Yes, your game is at risk of being put under review if a feature in your game is abused to play inappropriate songs very often, and players report on this often enough for your specific game. You can easily mitigate this by having a pre-screened selection of songs. Most players hate typing in IDs anyway.
I feel as if you could just log the music ID’s being played and blacklist each individual inappropriate ID.
Most of the bypassed IDs I’ve come across in the past weren’t recently uploaded and dated back to 2015-2018. The whole issue is tracking them down since not every player will report the ID for a numerous of reasons:
- They’re currently using these IDs.
- They gain nothing from getting the ID removed.
While roblox may not offer rewards, developers could encourage players to “snitch” by offering in game benefits. Police have relied on this tactic to track down criminals so clearly this method works.
So we’re punished for players misusing a feature designed by Roblox? I’ll keep that in mind.
You are responsible for the content in your game. Roblox did not create a universal boombox feature, developers implement this into their games themselves.
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I consider that more of a loophole but a valid point regardless.
Nobody complains to Unity or epic games for developers using those systems for allowing inappropriate content into their games.
Yes, Roblox’s filters don’t catch every bad piece of content that passes through their systems. It is impossible for such a system to do that 100% of the time.
As developers we have the power and responsibility to control what reasonably happens in our games, and what content players can see and hear.
It is kind of harsh, but that’s the situation. We just do best to make what we love within the standards set.
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Roblox have created multiple gears that give players the ability to play any song ID:
- https://www.roblox.com/catalog/84417281/Dubstep-Boombox
- https://www.roblox.com/catalog/212641536/Golden-Super-Fly-Boombox
- https://www.roblox.com/catalog/409746054/Dual-Golden-Super-Fly-Boomboxes
- https://www.roblox.com/catalog/193769809/Boombox-Gear-3-0
- https://www.roblox.com/catalog/319655993/Beat-Up-Super-Jank-Boombox
If their players play inappropriate songs with these gears, should games that allow gear be moderated?
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I completely agree however to punish the developer directly seems rather extreme. I feel as if it would be more fair to the developer if the misused feature(s) located within the game were removed instead of the entire game.
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Apples and pears. Different platforms, different audiences, different policies/standards.
Then report it as a bug. Tools shouldn’t be able to play songs that aren’t listed as “Free” in the Library since they have “Allow Copying” turned off.
Moderators are not game developers. They can’t dismantle a feature in your game, they don’t know how your game is programmed. Only you know that.
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It’s worth mentioning that boomboxes without a whitelist have been explicitly against the rules since the audio copyright and APM partnership was bought in. Roblox just doesn’t always enforce it and it’s often ignored.
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Presumably because they were made before the rules changed, and weren’t retroactively updated
My bad—I meant any free song. Still, if developers’ games will be moderated if players are able to play inappropriate songs, then any games that allow gear infringe this policy, since Roblox have multiple gears that give players this functionality.
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Report it as a proper bug report.
Don’t use the outdated concept of boombox gears as a contorted argument to prove a point. There is no point, it’s against the rules formally, and Roblox should update the gears to follow the rules as well.
(Same for @Dandystan – you’re getting hung up on this boombox argument as well)
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Will do. Could we receive a link to the relevant rules for reference?
See the note on “Allow Copying” on the configuration page of an asset. It describes that other creators are only allowed to use that asset when Allow Copying = true.
See the relevant rules about APM library in the terms of service. You must ensure that you use at most 250 APM tracks per game. Technically, this cannot be satisfied when there is a boombox gear in your game that can play any track, since that means all users collectively could use up more than 250 tracks from the APM library in your game. (This rule is not enforced)
The Roblox Community Guidelines and Terms of Service describe that creators should ensure positive experiences and are responsible for content in their games.
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I feel that if your game can go under review for a gear that Roblox has made themselves then that’s a massive loophole and extremely unfair to the developer.
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It’s not a loophole at all - but it should be reflected by Roblox staff and clarified, I agree with that.
I feel like this thread has been far derailed and loaded with (excuse my brevity) interesting, knowledgeable and misinformed comments. I don’t have half a mind to reply to any of them right now.
Sound exploits can only be happening because of a vulnerability in your game that you opened. Sound playback replicates if RespectFilteringEnabled is off, which it is not. This can only mean that there is a remote somewhere which is client-authoritative: exploiters are calling this remote and blaring their inappropriate audios. You can rectify this issue by adding server-side verification, disallowing offsale assets from being played via MarketplaceService::GetProductInfo and/or whitelisting your boomboxes with preset IDs. Problem solved.
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@thedevbranch Hey man, I have a couple of suggestions.
Right now,you can create a system that checks for any keywords within the titles of the songs that might be exploitable. I utilise a long array of banned words that are only visible to the developer (as it’s in a script), it’s pretty feasible for preventing most bypassed audios as long as its got enough words to block them. This would check for anything in both the description and title that would cause issues, and I have also contributed to a system that checks a number of other things (whether the owner of the audio has been doing it multiple times, PlaybackLoudness etc). The only disadvantage is that some audios might get false positives, but at least you wouldn’t have to sacrifice the entire system because of it.
That being said, you may want to attempt to employ a data store system that can ban/cross reference audios. You could also add a system that might help your moderators by listing all current ID’s that are playing, and showing known offenders.
However, if you ever assume that this is an exploited attempt, make sure that your remote events are secure. If you pass the location of where the sound should be from the client to the server, that is where an issue would arise because they can practically place it in Workspace for all we know.
If all else fails, double check your SoundService settings (everyone else suggested this but im just adding it in as an option)
Good luck!
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