First off, let me begin by saying that everything I say here is inline with what you have already said, and I agree, this “update” should never even exist in the first place;
Terms of Service changes such as this one should take months, if not over a year to be updated. If you’re going to be changing something so substantial that it will kill off (aka BAN COMPLETELY) almost every single game on your platform, it’s probably not a good change.
The very developers you are banning off of your platform are the ones that have, and are continuing to make you billions of dollars. That’s like the owner of google firing every employee and expecting to still make their billions per year. If there’s nobody there to develop, build up, engage your users, engineer the core of your platform, then you make a big fat ZERO dollars.
This is not a wake up call for Roblox. This is a call to everyone, both the developers, content creators, and staff at Roblox to seriously start taking action against Roblox for… not even mistakes at this point. If this “update” would’ve been pushed out, within 10 minutes, everyone’s careers - including developers, content creators, staff, etc. at Roblox would’ve completely been destroyed.
I didn’t think I would ever actually say this. But, the entire reason this is impossible is that even if some developers did decide to do this, we’d need more than just that. Even with some just backing down you’d need some big names for that and either way there’ll be new people that’ll just step up just for a little bit of money just to do it either way and make a cash grab. Ultimately, they know this won’t happen which is why they don’t think it through.
I know Roblox postponed this, but I’m genuinely concerned about what direction Roblox wants to take development. If I read the post right, they don’t users to even be using off-sale or Roblox-made items. If Roblox IP items are excluded from usage, this pretty much spells the death of virtually every game that has used 2d faces are in the process of offsaling. Way to force an update. And this raises more disturbing implications. If developers can’t even use Roblox IP items, then all developers will be forced to either learn modelling or hire someone who can. This unnecessarily raises the bar of entry and will significantly impact the workflow of beginning developers.
I don’t think it spells the death of every other game. All developers have to do is make sure they are not using assets they don’t have permission to use. It’s like writing a paper for school, you need to ensure your sources are cited properly. If a developer creates assets, and then those assets are used without permission or a way of buying said assets, that developer is getting scammed out of their fair share.
I really HATE this update. By pushing this out, this would ban Roblox’s own games because they uses faces that are off-sale. This does not only effect just the UGC type games, but all games in one way or another. Roblox has said many times before that they want us, the developers to have market place items in our games and sell them from our games, but this just ruins all of there “Vision”. One other thing that gets me really mad is we only have one week to comply with this stupid update, at least give us a month or two because there are some games that have so much off-sale items that it would take a while to find new items. I’m so glad Roblox decided not to put out this update yet, but this should have never even been thought of. I don’t like saying this, but Roblox this is one of the most stupidest updates you guys have ever thought of.
They have said in their pinned post that they are postponing this update and reflecting on what changes need to be made based on the community’s comments.
i agree with what you said, this update is not needed, why would they add this?
if you publish ANYTHING onto the marketplace, you have basically agreed that your said thing can be freely used.
I 100% agree, before Roblox wants to do this, they should also get the marketplace under control the amount of copyrighted items I have seen are outrageous.
Okay, maybe my last post wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be, so hopefully this is more “on topic” for you.
My main possible concern for this, as the update has been postponed and Roblox is looking to improve upon the policy, I do have some concerns that I detailed in my initial post.
To summarize it and make it more clear:
What does Roblox deem appropriate when it comes to “providing evidence” to an agreement between creators? Can it be something as casual as X direct messages, something a little more high scale such as an email, or something over the top like an officially signed contract?
What counts as a UGC item? Will Roblox have systems in place to detect that there is some form of UGC item within experience? By the looks of the outdated FAQ (and yes, I’m well aware what they said is subject to change, but that does not lower the significance of this concern), it seems that regular users are able to report games in which Developers might be subject to moderation action. I feel as if this should be done by the creator in question whos rights are being infringed, and not the general Player base, but I’d love to know what Roblox might have to prevent cases like this, but it is still a genuine concern nonetheless.
What will Roblox do when it comes to Developers uploading their own meshes for their games, and not for the UGC catalog, but someone steals the asset?To clarify what I mean by this, Roblox Cheats are still fairly common (even with the introduction of byfron) and it’s been possible to completely download games as a local file. This includes any meshes within the game that was downloaded with the cheating software. I guess my main question here is, what can we do if someone uploads our own item to the UGC catalog just to get us banned? An example case of this would be if someone specifically targets said experience by stealing their assets just to get the game taken down following the new possible policies way of managing UGC Creator Rights on the Marketplace.
These are concerns I believe are relevant to the discussion, and are important when it comes to actually protecting our rights. I do not understand why my last post was moved, but this is me focusing more on questions I have sorrounding a policy similar to this one. This is not me hating on the now outdated policy. I’m genuinely interested in how Roblox will tackle the new policy when it has been polished.
Like you said, it will most likely be something written out
Well, faces, clothing, hats, pants, etc would be considers UGC as long as its on the marketplace
If a developer uploads something for there game, that would be fine. If someone “steals” it Roblox would most likely do nothing unless you a BigGames or something because Roblox really only cares about the devs who earn them a lot of money.
It’s not just UGC items, I’m worried about Roblox made items (including offsale ones). Imagine getting your game taken down because it includes the old chill face. If even Roblox made items are not available for developers without modeling capabilities, then I am very concerned.
I might need to edit my post again to make my point just a little bit clearer.
My main concern relies with this scenario:
I upload an asset for my game, for example, cat ears that I made in Blender. Those cat ears are to be used as an accessory for some form of StarterCharacter within the experience. How will Roblox decide that my item complies with their policy? Is there a way to tell if my item is someone elses? Or is it just a “receive moderation action, figure it out later” type of deal?
If this is the case and I have a lot of my own personal content uploaded just for use within that game and NOT for the UGC marketplace, how will Roblox tell that my item isn’t on the catalog available for purchase? Wouldn’t it conflict with meshes in general, especially as it appears as an accessory?
