Experiences using Marketplace Items - Policy update

[Roblox]

[Update] September 19, 2023

@Roblox

Hi everyone,

We value your feedback and concerns. Our intent with this policy is to further ensure that UGC creations are respected and properly used across the platform. We realize that the requirements behind the policy are very nuanced and have a significant impact on experience creators. We sincerely apologize for causing these concerns.

In light of this, we have decided to pause the rollout of the policy. This means that on September 27, you will NOT be subject to moderation for this policy.

As a next step, we will thoroughly consider all your use cases and feedback, and refine the policy as appropriate while respecting creators’ rights. Once we finalize the policy, we will provide ample time to meet its requirements. We promise to keep you updated with any new information in the coming days.

Thank you for your patience. We are committed to learning from this and appreciate your feedback.

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Hi everyone,

At Roblox, the importance of treating creators with mutual respect, providing equal opportunities for monetizing their creations, and protecting intellectual property (IP) is crucial to our platform. We strive to ensure a fair and supportive environment for all members of our community.

To support this, we are introducing “Experiences using Marketplace Items” in our Community Standards (to be found in the Roblox Economy section after publication).

If a creator makes an experience with unaffiliated avatar Marketplace items available for users to equip when the user has not yet purchased the item, the experience must:

• Prompt a purchase UI for the item when the user equips it and maintain a prominent ability to purchase later if the user declines to purchase in the moment, using the appropriate MarketplaceService tools for proper Robux pricing and creator attribution.

• Prevent items that are not available to purchase from being used in the experience (i.e., zero quantity, only for resale, or off-sale items) with our CatalogSearchParams tools.

Please note that an unaffiliated avatar Marketplace item is one that the Experience creator did not create themselves or have a direct agreement with the item’s Creator to distribute or incorporate in the Experience.

This policy will be incorporated into the Community Standards on September 27, so for those of you it impacts, please make the necessary changes as soon as possible to avoid any moderation of your content.

FAQs

Click here to view the FAQ!

Use of avatar Marketplace items in experiences has been a long-standing feature of Roblox. Why is this change happening now?

• Historically, our Marketplace was primarily populated with Roblox-created items. As we are about to open up creation to a larger portion of the creator community, we have to better ensure fairness to those creators.

Is Roblox planning to offer any additional tools or support to help developers navigate this requirement and/or provide more choice to UGC creators?

• While this policy goes into effect on September 27, we are also working very hard to consider a more holistic approach to ensure a consistent experience for our players and to help our creators. We can’t commit to anything yet, but we are evaluating the possibility of providing additional tooling in the future.

I found an experience that appears to be violating this policy (the Experience is using off-sale avatar items, Roblox’s items, someone else’s items, etc). How do I report this developer?

• To report an experience, enter the experience, and navigate to the Reporting tab of the menu. Follow the prompts for reporting the Experience and Reason for Abuse as “Inappropriate Content.” In order to help our moderation team more accurately identify and handle your report, be sure to include descriptors and keywords in your text input, such as “UGC,” “Marketplace,” “Roblox IP,” “off-sale,” or “avatar item.”

What happens to violating experiences and developers?

• Developers who violate this policy are subject to moderation as they would be for any other violation of the Community Standards. This may include warnings, removal of your experience from the platform or suspension of your account.

How do I inform Roblox of an agreement I have with a creator for using their creations in my experience without requiring it to be on-sale and purchasable?

• If Roblox receives a user report of a potential violation in your experience and you receive a moderation warning or action, you should appeal the action and provide evidence of your agreement with the avatar item’s creator to use their content.

How can I protect my IP?

• IP owners are the ones best positioned to tell Roblox what is infringing. And only the rights holder can report content that infringes on their intellectual property rights. If you find content on Roblox that you believe infringes your IP rights, please see our DMCA Guidelines for additional information on how to submit an IP takedown report to us.

  Roblox investigates each report and takes appropriate action, which may include removing or disabling the infringing content, and permanently terminating the accounts of users who have repeatedly infringed on the IP of others.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you.

[scaryzane]

Let’s ratio ROBLOX to show them how much we disagree with this update

[TheGuyWithAShortName (Sam Huckaby)]

Can you confirm whether or not this includes Roblox-created limited items or just UGC? Players wearing Roblox limiteds is one of the main features in my game.

[PeZsmistic]

As long as this does not impact catalog heaven style games, sounds good to me on paper. Players should be able to fully preview how an asset looks and plays before they purchase it. Preventing users from trying on offsale items is also not appropriate, is this the case? Please clarify.

However, one week notice for a game ending policy change is also not appropriate. Other developers here are bringing up concerns more politely than I ever could, please listen to them.

Bottom line: one week is not enough, we should be able to use off-sale items in experiences, roblox-created items should be exempt and only UGC should be should be covered by this policy.

[CaptBeatty (Beatty)]

So what does this hold for games like catalog avatar creator, or all of the other thousands of 40% discount games users have made for themselves?

[Disgustedorito (Disgustedorite)]

I play games that allow players to try on any accessory specifically because Roblox’s default try on feature is lacking and frequently doesn’t even load. Will changes and improvements be made to this feature in order to compensate?

[ScriptOn (Genya)]

This is a terrible change that will harm many UGC creators & experience creators’ bottom line. This benefits nobody.

If the goal was to prevent users from endlessly playing with assets without purchasing them, then some sort of UI or visual identifying the character as wearing non-purchased assets would have helped. This change hurts catalog games the most, which I am currently working on. I wish Roblox had taken a less extremist approach with this.

Why would Roblox do this just before the wider release of UGC? This is deliberately reducing income for UGC Creators & Catalog-related experiences by adding friction & removing/reducing the ability to create cool looks.

Making engaging avatars on Roblox has been an iconic part of the platform for many years. These avatars often use off-sale assets and the time spent making these avatars with friends is cherished by many. I sincerely hope Roblox considers the community & economy when making these sorts of decisions in the future.

This change has not come into effect yet & it’s not too late to reverse course & come up with a less destructive plan.

[grilme99 (brooke)]

@Roblox

mutual respect

You gave next to no notice for this change. There is no mutual respect for the people who need to 360 their game design in literally just a week. Do better.

@Roblox

If Roblox receives a user report of a potential violation in your experience and you receive a moderation warning or action, you should appeal the action and provide evidence of your agreement with the avatar item’s creator to use their content.

What? So, I have to have my game taken down before I can actually inform Roblox that I do have permission to use some asset? Is this really the system working as intended?

[TypeDummy (TypeRamadan)]

• Prompt a purchase UI for the item when the user equips it and maintain a prominent ability to purchase later if the user declines to buy at the moment, using the appropriate MarketplaceService tools for proper Robux pricing and creator attribution.

Would a checkout process work in place of this?

Instead of just prompting a purchase every time a player chooses to wear an item, have a little checkout basket or something where the user can purchase all the unowned items they’re trying on. The whole process is to try on items and experiment with your avatar. Once you find the right fit, you buy it all at the end, rather than just prompting everything you try on to be purchased, which seems a bit jumpy and takes up a lot of precious space, especially for mobile devices.

[YasuYoshida (Yasu)]

Why in the world does a try button have to show a buy prompt? I understand including a buy button next to the try button, but forcing developers, especially new developers, to come up with a way to handle prompts sounds like a lot more work than what needs to be done.

[B_Iu (Blu)]

This change destroys my game and my income while bringing nothing of importance to the table but less choice and more paywalls. Thank you very much.

[GreatGuyBoom (Boom)]

If you’re going to push out a giant policy change like this, please give us more than a week to prepare for it.

[SimoIlCompagno (MinimumADHD)]

@Roblox

Prompt a purchase UI for the item when the user equips it and maintain a prominent ability to purchase later if the user declines to purchase in the moment, using the appropriate MarketplaceService tools for proper Robux pricing and creator attribution

roblox on their way to release an update that will force people to add useless bloat ui in their games (lets just fill up those empty screens with purchase prompt guis)

[Abcreator]

Well, I just had my pride and joy experience of 2 years in-development ripped away from me before a singular player could even experience it

@Roblox

If a creator makes an experience with unaffiliated avatar Marketplace items available for users to equip when the user has not yet purchased the item, the experience must:

My experience is going to be deeply affected by this change, with-in my experience, users are allowed to swap characters with one of their Roblox friends, this is a critical game mechanic and my experience would have to permanently close if this were to no longer be the case. The vagueness on what “equip” means (does entirely changing the avatar count as an equip) is what annoys me. This change jeopardises my past 2 years of development because of this last minute change which will throw one of my most immersive experiences out the window. I just had my pride and joy experience of 2 years in-development ripped away from me before a singular player could even experience it. This is heart-breaking and honestly, I am thinking about stopping any and all immersive experiences and focus on quick turn around experience because I honestly can’t risk that a rule won’t be implemented, blocking that experience aswell.

[Beac_n (Beacon)]

So you want us to entirely gut our games in a week?

[GaelPaws (gael)]

For games that have a custom avatar creator this is just horrible. Getting a purchaseprompt everytime you try on an item is annoying.

[GRIMNO1RE (Noire)]

Loving most of the changes being announced today. This is not one of them.

This is exceptionally under-explained and needs more time in the oven.

@Roblox

How do I inform Roblox of an agreement I have with a creator for using their creations in my experience without requiring it to be on-sale and purchasable?

• If Roblox receives a user report of a potential violation in your experience and you receive a moderation warning or action, you should appeal the action and provide evidence of your agreement with the avatar item’s creator to use their content.

So… Ban first, ask questions later? Recently one of my groups was locked because of Roblox treating a string they filtered as spam (i.e. we did absolutely nothing wrong and it was a moderation error) and it still took us several weeks to sort out this issue. With the significantly higher potential for abuse, I personally feel this is an unacceptable way to handle this and needs much more thought put into how exactly IP is handled on the platform. Considering the state of audio due to these same issues, I highly doubt this is going to magically be “better” than the other areas this has been tried in.

[MrChickenRocket]

Two things:

1. What would be the required compliance for allowing players to completely morph into another players character appearance for gameplay reasons (eg: a spy game)? If the other player has offsale items, how would that be expected to work or is that simply not allowed now?

2. A weeks notice is not “Respecting The Community”.

[Offpath]

Based on the example video above, I don’t think we have to actually initiate PromptPurchase() but we do need to show a UI with a buy button.