it’s in Roblox’s interest to crack down on third-party transactions of Roblox assets, content and currency. Instead of banning fraudulent users, they can hurt offsite markets by creating their own, on-platform Roblox version of it and regulating it.
Imagine a system where one can safely buy and sell, not only limiteds but also things like accounts, account names, groups, group names, games, scripts and other whatnot things on Roblox with any value. Right now, everyone here that wants a new cool name can already capitalise on it.
Not a good thing. In fact, it was one of the worst updates in my opinion. Leaderboard? Useless. Knowing your friends’ usernames/display names? Impossible. Trying to report a player? Now you need to worry about their “twin”.
Things should have stayed the same. My username has a long story, but it all started when the Xbox app generated a gamertag for me. The name was not taken, and I joined Roblox in October 2018 if I remember correctly. This was not a problem when setting up my account, and I don’t understand why anyone wants to be named “person”.
If you cannot find a username, use a username generator like the Xbox gamertag generator.
Edit: Also taking into consideration that guests were removed, there are a lot more throwaway accounts. I guess this problem is becoming more relevant, so I might not be up to date.
It’s truly a shame how this post is so old but so relevant and it hasn’t really been taken into account by any members of staff (correct me if I’m wrong).
There’s thousands of accounts that were purely created to snipe usernames, and these accounts are well over 10 years old. Furthermore, there are MANY terminated accounts that hold usernames that people would love, I don’t understand the issue in permanently deleting term’d accounts so that people at least have the chance to get a username that they like. Others may say display names are the solution to this but they really aren’t as you can’t exactly identify an account with a display name, it will always be by username.
However, I’m still hoping that even if it’s in several years time Roblox realize that this issue can be easily addressed. But I would hope that it’s fairly soon.
There’s so many replies so I haven’t read them all (so sorry if this was already mentioned) but I cannot agree more, day by day, this issue becomes more frustrating and relevant as each and every second, a new account is registered on the Roblox platform.
DisplayNames were implemented as a sort of workaround allowing people to be called what they want to be called but unfortunately the lack of usernames creates a bad UX while logging on. I mean, who wants to write some random spam whenever they log on to a browser that has not saved login data?
So, the question is, what can the solution be? And I believe that the most ideal solution would be this:
When a Roblox account has been deleted for 3 years, make its username vacant and completely delete the account from the Roblox system, ensuring that the account can no longer be accsssible. 3 years - in my opinion, is an ethical, more than enough time to allow for a user to discover that their Roblox account has been deleted. I don’t know, what do you think?
If this policy were to be implemented, it would allow for some unused usernames to be used again. This would include some good usernames as well.
If you think you were falsely terminated, you have up to a month to appeal, after that, Roblox can’t help you under normal circumstances.. After a month, it doesn’t matter - it’s gone, unrecoverable under normal circumstances. It wouldn’t matter if they lost the username of an account they have no way of recovering anymore for usage. I feel bad for people who are falsely goners and wish for roblox’s crappy moderation UX to be better in the future, but if it’s gone - it’s gone. And when it’s gone - completely, the username should be available. It’s just my honest opinion. Like, why keep the username of a banned account that hasn’t been used in forever, someone else could actively use it.
The reason I suggested 3 years is in case the person went inactive and didn’t know they were banned. 3 years is a long time and in my opinion, enough time to discover you were banned from Roblox. I feel like a longer time period, like 5 or 10 years is a bit too long and kinda ridiculous.
Some people would suggest less than a year, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years etc… I just thought 3 was a reasonable timeframe to learn you were banned from Roblox. The time is a preference that can be adjusted to Roblox’s liking but the idea is to make the username available after some point.
The issue with this is that some terminated users have bad-history within the community (IE: they were doing some terrible things) so re-opening the use of the names would allow malicious actors to take the name further stirring up drama over the account again.
Some examples of horrible came to my mind. I wouldn’t want people impersonating them.
The only way my suggestion would work is if the usernames of super horrible people were manually blacklisted and unavailable to be used but I don’t think content moderators and the appeal team would be willing to go to this extent. It just doesn’t sound like a policy that would be enforced/applied regularly.
However, I just realized there can also become an issue where a normal user impersonates another normal user who was banned (ex. a game dev or a group owner or a ugc creator etc. by taking their username, wearing the same stuff as them and talking like them and possibly even defaming the original/real user by breaking rules). Then what happens?..How would people believe/know they’re different people…
I wish I saw these two issues earlier. It seems my suggestion would be bad.
Perhaps the maximum characters of a username could be increased to allow more meaningful usernames to be registered, however, I know that wouldn’t look so beautiful on a leaderboard in-game aesthetically speaking, and I know that eventually that’ll lead to the same problem faced today (lack of available good usernames) so I don’t know. Hope something is done somehow, I’m out of ideas.
I wish I saw these two issues earlier. It seems my suggestion would be bad.