Deprecate CreatePlace API: suggest reserved servers

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to understand the most current and appropriate method for creating closed-access servers for game features such as matchmaking.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I can learn how to better create private servers for users and use updated methods.

Before the advent of reserved servers, the standard way to create a private server for matchmaking was via AssetService.CreatePlaceAsync. There was also its save buddy, SavePlaceAsync, but we don’t talk about that one - barely anyone uses it and games that do are all expired (from what I can tell).

Now that reserved servers exist, developers are better able to create matchmaking servers and utilise the amazing benefits of reserved servers. There’s a lot you can do with a server instance access code that doesn’t fall under Roblox’s automatic matchmaking, even up to saving that code.

My request is a simple one: deprecate the CreatePlace API and suggest reserved servers instead. Reserved servers cost almost nothing for Roblox, while CreatePlace involves creating new assets on the website. Developers should be discouraged from using CreatePlace because realistically there’s not much you need it for anymore with reserved servers.

This request is similar to how PromptProductPurchaseFinished was deprecated to prevent developers from using it to verify purchases, despite the fact that it still works and needs to be used to determine when a prompt for a product is closed.

If this suggestion is accepted, the IX Team may need to be involved to update the Developer Hub. I’m posting this as a FR because I’m pretty sure IX is not responsible for API deprecation.

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I really strongly disagree with this idea, I’m currently in the process of creating a game built entirely around this feature (being able to generate terrain, and have it save without having to generate the terrain every time a player joins).

I don’t believe anyone who uses this feature does so for matchmaking.

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People who use PromptProductPurchaseFinished have a specific use case in mind as well and it’s to check for closed product purchase dialogues while using ProcessReceipt to process the purchases, except for the small amount of people who fall into the trap of using the aforementioned to process products. Still didn’t stop it from being deprecated and a suggestion being made to move over.

A majority of use cases for the API used to be solely for matchmaking until reserved servers came out. Uses for CreatePlace are very isolated now, such as your own: a build server. This is addressed all in the OP.

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