Here’s another idea.
What if any game that’s in Experimental Mode gets uncopylocked after not being updated for, say, 3 years?
Obviously it isn’t possible to just unlock every non-FE game out there, but this gives developers a way to take an old classic and update it to be playable without having to rely on the owner.
A better option than completely killing them, but I still don’t think it’s right to be able to steal other people’s content even though they’re long gone lol. They’re still people and those are still their creations. If they wanted others to have access to the game’s file, they would have made them uncopylocked themselves.
Isn’t millions of old, broken, playable games better than millions of entirely unplayable games?
By forcing Filtering onto games that haven’t been updated for x amount of time, active developers can simply turn off filtering again and have their games restricted to friends only if they so choose, or else disable their games for updates. Nothing will be different from how it is now. However, developers who have long since left the platform won’t have to manually update their 2007 era games to allow people to even join them.
In this case, isn’t broken better than the alternative?
No. Uncopylocking a developer’s work because they’ve left is an unacceptable breach of trust. They joined the platform a long time ago expecting their work to remain their own, not for Roblox to suddenly change the rules and give all of their hard work to any random user who passes by.
Also, I saw someone mention something like “Secure mode”, and I think an idea like that could have some promise as an alternative to “hard-forcing” Filtering. Games that are public, not friends only, but in experimental mode could still be joinable by other players, but the version of the game that non-friend players are allowed to join will have filtering forced on even if it breaks the game, with a very clear notification on the game’s page that the game may not work correctly. This is in contrast to explicitly modifying the game to have Filtering enabled.
Could you elaborate on your response instead of just giving me a toxic one word answer?
Honestly you shouldn’t need more than that, but I will update my post for you.
So do you think it’s not a breach of trust at all to just completely lock these creator’s games off forever into the memory hole, essentially dooming their work to rot for eternity?
I think that it’s a bigger breach of trust for Roblox to just completely lock their games down so nobody will ever see or play their work again.
For example, I have a friend who used to play Roblox with me, but he unfortunately forgot the password to his account and will never be able to access his old games again.
What I proposed was just a suggestion, since I asserted in my first post in this thread that I’m abhorrently against these games getting wiped out. Perhaps extending the limit to, say, 5-6 years of not being updated instead of 3 sounds more reasonable?
I’m pretty sure your creations are your property. Roblox isn’t allowed to decide for you that your property is free for anyone to take and use.
We have already suggested ideas to address the issue of games now being locked forever. Ideas that do not involve just handing a developer’s hard work over to the public to play with, use for their own work, steal, etc.
Eg.
Also:
A lot of people, as ive noticed via scrolling through these comments, are backing up this update by claiming nobody plays the old games that got locked down anyhow.
So, here is a list of actually still popular games that got locked down by the update:
(The list will grow as I learn of more)
And this is only POPULAR games. This doesn’t include any slightly-popular or not-popular games on Roblox that got taken down. Thousands of players play these games almost everyday, and the wide majority of these games became a part of their Roblox journey. They made friends on them, had experiences on them, and these games ultimately shaped their experience on the site. Why are we taking these games away from them, simply because their developers aren’t active on the site and/or don’t want FE to break their games because of the bugs in the system?
Here is a way in order to make things a lot easier for us all; obviously, most of the classic games on Roblox are not going to be updated for this. However, also obviously, we need to ensure that the games with developers capable of enabling FE on their games do so that the players are protected. So, instead of just locking down every game that doesn’t have FE updated, lock down all of the games that don’t have FE updated, but have been updated within the past year or two. After that, it will be obvious the owner isn’t active to the point where they can update it to make FE active, so either automatically set FE onto those games or unlock those games, but put up a warning message saying the game is not FE and may be exploitable.
I can truly and honestly see the ethics gone behind by this update; it helps ensure the security of Roblox users, and it ensures that those games without the protection are required to get it to protect their players. However, to just completely lock down all games from being accessible simply because it does not have FE on it, I believe, is not the route to go with this update.
This update is not good. Like 90% of games are now closed.
Arguably these games were unsafe and not up to the quality we should expect these days. It isn’t the fault of the developers who didn’t have filtering enabled back then, however these games can’t just continue being supported.
I’ve said it a lot already, but experimental mode needs to go. Of course, this will break the games, but they would obviously be accessible after.
Aside from that, saying the update isn’t good doesn’t do much. If you’re serious about a possible solution, make a feature request.
I am just hoping for people 13+ to still be able to play these games, 12 and under it seems reasonable as some of the stuff that can be exploited into those games are a different level of inappropriate. However 13+ are considered teenagers and a lot more mature. If we see an exploit going on we either don’t mind or will simply leave the game.
There’s been a lot of discussion about this above. The change was first applied ~9 days ago for 12 and under, and was applied yesterday for 13+. To me, that says Roblox isn’t willing to leave it open for 13+ either, and it wasn’t a matter of putting more work in or not to restrict only one category.
Activity on the site is going to go down tremendously as many cool games, even training places for clan groups are currently down. And if there is no way to bring it back up again. Lot’s of people will just quit.
Where are you getting these statistics? If activity is going to go down, then the solution is for these groups to use better systems for their places.
That takes lots of time and the only people that already have that are the super big groups with their own developers. The smaller ones will no longer be playable.
I agree the bigger groups currently have an advantage. That needs to be fixed, but opening experimental mode places isn’t the way.
Edit: I’m going to PM you so we don’t derail the thread.
If these popular games were made single player only while they’re still in experimental mode, it’d be much better at keeping players than just straight up blocking it. Roblox clearly don’t want to have people lose player counts, as its in their best interest for their developers, so why they would straight up block all experimental games baffles me, instead of just having 1 player server games instead, which would be far more beneficial, even if the game doesn’t work.
A friend just had a super easy solution to this problem that would at least make the problem less of an issue:
why doesn’t it just toggle all games fe on
Also, see Remove experimental mode - #5 by EmeraldSlash for why this isn’t a bad idea.
That is, if Roblox wants to remove access to EM games entirely (the 1 player per server isn’t a bad idea).