Give developers more control over the freecam

Old content since I was misinformed, kept it for reference

As I’m sure you heard, the freecam group recently got leaked. This group allegedly gives members access to use freecam in any game. This power is also inherited by game developers

https://twitter.com/Roblox_RTC/status/1306259548831801345

Multiple developers have voiced complaints about this power existing, here’s a tweet from @TheAmazeman addressing the exact issue: https://twitter.com/TheAmazemanRBLX/status/1306278309106311168?s=20


As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to control the giving of the freecam GUI, making it impossible to fork, or to control who has access to it.

Many developers know that the freecam has existed for a while. I found it by accident. However, developers get 0 control over how it’s given.

If Roblox could address this issue, it would improve the experience of many developers as they could control who could get access to freecam, and not have to rely on Roblox to control the permissions.

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I’m going to explain my entire thought process. My basis for tweeting was if star creators were going to get special access to all games (which via other tweets in the replies post facto, I realized is not what is planned), it would have created a division between niche youtubers (who are not able to be seen by Roblox as worthy of the star program) -which I have been extremely vocal about earlier this year
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/differences-in-treatment-between-roblox-developers-and-roblox-star-video-creators/446346/26?u=theamazeman

This of course led me to create a feature request to make developers more able to run their own youtuber communities.

I still firmly believe that. UGC is the power that drives Roblox, having a select group of youtubers for marketing purposes, fine. But give developers more tools to make their own communities better. That way I could go all in on cultivating my games’ own youtuber personalities. There’s so many I’d like to advertise on the games page, and I am limited to the youtuber who makes my games’ trailers!

All of this built up frustration releases within tweets. If those youtubers would be able to get access to any game and film good videos due to the freedom of the freecam feature, then this is why I said in the tweet that it “ruins the point of equal opportunity”. Other smaller youtubers would be left in the dark, having to deal with default Roblox controls, or purchasing gamepasses that the developer has put in place to provide an opportunity for youtubers to get extra movement and camera controls.

NOW, what actually is the group ACTUALLY about?

It’s to give some admins and marketing people (including a few star creators) access to free cam in all games so they can make promotional footage.

I mistook the point of allowing freecam in all games as only needed for admins because they need to be able to look through every place in a game to find potential things breaking TOS.

Then, people who have allegedly more knowledge on this program than me (was there an announcement on it?), were saying this is for a special event.

I then wondered why wouldn’t they make 2 different groups, one for admins to be able to find anti TOS in all games using freecam, and a separate group for their testing sessions for their event. It’s standard practice to create different groups for different types of permissions. I wondered why it wasn’t followed here.

Since this is about promotional footage, it is a bit more understandable than it was when the news first announced.

9 Likes

Just of interest - users that are in the staff group on Roblox (this which, as far as I know is most/all moderation) also are given access to global freecam - see here on CoreScript. It looks like the Freecam group is purely for non-staff users who require Freecam for marketing purposes.

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