My Open Letter to the Roblox Corporation

Feature Requests Website Features
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To the Roblox Corporation,
@Roblox

I have already discussed this at length on another board, however here I am discussing my thoughts on the current updates and developments, most (not all, like the new ability to switch between servers in-game, and more crack-downs on hackers) new updates have been a detriment to the long-term survival of the Roblox platform.
I am putting this out as I assume (and hope) Roblox employees will respond and route it to the higher ups of the Roblox Corporation.
Why have I chosen this board instead of the Engine,

The Chat
The Roblox Corporations, in response to lawsuits and government regulations of minors on the internet, decided to close off the chat and now limit users into different age groups. Although this was made with good intentions, the way it was executed was extremely disproportionate. For users under the age of 13, parents are forced to log into the Parent Account link to manually unlock in-game text chat. This has disrupted user cohesion and – in my experience – sapped the life out of Roblox, a social site. The only way for people on the platform to talk to people is either talk off platform on platforms that are unsafe, or, have “Trusted Connections” which is complicated and you have to send a QR code on a third-party platform.
Proposals:

  1. Re-open the chat for all ages. There are many benefits to this, amongst them is that if there is TOS-breaking, it can be reported and recalled.
  2. Re-route all chat traffic through Secure Remote Events and feature strict rate-limiting and server-side verification.
  3. Some biometric identification. – However not excessive.
  4. Anything that resembles actual addresses, phone numbers, off-platform IDs, etc. are filtered out.
  5. Get rid of rephrasing: I heard from somewhere, it is technically illegal, and I think the old hashtags is good because it is what users recognize, and makes conversations feel less AI-generated and removes the atmosphere of forced politeness, and to be honest, it’s useless.

Content Maturity Labels
Roblox has completely replaced the age recommendations to content gates, that being Minimal, Mild, Moderate, and Restricted. This harms popular classic games made by creators who haven’t logged onto the platform in years, and destroys part of Roblox’s history, causing many games to be locked forever.

  • Proposal: Go back to what it was before, a sign that warned players of what the game’s content contains, rather than blocking them.
  • My more radical proposition was that for those part of Roblox’s history, these could get their own category, Classics. This spans from the site’s inception to the mid 2010s.
  • Roblox should also crack down on so-called “Condo” games and also hangouts, such as for those known to harbour bad-actors, like bathroom hangouts.
  • Get rid of the 17+ category, it’s not going to work well in the long run.

Robux Donation Wall
The Roblox Corporation now has axed Robux Donations in games like *PLS DONATE *. This update has been considered by the community of being harmful and the most destructive update in Roblox’s history.
Donors now have to be a paid subscriber to the new Roblox Plus subscription (which costs about $5/month). Free-to-play users are completely locked out of donating and it is not fair.
Proposal: Re-introduce unrestricted donations
Donations were once uncapped, but under the new Transfer API, Roblox now enforces very strict limits. Standard accounts are heavily restricted from capping total gifts severely. Large-scale giveaways or massive tips from other players is no longer possible.
Even with that, Roblox has heavily locked down this gifting ecosystem with any player under the age of 16 blocked from sending or receiving transferred Robux unless a linked parent account manually reviews and approves every single transaction.
Proposals

  • Re-Introduce Unrestricted Gifting - Restore the capability for standard free-to-play Robloxians to tip and donate natively within experience without a fixed subscription paywall.
  • Lift Artificial Transaction Caps

Entry Barriers: Publishing Regimes

  • Abolish the 1,000 Robux Publishing Fee: Eliminate the mandatory fee or subscription requirement to unlock a universal audience reach. This guarantees that Robloxians’ financial status does not dictate visibility on Roblox.
  • Democratize 2D Shirt Creation: Remove the high-cost barriers for traditional 2D clothing template, and not removing classic shirts because users have not logged in to fill questionnaires. This keeps the asset ecosystem accessible to everyone without leaving them at an impasse with a fee to incentivize them to create 3D Clothing.

Game-Specific User IDs
Roblox has announced a new and honestly drastic architectural shift to replace global User IDs with game-specific IDs. This is not good as it doesn’t actually protect user privacy and instead damages a developer’s ability to track, ban, and share lists of exploiters across multiple games, and in addition to this, this might break the APIs already in place.
Actionable Proposals

  • Maintain a Developer-Facing Global Hash: Provide verified developers with secure hashed version of the global ID that remains consistent across the platform.
  • Enforce Roblox-Native Global Ban API First: Do not fully restrict global ID tracking until Roblox puts a robust, platform-wide, developer-managed Ban API is natively built and optimized.

The “Build” Mobile Text-to-Game AI Feature
Roblox is launching a mobile “Build” AI-powered creation tool, which allows users to type a text prompt (e.g. "Cozy adventure game set in the British countryside adventure game) and instantly publishes it to the platform. This is bad for all the wrong reasons, as it clogs up the front-page with poorly-created AI slop, drowning out organically made games.
Proposals:

  1. Release a full port of Roblox Studio onto mobile devices
  2. Get rid of the AI-prompts entirely
  3. Enforce Manual Quality Gating – Prevent AI-generated games from entering

3D Faces
I think the Roblox Corporation should reconsider pushing out 3D Animated Faces on a wide scale. Creators are making new “Classic” 2D Faces and I think the Roblox Corporation should take note, and start rolling back this programme of 3D Faces.
My proposal is that Roblox make it optional to have 3D Dynamic Faces or 2D Faces, instead of forcing it on everyone. It would save Roblox the backlash from the community.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS
I hope that the Roblox Corporation might see this. My original post on Development Discussion was slightly more rant-y, this one is more full of proposals. In addition to this, I have added more onto this. I hope to hear back from the Roblox Corporation.

– Jaxk.

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they legally required to have age verification

they changed it to 18+, not 17+

in my opinion, 1k robux fee is fine

do you mean 80 robux to upload 2D clothings, or security requirements (Have Active Roblox Plus Subscription, 2FA, ID Verification), or all requirements?

it will be available for users from new zealand on July 28th plus roblox said that AI slop games won’t get on the front page, so you don’t have to worry about it

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Thank you for your comments, and for the last thing, I’m quite happy for that.

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The problem is Roblox have boomer regulators and lawmakers breathing down their neck, yes they didn’t need to add age checks to chat by law, but if they dont, the boomers might bring something much much worse.

They’re doing something they can show to regulators who might want to pass a prospective ban on online platforms, and say, we’ve implemented these safety features so please dont regulate us further.

“but oh they can fight them” i hear you say. Lawsuits and other measures against entire governments are 99% of the time ineffective. Big companies will eventually capitulate because adding regulations for a specific country is usually easier, and much much cheaper.

I hate age checks as well, but its better than what a boomer regulator might propose

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I do understand that, but the whole chat thing is excessive and breaks the flow and feel of many games, and makes it feel very very lifeless and janky, like in a game where somebody’s trapped in a cage and the players must shout out a number.
But I do not understand why they axed games like PLS DONATE, it feels excesisve.
I don’t know if anybody from the Roblox Corporation might respond to this as I heard they trawl around on this board specifically, but since I live in an Eastern Time Zone (somewhere near the Midwestern, Eastern US or perhaps in Canada) I must wait as Roblox is based in California.
Other than that, I do see your points as valid, although I wanted to use the argument of like “but their children might complain about like publishing games as they have to go to them to spend money” or whatever, I realised that was a useless argument.

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@Roblox LISTEN TO THIS GUY PLEASE

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They can’t do this without completely nullifying the entire reason that update is being made. “Verified developers” would have a large enough playerbase to where the data they can obtain from their players is much more valuable, they are the last people that should ever have unrestricted access to a globally unique identifier if privacy is truly the goal.

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Thank you for acknowledging that, I realised that was not a good idea. Thx for your feedback.

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I’m most concerned about the “Build AI”, I really would hope that any AI generated game cannot be publicised, even with the 1k robux fee

it’s good enough that they aren’t allowing these games on the front page but it would be even better if they only allowed these AI generated games to remain private and solely entertain whoever typed the prompt in to generate the game because nobody who just types a quick prompt and gets a game in return should ever deserve to have even 1 player playing their game

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I never understand why the 1,000 Robux fee, however, I think Roblox should have this for games built with this Build AI. However, I think they should abolish it and do a port of Roblox Studio to mobile devices, as that would be a godsend.
Also for the chat, I think a workable solution is Age Verification for users to re-open the chat, it will be a bit tedious at first, but over time, I hope, it becomes necessary.

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roblox’s #1 IDF plant right here :sob:

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In addition to this, when would the Roblox Corporation perhaps respond fully to this, as I heard that Features Request is where Roblox sees the community’s thoughts. I also heard it’s probably it’s here.
– God bless ye

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ADDITIONAL
@Roblox
Yes, I’ve returned. As this thread is quite silent.
The following are more proposals I think the Roblox Corporation should heed. These mostly are because I know Roblox Corporation must follow child safety laws.
These are my proposals:

  1. Re-open the chat for all ages…but with heavy regulations to access it fully.
  2. Mandatory Age-Verification - If you want to comply with local laws, like in Australia, players should submit their biometric data – mainly their face, to chat fully.
  3. An algorithm should be created if there’s signs of inappropriate interactions. It should flag it and immediately, the user is given a warning, or, if it becomes a repeated behavior, the user is immediately locked out of their account and/or Terminated from the platform. This should be reinforced with an IP ban.
  4. Roblox should also crack down on so-called “Condo” games and also hangouts, such as for those known to harbour bad-actors, like bathroom hangouts .Those should be shadow-banned, mainly searching up those terms results in different irrelevant results.
  5. Give tutorials of Lua to users who use iPads and other mobile devices.
  6. Get rid of the AI-prompts entirely, as developers do not even use them.

I have created this as a comment as I know that any thread, minus portfolios, get locked instantly.

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Hell no. Need I explain why?
Age Assurance is one of the worst things to happen in modern society. Forcing users to submit biometric data to a company that is more than known for constant data breaches is not a great idea, is it? Do you want your ID or face leaked on a forum on the deep web? Probably not. There should be global pushback on this, not only to companies but to lawmakers.

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Compliance with laws…however…I do get your point!
Because Roblox is facing a lot of lawsuits from governments over the Corporation’s apathy towards child safety on the platform.

I do get your point though, as

  1. Hackers get their sharp claws into databases, suddenly, they have intimate government IDs at their disposal.
  2. Black Market - Ironically, bad actors simply buy pre-verified IDs for dirt cheap less than rent nowadays, rendering this whole crusade to be useless meanwhile the everyday Robloxian basically suffers.
  3. Artifical Intelligence - Somehow the most feared yet pathetic thing ever. AI-driven tools massively fail, like a lot. People have reported that this software tweaks out such as estimating someone’s age to be 9 or 18, even though they are none of those and are in between those age brackets.
  4. Plus, anybody can bypass it, and use any, and let me stress this enough with the utmost of my being any face, yes, even a Barbie Doll.
  • FOOTNOTE: Also, a Roblox Avatar or even a smiley faced, yes, you heard me right and clearly, a smily face scribbled hastily on a thumb apparently classifies as a human face.

Also, one of my proposals (specifically number 3) is quite excessive, but there was a proposal for the Chat to flag anything that seemed to be inappropriate. Roblox Corporation shot it down because it “disrupted game flow” or whatever, yet when they did it, they did exactly that, except they locked everyone out of chat.
That last bit was a bit of a rant, sorry for that.

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it feels like roblox has been taking 1 step forward and 10 steps backward with these new updates. im glad other people have noticed this
if only they actually listened to the community and readded all these features and removed the bs stuff

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Roblox yeah, at this point the updates are causing me to have hypertension AND a headache (sarcasm, why do I have to announce this to bud, I do in fact go outside!)
I do get your point. I feel like Roblox might not heed this thread, but I hope they take notice as this thread is growing.
UPDATE: Is there any more activity on this thread?

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