Further Changes to Playing Ability of Experimental Mode Games

This clearly marks a ending and the doom of very classic games that unfortunately are no longer maintained.

And one game in particular that I loved a lot. It was thrilling for four years. This change marks it’s tragic end until the developer (who was reluctant to switch to FE due to performance issues) reconverts the whole game.

13 Likes

It was about time! :clap: I’ve been waiting for this update since you mentioned it.

Stop blaming Roblox for already broken since years “games” that haven’t had updates in years. I’d love to see Roblox start a topic here so all of us can ask old abandoned showcases to be turned back on with filtering enabled, but gosh is this not a priority at all!!

You have to understand what’s happening now: EVERY public game on the platform is significantly SAFER. This is awesome news and everybody should support Roblox for pushing changes that should have been here for YEARS.

“Good job!”
-Everyone that understand what this is really about.

7 Likes

Overview

This update for experimental mode games appears to be an update that tries to suppress bad reputation from bad press. That’s what I believe. An example is this, there are many more, take your time counting the total of “fake news”(but not really).

Now when the update is posted, goodbye ancient games of 1337 age. No more Crossroads, and many of the older classics. Oh, by the way, didn’t @Maximum_ADHD create the game called Super Nostalgia Zone? We can still experience the classics, in one way. Though this might not be the best experience.

Well, this update may seems to be off limits, no ancient games are playable anymore. However, this do put an extra barrier against the exploiters from exploiting to create inappropriate actions or models with an injector… but also those who wants to bypass certain things by faking their age.


The Polls

Now here’s series of questions:
How many exploiters have you encountered every month?

  • None
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3+

0 voters

Also do these exploiters appear in FE games or non-experimental mode?
No answer here means “I don’t know” option.

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Do they make visually disturbing or inappropriate changes?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

3 Likes

This just restricted access to practically every old game that has ever existed on Roblox.

I am 100% against this in its entirety.
But hey; don’t just take my word for it.

  • I am in favor of this change.
  • I am NOT in favor of this change.

0 voters

10 Likes

I am in favour of this change however i’d have liked them to do it a bit differently.

I feel that sums up most people’s opinions on this.

10 Likes

This seems a bit like decisions being made for developers instead of by them. I understand the security aspect (which is very warranted) but the simple fact that so many games will now be impossible to access (a good amount of which were popular, older games) and many communities that revolve around using old scripts for things like weapons will now die entirely. I know I can’t be as constructive as I’d like due to not knowing another solution, but this should be retraced for something more favorable, whatever that may be. There’s got to be other solutions out there, and simply communicating with developers over this excellent forum to synthesize another solution would be ideal.

18 Likes

Okay, but I think this update caused a bug, Flood Escape 1’s game is permanently fixed to Experimental Mode despite all included places within the game being FilteringEnabled and Experimental Mode within the game set to off.

8 Likes

Hey,

I brought this up internally. We are looking into it.

6 Likes

If any owners of classic games need help porting their game to FE out of fear it might break if they try, PM me here (or on ROBLOX) and I’ll gladly help. I can imagine pretty much any programmer on the forum would be willing to.

14 Likes

Thanks for the quick response!

2 Likes

Without reading any replies (devforum seems to be experiencing technical difficulties) I can immediately recognize that this is a terrible decision.

Literal tens of thousands of games, containing the fruits of endless labor, are being blocked and ultimately ruined by this change. Many games were still completely functional. A much better fix would be to signal to the player that the game was at risk of exploiting, rather than outright disabling them.

This is undoubtedly a step in the wrong direction. What happened to “backwards compatibility”?

Edit: 6 of my games (including some of my most popular), which I intended to preserve in their original condition for nostalgia, are now unplayable :upside_down_face:

43 Likes

I get there is a lot of people in a negative attitude towards this decision, but I think long-term it will a good one for the platform as a whole. Sure those old games you never play are getting taken down, and if any current games that are active got taken down, then it’s about time they switch over to FE.

Rip some oldies, but remember this change will be for the better, don’t let some immediate nostalgia control you.

3 Likes

At this point it’s obvious this change is For The Best, but the way this change was made is horrible.

Thousands and thousands of games are now unplayable, and will never ever become playable again as the developers have moved on.

It would have been much more preferable to have had Filtering forced on all old games. If some scripts break, at least the games are joinable - as it is right now, all old showcases are completely dead. Active devs impacted by this change could have then changed filtering if they so desired, or closed their games for updates if things broke.

13 Likes

I agree that Roblox was really forceful on this update, and that forcing FE(if they can do that) would be a much better option.

But this change was still for the better.

2 Likes

Yeah this is the most depressing part about this change. R.I.P a lot of my childhood.

7 Likes

I’m going to be a tiny bit controversial and say that’s it’s good that all these games are no longer accessible. They remain a security risk and Roblox is looking at enforcing a standard in terms of security. Non-FE games should remain as only accessible to friends and the owner as they are a security risk and are simply experimental.

Saying that, you said last year in RDC (see here) that it was going to be only under 13, it would be lovely if you mentioned (if you did, my apologies) that you tell us that you are also going to 13+

As someone who looked into the Roblox exploiting community [hi V3rm] (just research into my cybersecurity course), I can tell you for fact that this change has killed a major exploit admin (Infinite Yield), it has killed a major part of the community who wanted to find non-FE games to play around with and may include offensive content.

This change does not stop the major exploits who can simply bypass some of the stuff but you prevent most skids from breaking into stuff and it prevents a lot more than it hurts.


TL;DR. Non-FE games are a security risk, but security first.


EDIT: Someone did suggest that it be single player/only with friends, that sounds fine but you should enforce the standard.

5 Likes

Hopefully they plan to remove experimental mode. These changes don’t make sense otherwise.

7 Likes

Sad to see so many old games gone. Please add better safety features so we can customize our experience instead of having it be the same for everyone.

3 Likes

It’s not just for nostalgic value that people are upset over this update.

This also completely nullifies games like Place Roulette, which used to teleport you and a group of friends to a completely random game on the platform. It gave you the opportunity to explore somebody’s creation that nobody else has ever seen. Because most of the games are in experimental mode, it will take you forever to just find anything with experimental mode turned off. People put their heart and soul into these places, even if they weren’t the best builder or scripter, and I think losing that part of Roblox would also mean losing what built this company up to begin with.

This topic is similar to how online-only games getting completely wiped from history. Here’s a video by Ross of Accursed Farms which explains much better than I could about why killing games shouldn’t ever be necessary, and I think the same applies to both Roblox games and Roblox itself. Unless the original owner of the place patches the game or makes it uncopylocked, there is currently no way to archive these places. There also aren’t any viable solutions like hosting a Private Server like with other MMOs, such as Star Wars Galaxies or Ragnarok Online.

While the platform wouldn’t lose much in terms of all the Happy Homes or the Empty Baseplates on the platform, there is still so much content on this platform that would become completely unplayable. Please reconsider this update and perhaps implement some of the changes that others have suggested.

41 Likes

That would the best idea but just depends with what Roblox comes back with.