Hello Creators,
We’ve heard from you that it is challenging to moderate repeat offenders within your experiences. As we shared in February, we’ve been working to build a tool which better supports you in your ability to moderate your experiences.
Well, we have some good news! Starting today, we’re launching the Ban API, available via Engine and OpenCloud. This API enables you to remove violating users from your experience, while our new real-time alt account detection will identify and prevent alternate accounts of banned users from joining an experience. As a reminder, this is for violations of your experience’s rules - Roblox will always be there for violations of platform-wide policies.
Here is a summary of features launching with the Ban API, which you will have access to starting today:
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New real-time alternate account detection: When you ban a user, suspected alt accounts are also banned in real-time.
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Moderation History Overview: You can see your moderation history for any users you ban from the experience.
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Customizable Bans: You can determine the reason and duration of the ban, as long as it follows Roblox Community Standards and Terms of Use.
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Configure via Engine or OpenCloud API: We’ve made the functionality available via Engine and OpenCloud APIs to make sure implementation is flexible and accessible to all creators.
In the fall, we look forward to providing the Ban API on Creator Hub.
All of these features are improvements over the existing Kick API. The Ban API can be used to temporarily or permanently remove a user from an experience, and allows you to specify a duration. The Ban API also detects suspected alt accounts, and is configurable from OpenCloud. The Kick API is only able to remove users temporarily from an experience, and does not provide the ban history for a user.
The Kick API will remain active to avoid unnecessary adjustments. However, we recommend performing all of your account actions through the Ban API if this is your first time setting up an API.
You will now be allowed to establish your own Experience Rules, and moderate your own experiences according to those rules, as long as those rules abide by the Roblox Terms of Use and Community Standards, as well as the Ban API Guidance that applies to the use of Ban API; for more details, see the FAQs down below. Roblox may take action against creators who violate the Roblox Terms of Use in their application of the Ban API.
As a reminder, you have control over your own appeals process and can choose to unban the user if they appeal to you. Roblox will not handle appeals or reinstate users who have been banned based on usage of the API. All contacts to Customer Support regarding these bans will be redirected to developers.
The technical documents for the API can be found here:
Thank you.
FAQ
Click here to view the FAQ!
What are the reasons a developer can ban a user from their experience? Can you ban anyone?
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Creators’ experience rules must follow Roblox’s Community Standards and Terms of Use.
For instance, creating an experience rule that lets you exclude someone because of their gender would violate Roblox’s Discrimination, Slurs, and Hate Speech policy. This type of rule is not allowed. Additionally, creators must apply their experience rules fairly and not arbitrarily target certain users. See our Ban API Guidelines for more details.
Are suspected alts banned automatically?
- Yes, there is a setting that is default on. However, developers can disable it if desired.
Can I transfer bans over to the new API?
- Yes, bans can be transferred to the new API if you had a previous log or database of bans. However, Roblox will not provide this as a feature.
How do unbans work for the originally-banned and suspected alternate accounts?
- If the originally-banned account is unbanned, we unban the original and any suspected alternate accounts. If the alternate account is unbanned, we only unban that alt but not the original account or other suspected alts.
Will we know if the user has ever been banned from Roblox?
- You will only have access to the moderation action you have taken with a particular user.
Can I see a list of suspected alt accounts a user has?
- You can see that an account is a suspected alt, but you will not be able to see a list of usernames of suspected alternate accounts.
Will I be able to pull a list of all currently banned users in my experience? Or across all my experiences?
- The APIs available will provide information on the experience-level, although you can customize them if you’d like. For example, if you have multiple experiences, you will need to pull a list of all banned users for each one individually.
Does this mean I will no longer need to maintain my own database to store user ban info?
- You can look up a user’s moderation history with the APIs available, but feel free to maintain your own database if you have other use cases.
What happens to a user’s subscription if they are banned permanently?
- If a user is banned from an experience for more than 14 days, their experience subscription will automatically be canceled without a refund. Learn more about managing and canceling subscriptions here.
How do we know this won’t lead to false bans which will stop people from playing experiences?
- This is our first step towards enabling alt account suspensions on the platform. Right now, the system is fine-tuned to minimize false positives, but alt accounts may slip through. As more people use the service, we aim to expand its coverage while keeping the false positive rate very low. Since attackers are constantly evolving, we expect to continually adapt this system.
Can developers disable the API (to prevent abuse) if they don’t want to use it?
- Yes, developers are not required to use the API and if using it, will be able to disable the ability to detect alts if desired.
Will there be a system that can appeal these bans?
- You have control over your own appeals process, and can choose to unban the user if they appeal to you. Roblox will not handle appeals or reinstate users who have been banned based on usage of the API.
What information do creators need to ban users - username or user IDs?
- You will need a user ID in order to ban a user. You can find a User ID by following the instructions in the Creator Hub documentation.
We waited for this for so long! And here it is!
