Why not? I’d love to see some stats behind what percent of games are EM. I’m sure it’s in the 80s-90s
Not to mention the racing community uses a timing board with needs EM to work because it’s bouncing things from the client to the server. Sure, I could fix it for FE but I didn’t make it in the first place all those years ago and a lot of it is complex and it’d take me a ton of time to sort it all out.
Basically this is just an extremely annoying way for Roblox to fix a problem.
Experimental mode is an extremely annoying thing in itself. Anything can be updated to work without experimental mode. The solution isn’t to use a mode we should have never had in the first place just to leave unmaintained games active. Anything that is still in experimental mode isn’t maintained well enough for today’s standards, and just provides a lot of unsafety.
If a whole community is using the same general model, then someone should eventually make a version that works out of experimental mode. The tools have been available for years now, so there’s no reason people shouldn’t have been striving to make their creations better and more secure. This day could have been predicted based entirely on how unsecure experimental mode is, and especially by the fact that Roblox has been slowly closing the games off for the past year, starting with hiding them from sorts to < 13 players last year.
Anything that works in experimental mode can be made to work without it.
The old cars with cylinders for tires could be made to work now a days without the cylinders. However.
If small subtle stupid changes break a workflow. There is no realistic reason why to make a massive change that affects over 75% of your base in a negative way. Safety or not.
If Roblox really cared about safety they wouldn’t hide a huge safety loophole like ROBLOSecurity in your cookies.
There is a reason. It’s for the safety of children and quality of their platform. It makes no sense for Roblox to leave a seriously horrifying mode open for people to use. It needs to be done away with step by step, and these steps make sense.
It’s easier for your games to be updated piece by piece to work without experimental mode by doing it in experimental mode, since you can make sure things work one at a time. Expect the removal of experimental mode, not the reopening of it.
Poor execution of this change aside, this company seriously needs to reconsider how it warns its developers and its own employees about sweeping, high-level changes like this one. We should have had explicit advanced warning of this change months before it went live, not *a week before. This caught literally everybody off guard because of the poor communication by whoever gave this the go ahead.
They’ve been telling us to for a year now, and always insisted on it even before that. Not only that, but I really don’t think anyone should have been keeping experimental mode on their game the moment filtering enabled was released years ago. Having a secure game should have been plenty incentive this whole time.
The fact they still have experimental mode, in my opinion, just means they’re leaving a window of time for developers to update their game in experimental mode before they completely remove it.
To be a bit fair on that note, it wasn’t the day of, there was a post around a week ago which mentioned this change. It’s just that nobody really reacted until the change went in place, and was easily noticeable.
Encouraging us to use FE is not a valid substitute for “HEY GUYS, WE’RE LOCKING EVERYONE OUT OF NON-FE GAMES” no matter how you spin it.
Oh check that out, you’re right. That’s still not enough heads up for something like this but I’m surprised that didn’t end up garnering much attention. I didn’t see it at all.
Securing your game is more than enough incentive. Them suggesting we use it is more than needed. There’s really no excuse for not have it.
You say that as if everyone either:
A) Knows how to do that and
B) is still around to convert their games
Yeah I gotta agree. When I saw it and originally posted that /u/QuiteAmazingStuff post up there on the first thread, I thought that there would’ve been at least a month before such a change, and a few warnings beforehand. Instead it kinda just sat for a bit, and then *pop*.
There go the games.
Anyone can learn how.
How would a warning help then?
This change had to happen. I’ve said this plenty of times now, but the experimental mode environment should have never existed in the first place. We shouldn’t keep it just so we can cater to games that aren’t maintained.
There’s been incentive for years now, which is really the biggest point no one can deny.
I feel like it would’ve been nice if the general community was notified as well. I’m getting several confused PMs from people who think I made Mashables friends-only for absolutely no reason. They have no idea what experimental mode even is or that this change was put into place.
I had also completely forgotten about the experimental-mode-going-offline warning until they made the new announcement 8 days ago. We needed more heads-up than we ended up getting.
I’ve (leisurely) been working on an FE-enabled sequel to Mashables for several years now. Now I’m put into a position where I gotta get the game in a fully playable state as quickly as possible to fill the void left by the original game.
A clear and concise warning months in advance that included the exact plans and dates would’ve been nice so I could’ve managed development within my allowed time frame.
I would head over to #platform-feedback:web-features with this. I never considered this problem, but this is a very active thread where you will be drowned out and unheard. Putting together a thread where other developers can share their concerns and experiences on the subject I quoted would speak a lot louder than a post in this thread.
Many people did not know that though. And as a result of it, 90% of the sites games are no longer playable.
No, but it effectively removes all types of exploits that would go on the front-page of a major news site.
Please watch the video you were linked on how Filtering Enabled functions and why it is utilised by effectively every scripter in these forums.
Now - in response to this, yeah. I am upset I can’t play old legacy games anymore. That’s an issue which numerous members here have suggested fixes to. Otherwise, I am very glad that experimental games are no longer causing Roblox severe PR issues. I’m hoping this is a temporary implementation though - and considering how only a few weeks ago Roblox was featured on a news site for something that would have been fixed if this was implemented, I’m betting it is.
This has been such a long time coming. You’re all acting like it was never warned about but all the changes for the past year or two have been hinting towards this.
Security is really important so they were not going to support poorly structured security-flawed games forever. Making them friends-only is the 3rd warning to change your games. If you ignored the previous warnings, that’s not Roblox’s fault.
If the dev isn’t keeping up to date with Roblox updates and isn’t making sure their game is secure and prevent abuse by using Roblox’s suggested methods then don’t be surprised when your game loses support and becomes unplayable.
Imagine if a big company like Microsoft just ignored all security flaws and let them exist forever because they are scared to break one or two apps. It would never happen. The PR of having a flawed system that anyone can hack is damaging to say the least.
Security is number 1. PR and parents is number 2. Making sure you can play games from 10 years ago with massive security flaws for the sake of nostalgia is at the bottom of the list. Update your games.
Devs who have moved on can’t update their games. Proposed solutions that are leagues better that what Roblox has done preserve the playability of these games at the expense of them maybe not working correctly. Playable is better than permanently dead.
Just because they were developed under experimental mode doesn’t make them “Insecure” if forced out of experimental mode.
Warnings for this existed only on devforum. The eventual goal of this is not explicitly stated anywhere. There was nothing announced on the website itself. A huge amount of people would not have known anything about this.
What’s your proposed solution for fixing all those old games to make them more secure without having to change anything in their code then?
I don’t think there’s a good way of making them secure without breaking them or requiring the dev to make changes. If the developer’s moved on then why does it matter?
If the developer has chosen to give up on the game and left it in roblox’s hands, Roblox choose what to do with it 
seems pretty fair to me and personally I will always pick security over unsafe playability.