But you can currently make games at any age, and DevEx at 13.
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Slightly confused by the payout methods. Will GPP be the only method for developers to profit from the Chinese market in the beginning, or will DevEx still be an available method? Slightly confused by this one
I think it gets a bit complicated when you involve other countries with laws that are vastly different from the US. Also I’m sure there’s some sort of contract work involved in which you need an adult to sign off on.
To devex while you are under 18, you need someone 18+ to assist you. and this is only to convert robux to real cash, there’s not much involved.
making games to comply with overseas laws, however, is much more complicated. There is so much more that can go wrong and so many new rules that you gotta abide by and as an adult, it’s much easier to hold you accountable for anything that you do wrong.
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Sorry, I meant Intellectual Property. Thanks for the reminder 
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I am mixed on this, on one hand, it’s good that Roblox is expanding into new places and it will be good for all of us devs, however, it’s a bit concerning that Roblox is teaming up with the Chinese government about it and make it “acceptable” for them.
it should be ok, but I would recommend waiting it out for a bit to see what happens before signing anything
tip: don’t sign anything till you read and look into what you are going in for
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I know I’m super late to this but I dont want to get super political, so I’ll just super summarise this.
Stop selling out to China
Almost every developer here is against the CCP.
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If you guys are going to make a wechat account, which I saw was mandatory for logging in, you may as well give up your right to privacy, chinese apps already have a bad record of keeping people’s data safe.
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I have noticed most of the replies here think that this is something that is mandatory, no it isn’t, you don’t have to make your game follow those policies if you do not plan to have your game be available in China.
This is a great opportunity for developers that want to expand their community and make it even bigger, with the drawback of following every policy stated and change their game if new policies get added or old ones get changed.
There are many games released in China, take PUBG, League of Legends and World of Warcraft as an example.
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Interesting to see there is a program to expand the selection of games being developed locally in China. 10,000 yuan is equal to $1546.96 at the time of writing.
However, I’m a little confused about the continuity between Roblox China and outside of Roblox China in terms of rules and regulations. I’ve spotted a few discrepancies which should be addressed that are brought up below along with a few additional queries/concerns/general questions.
1) Questionable developer story
NO Objects, scenes, or dead bodies that contain blood or blood stains
Not entirely sure why a developer story that is being promoted is the creator of “Fight to Death” although I also acknowledge that this is a Google Chrome translation and may not be entirely accurate as Roblox is also translated as Robus and Robles.
2) Rmegamech.mp4
https://roblox.cn/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Rmegamech.mp4
No Bloody and Violent Content
It could reasonably be argued that using flamethrowers on each other even in a robot form is rather violent. General team combat themes that are similar to that of a war enviroment.
3) Rcinhunter.mp4
https://roblox.cn/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Rcinhunter.mp4
No Bloody and Violent Content
NO Content that shows bloody open wounds or injuries
NO Objects, scenes, or dead bodies that contain blood or blood stains
NO Intense fighting or attacks
There is a clear blood spill from a wound when the sword slashes at 0:22 in the video where the monster being attacked is leaking blood. This feels like a clear violation of the general blood rules and regulations. I am confident that this poses an important question of would an internationally expanding developer doing the same setup as this be approved or face moderation?
4) Rdontturnintopoop.mp4
https://roblox.cn/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Rdontturnintopoop.mp4
This game features the international style of death in Roblox being the limbs just fall apart. Is this an old video or a mistake that will be fixed?
5) DevForum China
- Is there any reason why a separate DevForum was made entirely for China? (other than I assume local laws and regulations against outside content)
- Could one argue that this is quite a high degree of segregation and exclusion from international developers to the developers in China?
- What about fostering collaboration and friendship between people outside China and inside China? It was important to any other country when expanding and was pushed rather heavily to the point of international based subcategories added to the DevForum here not long ago.
- What about even trying to get natively speaking Chinese people to help translate international games?
- Are international developers barred from applying to this Chinese based forum? (and vice versa)
6) Roblox China created tutorials/discussions
Could some of these Roblox created development/discussion videos be translated into English either via subtitles or a dub? Some of them look rather interesting to watch and possibly even learn from. I must say that I am surprised that there are so many tutorials and learning videos available to Roblox China but still nothing from the Roblox team outside of China.
7) Acceptance of Tencent T & S
Why was it excluded from the original post that acceptance of a third party term of service from Tencent 腾讯游戏许可及服务协议 was necessary? If this applies to international developers (considering this is again, from the Roblox China website)
The survey mentions these terms to be accepted Guaranteed Payout Pool Program Rules for Global Devs (“Program Rules”) and I also found additional developer terms found on the China site although these seem only applicable for native Roblox China developers https://roblox.cn/dev-terms.html clicking the second button reveals the English language version.
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This seems like a really cool opportunity, excited that Roblox is continuing to expand across the globe.
Would it be possible to create a completely separate instance (sub-instance) of the game for specifically Chinese players?
Seeing as games have to be “compliant with all local Chinese laws and regulations”, this will most likely restrict many ideas for new features to be implemented within the game’s genre as it would, depending on what the Chinese regulation for a specific matter is, more or less subverse the new feature itself as some Asian countries have been viewed as quite tight when it comes to following and abiding by laws which allow certain content.
This would overall contribute to a better playing experience if this is allowed, a specific version of a game for Chinese and other countries that may not allow certain features in games. For instance, South Korea enacting a ban on the trading of in-game virtual items. To enable users from a wider range of countries like South Korea without altering the regular flow of gameplay for most users, I think that this could be a good proposition.
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They can’t publish your game in China if you don’t share IP rights. To even hold on IP, they would need your permission. To hold your IP and then host in a platform would be impossible if you never gave the rights. In Roblox, in the terms it says that if willingly publish your IP; they gain some rights to keep it in hard drives and have it used in any way. This is not the same in the terms outlined when publishing to Roblox China. Publishing there requires the same process as Roblox, give up your rights for them to have your game published on their platform. When joining this program, you agree to a new set of terms and you follow that. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world just like any other terms of service. That’s right, you agree to Roblox China’s Terms of Service and have it apply to your games, not Roblox. The clause that gives your publisher to extra rights applies to the game you publish there.
I knew most of my projects would be incompatible, but god is this restrictive. This basically blacklists 70% of current content.
Well, there goes all my chances at getting anything published. Unless I replace zombies with chuck e cheese.
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I have a small question about the compliancy rules.
I assume Chinese players would be separated from other players to comply with the rules, do we also have to separate them from matchmaking if a game has matchmaking? What about cross server matchmaking? Do we have to always separate Chinese players from actual players in matchmaking or is this not necessary?
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Read this:
YOUR UGC ON THE CHINA GAME
2.1 Option to distribute Your China UGC on the China Game. In addition to making your UGC available to other users as Dev Services on the Platform, you may be given the opportunity to make your UGC available to players (" China Players “) of the version of the Platform and Services published and operated in the PRC (” China Game ") by Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Co., Ltd (the " China Publisher “). Publishing your UGC on the China Game will be completely at your option, and you have no obligation to do so. UGC that you choose to make available to China Players (” Your China UGC ") will be subject to review in accordance with this Section 2.1. To the extent made available in the China Game, Your China UGC will be deemed published by the China Publisher. If a China Player purchases Your China UGC, you may be eligible to earn Robux from Roblox Corporation in accordance with Section 2.9, below. However, the purchase of Your China UGC by a China Player will not constitute the provision of Dev Services or establish any other form of contractual relationship between you and that China Player. Rather, Your China UGC will be sub-licensed to the China Player by the China Publisher. Sections 5B and 6B(3) shall not apply to Your China UGC to the extent that they are inconsistent with Sections 2.2 and 2.9.
The last sentence is important. If you choose to publish your UGC to China (this would be talking about us, not citizens of PRC), then 6B(3) (the terms relating to your intellectual property rights outside of China) no longer apply, and instead Section 2.2 (the terms relating to IP of China UGC) apply.
If you had read through the TOS thoroughly, you would’ve spotted this. Please stop accusing people of making rash, emotionally driven claims when it is clear you aren’t doing your due diligence in researching the TOS.
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As far as I understand, it is illegal to publish games in China if you are not a Chinese citizen / national company. A middle-man that can legally publish content in China would help you publish your game, which is why you cannot legally own the rights for your content in China, hence the TOS difference. So this is a hard legal requirement for even being able to publish your content in China.
Obviously it has no consequence for your IP rights outside of China, and obviously if Luobu wants to maintain a good relationship with non-China developers they would not be making derivative content of your game.
A little bit more nuance in interpretation might be appropriate here. They’re not asking for more than they need. This is just the way game publishing works in China.
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It’s cool to see Roblox venturing into different markets around the world, but China simply has too many restrictions.
I believe it would be easier, and maybe even more profitable in the long run, to go after the markets in Japan and Germany.
Combined the gaming industry of Japan and Germany is estimated to be worth half as much as China, but has way fewer restrictions. Plus, people might feel safer.
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Ok. The thread is in slow mode so I can’t actually edit my post but I would have redacted some parts. My dispute was a misread of the Appendix A omission, which covers anyone whose services are located in the country, rather than citizen of it.
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Even if I was eligible, I wouldn’t apply, simply because I don’t like Tencent and I would never want to make a game which runs with its’ support.
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Just weighing in here:
As Roblox grows in China from the few of us who did end up making a game that makes the CCP happy, more and more of us will see we’re missing out on a market 4x larger than the US and dive in as well, lest some other developer take the money with their own game we could’ve made if we just crafted a game for the CCP. Apparently IP theft is getting better in China. According to some studies, a developing country steals a lot of inbound IP until it becomes self-sustaining around $15k to $25k per capita. In the past this was Japan, South Korea, etc. China is just the biggest deal because it has the largest population.
THE BRIGHT SIDE
You know what all of this means? That the people of the world are moving up in quality of life. An Indian channel becomes the largest YouTube channel? Hell yeah! That’s a billion Indian people having a high enough quality of life to be able to afford internet and phones or laptops. China grows incredibly fast in economic scale? Hell yeah! That means over a billion Chinese people can afford awesome technologies.
Let’s not forget however that global corporations care not for you or your country. US companies, as we’ve been shown, will easily abandon giant factories in small towns and leave thousands of Americans without income if it means they can get more money or save money in another country. The top company owners care not for any individual worker or “developer” in the US. It’s up to our governments to bring on deals or restrictions which invite companies to come and stay.
The hope with China is that as its citizens gradually realize how badly they’ve been given the shaft in the past and more freedom of speech will come their way. It will take time however, because currently they’re mostly economically ascending and not much political descent happens during economic upswings. There’s also the matter of the ‘old guard’ of the CCP needing a few years to age out and kick the bucket. There are 7+ billion people in the world and only a few million of them are CCP. The CCP has all the power in China and it will take a few economic downturns and a whole lot of protesting to change things. Perhaps by bringing fun games we’ve made ourselves to the people of China we can be a part of that change.
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This seems to me as pure conjecture. Why would they explicitly grant themselves permission to make derivative video games off of your work, if they didn’t plan to use it in some capacity? Yes, it would be bad for Tencent’s relation if they were to create derivative works off of your IP, but do you think that will stop them? Just look at the history of Western works being stolen and shamelessly duplicated within the PRC, including video games. Also, you need to realize that we aren’t talking about the license that Luobu has to your UGC, but the license that the China Publisher (Tencent) has by extension of this.
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