Immersive Ads: Video Ads Launch and Publisher Eligibility Requirements

When you’re dealing with third party advertisers, you want to minimize the amount of bad actors and keep them accountable, essentially those bad actors would represent the third party advertisers and lead Roblox to have bad relations with advertisers if those bad actors are very prevalent.

Roblox is not forcing you to enable id verification, it’s just required if you want immersive ads, which to me makes sense.

Edit: This quote also explains it better than me

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They aren’t? News to me. Just a few of the recent new features locked behind verification:

… just to name a few. Not even going over stuff like censoring you in the Talent Hub without a valid ID. If this is where Roblox is headed, count me out,

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Cant wait for this to be implemented in pretty much every skinnerbox simulator game on the platform

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Why 18+ again for only having the ad in studio???

Roblox tries to make the experience of young developers worse and worse and not give them the opportunity to do anything.

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Great but also bad…

I don’t want to see ads video everywhere…

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Every single feature that you referenced requires id verification for strong reasons. Even though it should be obvious I’ll provide some insights and examples as to why.

ID is required for the marketplace in terms of UGC for intellectual property (I’ll go more into IP/DMCA later) and keeping bad actors accountable. Roblox used to have a big issue with games containing NSFW content being uploaded often, now imagine if that were to happen with the marketplace. All bad actors would have to do is create an alt/VPN to continue. This would severely hurt the reputation of Roblox since they strive to be a safe place for everyone.

This is the first time Roblox implemented the ability to buy and sell plugins directly for USD, I don’t blame them for keeping it ID verified for now to keep things manageable, however, this probably wont be an issue for long:

You 100% need ID verification for the rights manager, it’s not just a Roblox issue, legally if you want to create a DMCA request you need to provide IPP information. Luckily Roblox made it possible so you only need ID verification and not “Your address, telephone number, and email address.” as you would need when submitting a DMCA request formally.

This should be obvious, people under 17 lie all the time (I used to lie when I was under 17 about my age), if it was a simple confirmation click or birth date check that would essentially defeat the purpose of 17+. Even with ID verification I still suspect a decent amount of people being under 17 the few times I’ve played 17+ experiences, imagine how it horrible it would be without it.
Though it should be noted:

This should also be obvious, bad actors would ruin this feature completely by uploading NSFW videos, if it was not ID verified locked.

All in all, Roblox wants to maintain a safe environment for everyone in doing so means making their creators accountable and taking effective action against bad actors who abuse certain features of their platform. With all that being said, Roblox is not forcing you to ID verify, you can still enjoy Roblox without these features.

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I agree, how long before a game locks the player in place and the camera pointed towards a wall full of ads before they are allowed to play? I sure hope the “no AFK or forced watching” policy is enforced with some real action, even if the top games start to do this. I have a feeling that younger kids will tolerate this more than the older kids and not report it, which might lead to a lot of abuse. Of course, we are all just saying a bunch of whataboutism here, so I will just sit back and get some popcorn ready for the future complaints I expect to show up here by next week from banned accounts and experiences. :thinking:

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Wait… you just said it too. Are we all bots? :thinking:

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Who else remembers the old ad service that Roblox had?

Or when you had to watch an ad to press the join button, lol.

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Again a bad update for people under 18. Seems like Roblox just doesn’t care about us

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oh no. ads are now in roblox games

can’t wait for rewarded ads in simulators! (for op pet free)

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I can understand most changes on the platform. Locking features behind ID verification is the one I do not understand and do not support. I’m trying to understand why all these features are being locked behind it but still have no solid conclusion. And I could even understand if the whole purpose of ID verification is for security, having things like UGC being locked, but simply displaying ads that others create which allows us to further monetize our games? No. And I know Roblox is saying it’s to verify the user is over 18 years of age, but do we really need to send our ID in? I think there has to be a better way than to willingly share my government issued ID.

I will try my best to be constructive as there is no point complaining just to complain. I’m not one of these people who says every change on Roblox is terrible and “I’m quitting Roblox” only to complain on the next change and say the same thing. In fact even here, I can acknowledge that this change would have been great had it not been locked behind ID verification. Giving more developers a way to monetize and clearly outlining the requirements is a great choice. Nonetheless, I am very dissatisfied with the way it was implemented and here’s why:

I should start off by sharing the reason why I do not want to simply verify using a government issued ID. It all comes down to privacy.

Now I fully understand that every large tech company is tracking me even if I don’t use their services directly. That doesn’t mean I just want to willingly hand over my ID making it even easier to know exactly who I am, where I live, what I do, etc… I know Roblox states they delete all records after a certain time. But that does not solve the issue. Data breaches happen all the time and I already do not like large companies like Microsoft and Meta knowing exactly who I am, but I like even less an online hacker group getting all that data and sharing it with the entire internet. Even if I trust Roblox 100%, vulnerabilities are always present, and mistakes can happen that allow malicious actors to take that opportunity and take advantage them. Yes, this is a low chance situation, but it is not impossible and that’s the problem. And that cannot be fixed by having a sentence in your TOS stating you delete the data because once the data is out, it’s out forever.

This leaves me with a few questions:

I co-owned a game that had immersive ads a few months back. Why am I suddenly not trusted on the platform enough to utilize this feature?

I just don’t understand why we can’t have another way to prove we are trusted to get access to these features. Why doesn’t my clean moderation history not count for anything (been here nearly 10 years without any moderation beyond a warning. And not many warnings)? There are lots of developers just like me who have not broken the TOS in years but yet, still have that get swept under the rug as if it doesn’t matter.

You already even use that as a check for DevEx (based on the requirement: “Community member in good standing, having complied with Roblox’s Terms of Use”), why not here?

What is the point of this? I wouldn’t be uploading ads which could break the TOS. I could get it more if that was the case especially when dealing with advertisers. But simply displaying them in game? Why can’t we just display ads in game?

I know I can’t change this, but that does mean I can’t leave my thoughts here anyways. I’ll just wait and see.

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Wow, there’s no way I’m using this crap lol

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Yup!
Roblox is so advance that they can add video ads to the platform but can’t increase the number limit for light range…
thank for nothing Roblox!

(not to mention that uploading videos to Roblox YOURSELF still costs 2k robux)

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There should not be any barrier for ID-verified under 18

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Does this mean groups with holder accounts as their owner are unable to have immersive ads in their experiences? Both myself and other owner @Developer_Hidden are ID verified, making it impossible to ID verify the holder account.

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Removing AdService was one of the best decisions Roblox ever made, and I thought it showed a lot of integrity to put the player experience over short term profits. I guess they’re past that.
(Not sure if that was the reason they removed them, but still)

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Me waiting for ages to have Immmersive ads eligibility :

Publisher eligibility requirements, including that the publisher account must be at least 18 years old and ID-verified, take effect on June 1.

now I have to wait for years again, litteraly.

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ID verification is needed due to how easy it is to just make alt accounts/bots etc. I see no reason not to have it on a platform that can make you millions of dollars.

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Then phone verification should count at the minimum. I’m tired of being left out and at this point I’m only not ID verifying both for privacy and to prove a point… Roblox already blocks VoIP numbers from verifying and phones are more accessible than IDs for literally everybody especially those under 18

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