Us having to make our own referral program will honestly be a pain and it will probably end up being somebody releasing it for free as a module. Until then, Roblox should focus on adding onto the SocialService because the amount of DataStore usage to even get a good referral system in place could be a mess.
3 Likes
Just because something is hard does not mean you forget all responsibility and encourage users to spam everyone they can.
I agree that there are certainly additions that would make this new service even better but it doesnāt change the fact that moral and ethical ācodesā do exist.
5 Likes
If anything, it is not āethical codesā that are able to be broken, it is the failure of the SocialService to only send 1 invite per game per friend so it cannot be spammed. No matter what you do with your game, players can still spam invite their friends.
2 Likes
Then as of now, thatās on the developer to implement checks and waits with that.
You can not seriously think that itās moral, as a developer, to allow players to spam their friends endlessly?
Itās certainly not hard to include such limitations yourself, is it not?
3 Likes
How would you limit it? Itās part of the CoreGui for sending invites 
2 Likes
Not sure how he does it, but something like this is a perfect example. [ENABLED as of May 28] SocialService Game Invites are Live - #73 by LowPolys
- friend has to join within a small amount of time
- can only earn the reward every so often.
Limits the user in how much they will spam.
4 Likes
Real quick question, how would you use SocialService.GameInvitePromptClosed to reward a player a currency?
2 Likes
This still doesnāt stop them from spamming. My gameās invite system limits each āinvite sessionā to only count 1 invite per 6 hours and prevents them from inviting in that 6 hour cooldown span. Yet even with these restrictions, players that are younger or do not have a good idea on how invites work still send on average of 50+ invites per session even with a detailed explanation on how the invite system works.
There really needs to be a parameter we can pass when prompting the invite screen to only accept x number of invites.
SocialService:PromptGameInvite(player, MAX_INVITES)
9 Likes
I agree 100% with you. You should be able to do that, my friend gave me 2 invites to āPet Ranch Simulatorā. Canāt blame him though, and Iām guessing you can invite people multiple times and get 2x of that reward.
3 Likes
I agree that that Roblox should have systems in place to prevent spam or abuse of this system, but the fact that other developers may misuse or abuse a feature doesnāt relieve you of the responsibility to try and limit the damage caused by your own implementation. The bottom line is that other peoples actions donāt excuse your own.
Iāve seen people use this same argument to try and justify exploitative loot box practices, just because other games do something doesnāt make it right. You could make the argument that not using these practices puts you behind the competition, and that may be true, but donāt try to justify it by saying other people do it too.
3 Likes
I wasnāt trying to justify my own actions but more so prove that the best fix would be to have limitations placed by the staff rather than hold individuals responsible as those are only bandaid fixes. Iām very aware two wrongs do not make a right.
For me, at this point, itās not about whats āresponsibleā or ārightā, itās that I see no reason to remove a feature my players like to please devs who donāt even play my games who say Iām in the wrong. Iām looking out for my players and for myself first and foremost.
1 Like
Fair enough, though I do think itās telling that most of the complaints in this thread about spam coming from this feature are from your game. I can understand looking out for yourself, but you are still 100% responsible for the outcome of whatever features you implement.
12 Likes
Tuesday, March 5th
The feature was disabled today due to an unrelated CoreScript issue. We will let you know when this feature is live again. Use of this function will not throw an error, however the prompt will not appear at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
17 Likes
R.I.P the SocialService. D:
4 Likes
Is there an estimated time frame for when this will be back up and running?
1 Like
Realistically I would imagine no sooner than 3 weeks from now.
11 Likes
Oh thatās nice to know that weāre going to have a break from this spam.
Will there be some more features added to it once it gets reenabled?
9 Likes
As Capt said in response, incentivizing spamming invites isnāt cool. It also doesnāt do any good; if someone spammed me invites, Iād likely un friend and then never play your game (and I play lots on the platform for various reasons). However, if that same person sent me one invite and said, āPlease join, if you do youāll be helping meā or something of the like, Iād be much more inclined to do so; in fact, itād increase my chances of joining.
And yes, I caught a bit of spam from this, not from your game tho.
7 Likes
So you knew that there would be backlash from the spam caused as a direct result of your encouraging users to send out mass invites and you did it anyways? How Machiavellian of you. The point isnāt whatās going to get you more players, itās that there is something inherently wrong with using manipulative tactics to get those players.
Essentially you are saying that though you would have objected to this sort of thing in the past, now that itās making you money you are willing to let it slide? I understand that itās this sort of attitude that gets people to the front page / top earning slots, but I think itās worth pointing out that itās not a very great way to go about doing things if you care about more than pure conversion rates.
I think as developers we have a responsibility both to ourselves and our players not to use manipulate methods in an attempt to get those juicy DevEx Robux. You do you though, it obviously works out well enough for the big game companies.
8 Likes
So money trumps morality now? Nice to know.
9 Likes