Differentiate users who are deleted from users with hidden inventories in inventory API

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

A few days ago, Roblox released a new feature to hide our inventories, which is a great update for those who don’t wish to leave a target going “I’ve got items! Breach my account!” on their back, or don’t wish to have users constantly begging to trade/donate some of their hard earned items.

With this update came an issue though. When checking the owners of the new White Tiger Hat, I noticed something odd. “Sixteen owners are banned already?!? The hat’s only been out for seven minutes! What did they all do to get banned within seven minutes?”

The answer is “They didn’t.” Their inventories are just private.

For most cases, this wouldn’t be much of an issue. However, there’s one spot where this causes an issue, determining the rarity of an item.

When trying to buy or trade for a limited, users will often check how rare it is. There’s a major difference between a limited with 200 owners and 50, after all. With private users being marked the same as deleted ones, this changes the numbers a bit. Deleted users can’t have their items circulate anymore, since they can’t trade them away, where private users can.

This causes a point where users may buy or exchange thousands of robux worth in items for stuff which may not be nearly as rare as they believe. It also sets up room for abuse, where hoarders of rare items could simply private their inventory and use an alt to slowly sell off their collection. After all, if it appears 80% of an item is deleted, it’s gonna look rare, even if 30% is actually owned by one person hiding behind a private inventory.

The solution’s pretty simple. Right now when using Roblox’s API to view the owners of an item, a copy of the item may return like this.

    {
  "userAssetId": 790347516,
  "serialNumber": 1,
  "owner": {
    "userId": 1618690,
    "username": "CaptainJadeFlames",
    "buildersClubMembershipType": 0
  },
  "created": "2012-01-07T14:42:40.777",
  "updated": "2017-12-20T12:04:04.22"
}

But for a private/deleted user, it ends up something like this.

    {
  "userAssetId": 790350430,
  "serialNumber": 11,
  "owner": null,
  "created": "2012-01-07T14:44:35.357",
  "updated": "2014-08-30T14:54:20.14"
}

The owner is returned as null. Any sort of change which separates deleted users from private users, and thus allows things such as the Roblox+ plugin to differentiate the two would be a good fix to this bump of an issue.

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#2

Another issue with this is I’m still able to see a player’s inventory simply by using this url, the CreatorID parameter specifies the player whose decals/models/plugins/meshes I want to see:

3 Likes
#3

Wait they finally added this? I swear someone just made a feature request not even a week ago!

#4

Do find this rather odd myself. When I first saw the feature I figured it wouldn’t hide users within the inventory API at all, only hiding the inventory page… And the showcase on the profile for whatever reason. Very odd since it feels like one of the big reasons to hide your inventory in the first place.

The feature saw a very brief blip in and out of release in late August, lasting maybe a part of the day. I was told about the button existing, checked, and it was gone… So it’s been in planning for some time.

1 Like