It’s well known that the citizens of China undergo heavy censorship and will be improbable for them to realize the benefits and effects of free speech. It is impossible for a revelation to happen if the truth is clouded by lies and information is controlled. Seriously, imagine if the only tool you have available to find the inner workings of your society was only lies—breakthroughs are hidden away as they are discovered; you can certainly agree with me that something of that scale is simply impossible. I’ve seen testimonies of their citizens declare the right to free speech as chaotic and lead to disorganization. The many more times I’ve witnessed them negatively remark on something I deeply believe in the more jaded I become. I do wish that the right to freedom of speech is granted as a basic human right, but looking at their situation… it’s almost like a fantasy.
Doesn’t take a legal expert to read a legal document and tell you word for word what it says.
Please read my response following the post you replied to
A significant portion of this thread is a boat load of fear-mongering over China. We can confront the issue of free speech without falling down an emotional black hole about China. Chinese people are people. Members of the CCP are still people. But the higher ups are just as corrupt and selfish as any nation’s powerful population. The American rich and powerful have suppressed the rights and income of so many Americans but nobody cares because we’re all ‘used to it’. I don’t doubt the Chinese government is worse but let’s not kid ourselves about how little our own system cares for the working people. Most Chinese people know their government is full of crap. They go with the flow though because they’re in an economic boom and the CCP got them where they are now. Our only job is to pressure our governments to punish rampant capitalism leading to CCP censorship in other countries.
No, law requires interpretation. That’s what lawyers are for. Without it, you’re just saying “omg at night it’s dark! The sun must have been stolen by aliens!”
When you read legal text, all you have to do is read very, very thoroughly. You do not need to actually have a legal background to understand what is being said.
If this wasn’t the case, then how could Roblox ask us to agree to their Terms of Service, for example, if none of us could read it for ourselves and understand what is being signed?
Either you have no experience signing contracts or producing legal documents, or you are just here to insult people’s intelligence.
I’m not the one pretending to know the legal implications of a sentence that was dropped in the Chinese terms, and then telling everyone that this automatically means Luobu is going to be anti-developer and steal all our IP.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; just because a line was dropped does not mean it was dropped because Luobu is intending to exploit it.
Instead it seems you are just here to insult every developer who thinks that working on games in China is a positive thing and are acting like an expert in law to prove your own point and attacking anyone on this thread who dares to disagree with your narrow view.
At the end of the day no one is asking you to take part in this program, so why be so aggressively defensive about it?
I never said
this automatically means Luobu is going to be anti-developer and steal all our IP.
The fact that you are making up stuff shows that you really don’t have any basis for your argument against me.
I simply stated that with the updated contract between you and Roblox when it comes to China UGC, you lose the protection that you once had against your IP being used to create derivative games.
The implications of an omission are absolutely there. It only takes a literal reading of the text to understand that under normal circumstances, Roblox holds a license to do anything with your IP BUT make derivative games, but under the China terms, the China Publisher holds a license to do ANYTHING with your IP, no buts or ifs.
Please quote the part of the terms that disputes what I have stated here.
I don’t feel comfortable when the platform I’m using is pairing with and enabling a government that heavily censors, restricts artistic and expression, and violates the human rights of its citizens. Why is there even a need for a separate application that’s country specific? To abide by their censorship and potential data backdoor laws. Even though is is completely optional, I do not at all fancy how updates are going in regard to privacy an expression (things like automated code scanning). I’ve been on the fence between roblox and other engines, but I just can’t support something like this even indirectly.
This is quite normal for big tech. Facebook, Google, Snapchat and the like all started like this. Amazon still has net losses. Most of the money either (a) goes back into R&D/expansion etc and can be used for a tax write off, or (b) they’re still fine tuning their revenue model. I would imagine it’s an amalgamation of the two.
I’m personally unsure about this. Since chinese players may be “exposed” to players outside the county of China (Americans) and knowing the Roblox community some of the stuff China restricts might very well be spread through the Roblox chat.
Also another concern is Chinese mods banning foreign players for chatting restricted content to Chinese players.
So with some of the rules listed here for UGC submission checklist for China:
does that mean games like Royale High is banned because because of Superstition content being banned?
does it mean that Arsenal is banned because you attack each other with guns and the violence can get intense at times?
With the rules, you can forget about adding traditional Halloween content because the Halloween theme is scary.
What is superstition content? Does superstition content contain stuff like faries, angels, devils, demons, magic, floating islands, or anything related to fantasy?
Does this look like superstition content?
In the picture, you would see a meeting hall, a floating island with vegetation that takes place in outer space with a lot of stars. If you look closely, you would see an angel and you would see an elf supernatural creature.
The Roblox China UGC submission guidelines should have examples of what is not allowed.
Hey I found this and thought it might be relevant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/i6j9i7/how_chinese_officials_hijacked_steve_saleens/
There’s a chance Roblox could lose half a Billion dollars if things go sideways, but obviously every investment has a risk. I don’t know how patents work, or even if they exist in China, but it might be a good idea to put some effort into securing Roblox’s patents. Just food for thought.
From those rules it seems the red tint effect native to the client when the user dies must be removed, as well as their joints breaking as per no body parts flying apart nor red screen flashing mimicking blood. The oof sound effect can be interpreted as a last cry before death, and therefore should be removed as included under No Horror or Scary Content.
It appears the cost of entering the roblox china market is selling your soul and creativity to tencent / china’s regulation
Actually, the reason for this backlash is that that’s not the case anymore. This post creates a large and secure financial incentive of up to $2.4 million a year for Roblox developers to work with the CCP. Roblox is encouraging developers to take part without explaining the disadvantages, and putting those who do not at a disadvantage. This is because the running costs for the developer operating in China are close to 0, so it is an easy way to vastly increase revenue that can be reinvested into the studio. Furthermore, developers in China have to take on less risk, as the market is less competitive and Roblox offers a guaranteed income as well as valuable free services for “fast track” developers including a free, guaranteed featured place on the China app.
Developers that choose to take the morally right choice do not have access to these funds or services and will therefore see less growth and profit.
While your argument is valid for their first announcement, the situation has changed severely for the worse, and we must do whatever we can to stop this.
So… we should look on the bright side that we aren’t forced to operate in China (and try to uphold that right), but accept that we are disadvantaged if we don’t? I disagree. There must be 0 tolerance rule when dealing with countries with atrocious human rights records.
Thanks Roblox for making this optional. But, as a lot of people have said, its money over morals. I do not want to partake in expanding to China due to the massive amounts of silencing government criticism and the huge amount of Human Rights violations.
I do not want to comply with a country’s government that does not respect their civilians and violates Human Rights. I do not really care on how much money I get from it, I just don’t feel like it is right.
Another reason I do not want to work with china, is because a lot of my information can possibly be directed to the Chinese government, which I do not want. Such as, my ip and information protection and does China or any parties apart from myself have access to do what they want with my work on this website.
Thanks but no thanks, I would rather release a game to what is 1 billion users on roblox without having to wait and follow the restrictions so that the chinese government would allow it. Chances are this is going to fail as I don’t see why developers would change their whole entire game so it follows the regulations and can get a tiny bit more money by the around about 5,000 people that would play this. I would say this is a complete waste of time on both yours and the developers behalf.
This is a great opportunity for me and all devs alike, while I do have some suspicions, I think it’s a great way to let in devs to participate with what Roblox is doing
It’s ok to have valid arguments about the incorrect practices of the government.
This opportunity will provide games for people in china to play, it does not mean that by opting into this you agree with their practices.
That’s a ridiculous claim.
I personally do not see this going smoothly.
As much of a market there is in China, I feel that Roblox has always been about creating more than perfecting content to meet standards//Guidelines. One of the biggest things that makes Roblox Roblox is that you don’t have to be some big developer to make games, or host servers for it, having it be an apply-only system, I feel, removes some of that special spark of Roblox, and some of the creativity that could be.
Roblox implementing itself in China is certainly a step forward for the platform but considering the current market for games on Roblox, I personally do not see the games currently published on Roblox transitioning well to a much more regulated system.
The fact that its emphasized so much that there are strict guidelines for the platform is already a red flag for me and is why, even if I could, I would not participate in this program.