[Moderation] How can my creation game be safer?

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#1

Hey folks,

I am @Varonex_0, proud ROBLOX Luau developer. My current main project is a creation engine on ROBLOX that (will) let players easily build quite complex levels. The problem I am currently facing is about the safety of the game when it comes to sharing.

Introduction of the issue

Since it’s a creation engine, pretty much everyone can join, and start building what they have in mind despite the rules. I have seen several games in which you can create whatever you want, and in all of them, I have seen obscene builds, gore content, … that do not respect basic guidelines.

That’s why, I’m also setting up an administration to ensure user-created levels respect ROBLOX Community Standards, and our own ones.

The probem is more about how to implement this moderation?

Solutions I came up with

I have thought of a few systems to ensure the stability of the platform.

  • Account verification to upload your map “online” (on a sort of featured-levels page, …) or even a delay of 30 days since the account creation,

  • Manual verification by moderators (although it could become quite cluttered),
    → This idea is to develop a little farther

  • A report button that sends a direct webhook to some internal database,

  • A ticketing system to report maps that do not meet community standards.

  • Caching the version of a map when checked by a moderator, and accessible online. If any modifications are made, the map should go back in a moderation check (time consuming/expensive) → a moderation queue

Conclusion

Some ideas I had are basic ideas that nearly all game have, but it is kind of inconsistent. I want to make the system as safe as possible, and I am aware that despite all my efforts, wrong maps will be posted.

If you have any ideas, please reply to this topic or send me a message in here
Thanks for your help !

#2

There will always be bad apples, but it’s your job as the game’s owner to limit them as much as possible. Your game could get removed if too many content violations occur, even if they’re not made or endorsed by you — we’ve seen this first-hand with MeepCity.

As with any game that allows user-created content, you’re probably going to need a team of moderators (they could even be members of your game’s community). Depending on how safe the game ‘needs’ to be (the target audience), you’ll need to possibly be stricter than normal.

I don’t know how easy it will be to build something against the rules in the game, but you 100% need a report & internal ticketing system. If your game is going to be played by a younger audience, then I’d recommend requiring manual review for each submission. Otherwise, your ‘featured level’ idea seems like a good idea. Make it so that players can always make private levels, but require them to do something before publishing to a featured page.

1 Like
#3

I’d make a “Report Creation” button for users, to then display to every other person and decide on a votekick, and if it’s successful then actually show the creation to moderators, instead of a button, when pressed saying “This creation will be reviewed.”.

Make the report system only avaible to people that have been playing on the server for long enough, and are atleast one month old on their account, to prevent spams, but there will be some anyway, you can’t 100% protect it.

In conclusion, make your game safe using moderators, and help from the trusted section of the public. Most exploiters are skids (script kiddies), so making something like this will filter a big chunk of the exploiting team in your game.

I hope you find this useful.