I have plans of a building mode in my game where players can create an obstacle course map. My only concern with this is moderation. Should I implement my own moderation system? Could my game be deleted because of UGC? I’ve seen other threads related to this but most of them didn’t seem to have a final answer.
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Yes, you should have a moderation system in place because people can create inappropriate content that can have your game removed. Most people use an external moderation, such as:
- Player makes model
- Submits it, model data gets sent to their server/trello or other database
- Moderator approves or declines it
Only problem with this is it seems that you want it to be usable in their current session, I presume. The manual approval process can take a while however, as many people aren’t actively online, but it’s also your safest bet.
Although, there are games like Whatever Floats Your Boat that don’t use moderation, so perhaps it’s not necessary.
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No offense but this isn’t a good idea at all. This method - even if it did work, is not sustainable or scalable. Here’s a good article explaining why:
And Roblox’s own moderation team shouldn’t be looked at as a goal or benchmark either, they have a lot more resources than a dev. It just isn’t comparable.
As for the OP, I’m sure you’ll be fine. If you wanted you could have a small team of dedicated users act as moderators (to build positive community engagement and player enjoyment more than being phalic police) that you can communicate with and easily manage, but it isn’t a requirement.
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I would probably stay away from it.
There’s too many negative factors about the whole idea, although it sounds awesome!
Within a game like yours, implementing moderation would be extremely tough to do if you were to have multiple small running servers. Even if the game had a smaller community, you’d have to hire moderators and administrators to constantly check every server.
I’m not how else you could do it automatically, but it’s very inefficient to do it by this method. If you take Group Recruiting Plaza by example, it’s always being constantly moderated with harsh sanctions, and their decal upload feature is always being added back or temporarily suspended due to them not being able to trust the community.
They operate within 75 player servers and only have around less than 200 players at peak times, so if this was to hit the front page and then you had 500 servers with 12 players, I could only imagine it would be a living nightmare filled of inappropriate creations. I don’t think working hard on a feature, then having to remove it due to it being exploited would be ideal.
But hey, most players are immature anyways, so it’s probably not a good idea from the start although it sounds very promising on paper!
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Thanks for the replies. I think I’m going to make the building mode but with slightly limited options to prevent negative uses of the system, along with a report system.
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Just going to chip in with how I think your report feature should function.
You should have a DataStorededicated for Reports.
When a Report is created, the DataStore should store the
- Reporters Username
- Reported Users Username
- Reported Users Obby
- Message
You don’t want people to false report so make sure to notify users that they will be punished if their report is a joke.
Then when you can join, if the user is a Moderator they can check if there’s any Reports and go through them.
You’ll want to check if the user who is being reported has built an obby, if not then you don’t want to file a report.
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how about some sort of upvote/downvote system to allow for community moderation?
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Wait really? It seems really hard to abuse this game given that the only things you can customize are a decal which has already made it through roblox moderation and text which goes through the filter. Seems like if people abuse it, the roblox moderation/text filter are at fault.
I would definitely recommend a user report system. If you can hide the build from everyone without ruining the builder’s experience (they’re innocent until proven guilty), that would be sweet, too.
There is one way to decrease having to use moderation. When someone is building, have parts that they can place down, instead of building block by block. If there a parts (sphere jump, lava run)
I personally never tested the waters with any other game’s moderation system aside from Roblox. However since most company’s enforce a similar or exact replica of roblox’s moderation system I’m going to break it down in depth why malicious players can easily adapt to the system rendering it useless over time.
1). Malicious players are notified that Roblox has been watching them, fully aware of what they’re doing and what will happen if they continue. I cannot stress this enough… you don’t ever do this. All this does is provoke the malicious players more then you’ve done in the beginning, with vpns and creating alt accounts not being restricted it provides backdoors that have remained open for years.
2). Instead of detecting the entire inappropriate build, focus on the part that allows your mind to interpret it as an inappropriate build. For ex: genital, what makes it? 2 balls. If there’s no balls then it just looks like a wand.
3). Making the mistake of deleting the build for everyone, never delete the build for everyone. The inappropriate build should be kept for the builder while deleted for the visitors. Deceive the perpetrators, create an illusion that they’ve outsmarted the system when in fact they’ve fallen into the trap set for them.
4). Automatic detection, relying on bots especially bots that are detecting based on a flawed system is just absolute madness. Automatic moderation can result in false positives whether by a bug or the bot mistakes a similar build for something else. A bot cannot do a humans job, it can assist a human but you STILL need a human to double check to verify if it’s accurate or not. Humans have brains that give us the ability to differentiate right from wrong, bots cannot as they can only do what they’re told to do. The bot should notify you only, false positives are only harmful to the innocent.
5). Hiring too many, too little, or hiring unproductive moderators. I’ve heard the excuse of “Oh there’s too many” “oh this isn’t fun” “Oh I have a life and I have better things to do”. None of those excuses justify lack of work produced on a daily basis, if you need to investigate some cases then by all means do so but don’t let that be your main priority. Most moderation cases are fairly easy to handle while others require some time to invest into. If a moderator is cutting corners so they can just get the task complete without it being 100% accurate then why would I pay you? If I wanted every player reported or detected to be automatically punished without it being looked into it i’d just have the bot ban hundreds of innocent players.
It’s easier to not include a moderation system, however if your feature you’ve implemented makes Roblox look bad to the media then they’re going to strip that feature or even possibly remove the game entirely. That’s exactly what happened with @alexnewtron’s board in meep city, players kept drawing inappropriate objects so Roblox I presume forced him to remove the board.
Roblox doesn’t care what you do until your mishaps impacts their image. It’s your game therefore you take the risk, suffer the consequences of said risk.
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Just to add in some insight ; the game is constantly moderated . Raiding groups were group banned all innappropriate decals have been banned , it is a hotspot for trollers & group recruiters and developers who do not have access to the developer forum.They do what they can and as someone mentioned above the innappropriate decals have found their way onto ROBLOX so theres plenty of blame to go around whether its on the plaza’s staff or ROBLOX , I personally believe its on ROBLOX fully as it passed their system?
I would also like to add that the staff are unpaid volunteers ; they do what they can about these issues.And as for the reporting solution it already has been implemented they have a report link in their discord server ; they do not ban people blindly they ask for proof so adding one through ROBLOX wouldnt be right.
I am friends with some staff at the plaza and they are the nicest people there , I know the owner aswell , they are constantly working on ways to improve the user experience and trying to find solutions to trollers,etc ; for example they newly implemented a “blacklist” feature which is indeed helpful.
And by the way all reports are usually processed in 1 - 3 days ; if you do not get notified that doesnt mean that something hasnt been done.