the determined but they really try to steer everyone they can to keeping all their work on the Roblox cloud and never getting rid of it.
This whole strategic plan is at odds with the UX most developers want and it wins out because Studio is not a paid product and does not have competing products. So it is not a tool designed for you to manage your assets, it is a tool designed for Roblox Inc. to manage their assets (you).

[V_ersalty]

The best way to avoid “hacker deleted all my stuff” situations is to make the delete asset button available only 24 hours after the asset was uploaded.

That way, the button serves its intended purpose: deleting accidental uploads.