Developers shouldn't bear the cost of uploading audio

Feature Requests Website Features
#13

If you bought a license to use a specific Audio. And then uploaded that Audio. That audio file is still copyrighted. But you have a legal license to use said Audio. With that being said, Copyrighted Audio will still continue to be uploaded even as the platform continue to evolve.

All you have to do is make sure you have the legal rights to use said Audio. Even the Audio Roblox has uploaded is copyrighted. The point you made was to stop the copyrighted audio that is unlicensed from being uploaded. The sad part is even the terms of service says you need to have permission to use copyrighted material, even though Roblox will still moderate the audio file that you had permission to use.

So the problem lies deeper than bypassed audio. Its a problem with the moderation itself, And to fix this issue of the OP you have to dig deeper. Thus my points and posts were not irrelevant.

7 Likes
#14

Problems due to moderation cost and floodchecks are problems that can be tackled by other means. These are off-topic and not relevant to the feature request – it is something for Roblox to figure out.

OP’s feature request is perfectly reasonable. To add to the developer feedback, when I was working on my incubator game, I spent about $100 purchasing sound licenses so I could use them in my game. I didn’t have enough Robux to upload it all, and when I did the math to see how much I’d need to buy, it was another $100. I just gave up on uploading audio. So far, all of the games I’ve worked on use local files on my PC so I don’t have to pay to upload and test them in a development environment. Adding a paywall to sounds raises the barrier of entry to development and results in less immersive games because sound upload is discouraged.

36 Likes
#15

Yeah. I dread uploading sounds for this reason and try to make them as short as possible to minimize their cost. If I mess something up, I usually just leave it. So I have a bunch of half-perfect sounds uploaded that I will probably never replace.

At the very least, the price could be reduced. 20 R$ for a second-long sound really adds up.

10 Likes
#16

Be mindful that feature requests are meant to push beyond the current limitations of the platform.
Echo broke that down well:

The engineers definitely don’t see our feedback as irritating, they can pick and choose what is most important to them, but bringing up these pain-points helps them prioritize. From working as an intern at HQ, believe me they crave feedback as much as we love giving it. We should all be hungry for a better Roblox experience, communication is key.

1 Like
#17

I’ve spent a fair share on audios (majority costing licensing sounds), and it might have to do with myself never really having a tight budget for any projects, but the small amounts Roblox charges for audios I view as an investment vs an meaningless purchase.

The audios improve the quality of the project, and as with licensing the audios I believe it’s well worth the cost, and the cost isn’t significant enough where only the top developers are able to purchase them. I don’t believe the cost puts anyone at any disadvantage.

1 Like
#18

Licensing sounds from a third party is the only investment you should be making when choosing sounds for your game. Uploading them to Roblox at cost is by definition a disadvantage, no matter how small, especially for fledgling developers. See Echoreaper’s anecdote for an exact circumstance.

6 Likes
#19

A well off trader / featured game developer is probably not the best case study for users that cannot afford upload costs :wink:

11 Likes
#20

We are always trying to break down barriers and costs to development. As of right now, we have no plans to address this issue but we recognize its importance.

Thank you for this feature request. It has been shared around internally.

30 Likes
Load sounds from file
Uploading audio should be free
#21

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to upload audio.

The cost for uploading sounds, even in its current state, is still too high for development.
I can upload large meshes (usually larger than the audio), images, animations, and more, for free. Why not audio?

Multiple solutions that Roblox can implement exists, and are as follows:

  1. Create an option to find duplicate sounds (because most sounds probably have been uploaded already).
    This would increase space saved, as two uploads would not be made.
  2. Make free audio game-specific (as in it cannot be used anywhere else).
    This would prevent abusive audio entering other games or being used as a third-party account evading a ban.
  3. Remove the cost entirely.

Many times I’ve wanted to upload my own audio, to find that it will drain away Robux. Any Indie development teams I work with must spend money on audio if the sound does not exist.

Ever since audio became impossible to search for (unlisted audio cannot be found, and most audio is unlisted), I’ve found myself increasingly more required to upload the sounds I want to use for my game.

Other game development platforms do not have this restriction.

Changes were recently made to the Roblox Community Rules which now include banning the use of screamer or loud joke audio:

Distorted audio, including excessively slowing down or speeding up the audio content to make it indiscernible, and audio that is excessively loud including screaming, high-pitched or excessive noises are not permitted.

This change now reduces the amount of spam audio uploaded, which should additionally provide another reason to make audio free, as spam audio is against the rules, meaning less uploads for moderators to review, and less space being taken up.

19 Likes
#22

This would incentivize people to not share sound effects and would mean everyone has to spend more time making their own.

6 Likes
#23

The rule against what type of audio is allowed will not entirely prevent people from uploading audio that isn’t allowed. Moderators will still have to review these kinds of audio. And unlike other content, which can be reviewed with a simple glance, audio takes time as the moderator has to listen to the entire thing. They did curve this by making shorter audio cost less. But I still think audio should have a price to upload. If they didn’t, there will be a huge jump in audio submissions, and who knows if it will be abused by bots who do the same thing as uploading the same shirt over and over in those scam clothing groups.

5 Likes
#24

That’s one option I provided for the Roblox Dev team to use, if they cared specifically about it. I’m not saying all options are necessary.

Currently, already people cannot use audio that has not been shared. If it has not been ticked “made free”, then it is unlisted and unsearchable. Your concern is already active, and in-place. By default, it’s already not checked.

5 Likes
#25

Your reply is invalid when speaking about “will not entirely prevent people from uploading”, as anyone technically upload any image, or design they want, even if it’s NSFW. This rule, preventing meme or spam audio, would mean future users who want to create meme audio will be hit by the audio being unapproved most of the time. Most typical users then would give up or not create the audio.

Bots spam-creating audio wouldn’t make any sense, as the shirt abusers are meant for selling. Audio is not sold.

7 Likes
#26

What I meant was players can still break rules and attempt to upload audio that isn’t allowed. Moderation still has to listen to everything uploaded. Not sure if there is an automation thing where it checks if an audio has been uploaded before. As for bots abusing this “wouldn’t make sense” yea I agree, but the possibility would be open to them in the case that audio was made free to upload.

5 Likes
#28

At least make sound effects that are <15 seconds free to upload. Seriously. Games use so many sound effects, we already have to pay authors for libraries of sounds, then we have to pay Roblox to upload them so they’re usable on their platform. This is unheard of in any other game engine.

57 Likes
#29

Is there any word on the price of audios potentially being removed? The fee has pretty much completely stopped me from uploading audios due to the limitations.

I understand the argument that it takes a lot of time to moderate audios, however I have heard that Roblox audio is potentially partially if not completely reviewed automatically by now.

If the fee on audio uploads was removed, I know that I’d personally have so much more freedom to perfect the sound design on my games, and would make things like voice acting much more affordable.

8 Likes
#30

Roblox could invest in machine learning for audio moderation that could possibly eliminate the need for human moderators in most cases.

YouTube is already using machine learning to remove inappropriate videos:
https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals?hl=en&total_removed_videos=period:Y2020Q2;exclude_automated:all&lu=total_removed_videos

More than 95% of YouTube videos removed within the past few months were detected by AI moderation.

14 Likes
#31

Although it’d be a huge burden off my shoulders, I just don’t see it being reasonable. The price and difficulty to moderate correlate. A mod could whiz through well over 300 decals per hour but can only do 8 audios that are 7 mins long each.

1 Like
#32

Couldn’t careless if the price gets removed or changed but It would be so much better if moderators didn’t reject legitimate Sound files that are innocent, better asset manager and faster approval times.

A pay wall doesn’t necessarily block users with ill intent and often blocks legitimate users

Uploading Sounds to Roblox is such a pain, it stops us from making better games and at it’s current state I have to say that it’s underwhelming.

14 Likes
#33

Just uploaded two audio assets, both with a duration of 1 second per asset. It costed me 40 Robux to upload these two assets.
For a top developer, this doesn’t really matter. For smaller developers (like me), it does.

I understand that it is not realistic to make all lengths of audio files free to upload. However, files that are <15 seconds should be entirely free to upload. If this still takes too much time for a moderator review it, make them free if they’re <5 seconds. This stands equal to the time to review an image.

TL;DR Please don’t let me pay 20R$ for a file with the duration of 1 or 2 seconds.

25 Likes