Since everybody here seems to be negatively commenting about this update instead of offering solutions, let me throw in my two cents:
This quote implies this is a safety issue, and not a legal issue. I understand that some user ads have been misleading, and that’s probably where the issue arises. An alternative solution, rather than blocking us from advertising to a huge portion of Roblox’s player base, would be to have staff more informed on how to moderate user ads and implement longer wait times to review. I simply fail to see why you would need to block advertising for <13 on sponsorships, as it only shows the game icon. If players are uploading malicious icons and user ads and it manages to go over the heads of staff, that should be on you, not us.
This is a textbook example of punishing the many for the actions of the few; and family-friendly games, small developers, and up-and-coming developers are the ones that are going to suffer the most from this.
In case I wasn’t clear:
If safety is really your concern here, implement better guidelines for what qualifies as an “acceptable” user ad and/or sponsorship and allow developers to submit them for review by someone who is responsible for content moderation before allowing it to run.
I’m going to assume that this change was brought on by COPPA regulations or something similar. Would’ve been nice to have a heads up though.
Roblox knew the developers wouldn’t like this, so they avoided telling us until the last minute. It’s like telling your parents about a school project the night before it’s due because you didn’t wanna do it. There’s no way they could’ve announced this beforehand without receiving incredible backlash. We should also know by now that none of the decisions are from us developers, instead they’re all made by either the government or the investors dumping their money into this platform. Making as much money as possible is the main driver here, which seemingly requires disregarding what their own community wants almost every time.
Ads is understandable for safety, but Sponsors should be able to target younger audiences, it doesnt make sense to remove the option to target them since Sponsors arent any different than regular icons and those can be seen by -13 audiences.
At its current implementation, this only stops people from making games for that specific target as you wont be able to let them know your experience exists to try and get some playerbase.
Example: Lets say i have a clothing Shop tailored for Bikers, but i cant target Bikers with my ads. Whats the point of tailoring my product to be appealing for them if i cant reach them?
Tl;dr: I think ads are fine to not be able to select young audiences, sponsors change does not make any sense as it is just a regular icon just as all frontpage games.
I just wish we had an official explanation as to why we are not allowed to advertise our games to nearly half the audience. I’m all for not taking advantage of children through ads, but I don’t see how sponsors would be considered dangerous as well. And that’s assuming that this is the reason. With a change this large, I really would have hoped this post would’ve gone more in detail, as many of us are left asking ourselves questions we can’t answer.
I also doubt Roblox will limit themselves from running ads on under 13 demographics…
Guys, we can’t forget, a majority of players under thirteen are on mobile, and they could not even see ads in the first place.
(although, this is still really bad)
This is going to cause a massive issue for our game, considering our games target audience is under 13 this could completely destroy our game. Not sure what we should do, if there are any workarounds or so fourth. Any ideas or tips?
It’s already extremely difficult for smaller developers to advertise their game before this change, Roblox just keeps making it more and more difficult to be a smaller developer on this platform.
“Good” for limiting competition to already well-established and well-funded individuals - bad for the small developers. Bad for the rest of us.
Roblox is a platform that runs off the small developers. That’s how you get big - most people have to start small. This change hurts the community, giving more power & control to already well-established studios.
Every major company that advertises mainly to kids (moonbug, my little pony, other experiences made using the IP of kids shows (official ones of course)) are screwed. They dump tons of robux into advertising, and now there target demographic is gone.
Yeah, I hate this aswell but…I can also see why they decided to do this.
For the past few years, many people have been taking advantage of using trends, clickbait and false giveaways in an attempt to earn robux from younger players.
It’s not exactly a bad thing to do if you’re trying to make a career as a new developer, but it’s honestly been getting out of hand lately.
So that’s probably one of the main reasons behind this update, because Roblox already knows that older players like us aren’t going to fall for clickbait advertisements like children do and that they’re simply trying to discourage that practice going forward.
And because of that, this will ultimately force every advertiser to put some actual effort into their advertisments rather than just having something like “1 MILLION ROBUX AMONG US GIVEAWAY!!”.
It’s also probably because of the fact that some clickbait advertisements most likely violate COPPA laws in the progress, which is very bad for the platform.
So yeah, be prepared to see a huge decline in low effort advertisements going forward.
Under 13s account for 54% of the Roblox population, this means ads will be visible only to half of what it was before, especially if your game is All ages. Do you think that a game for kids is going to get any traction if they cannot advertise toward their target audience? I want you to think about that.
After seeing how they just announced this at the very last minute…I can defiantly say that the whole reason behind this update was probably so that they can avoid any legal issues surrounding child-safety laws in America.
Otherwise, they would’ve been more transparent about all this.
honestly, I am feeling mixed on this. i thought that perhaps advertisements/user ads could be restricted to the new age rating. come on, Roblox, make use of your mistakes.
Realistically, your ad will do worse. If nobody is allowed to advertise to players under thirteen then more people will be targeting your specific demographic. Therefore, your impressions will be significantly lower. In simpler terms, more fishermen will be fishing in your lake.
New developers already have a hard time promoting their games, and this change makes it worse. I understand there are many reasons that could have caused this change but at the very least we should receive a detailed explanation. A massive change like this with no advance warning is shocking to me.
If this is due to targeted advertisements toward children under 13, perhaps there should at least be an “all ages” option that will reach all ages including >13.
tldr; This change negatively affects both developers (primarily small devs) and it makes it harder for players under 13 to find new games. Would love to at least hear some more details as to why this change was made
I would be afraid if this is starting to show where Roblox is going in terms of ads.
I believe you should first focus on how to make Marketplace easier to navegate (specially for mobile devices) and to jump from category to category in order to help players find what they are looking for instead of spamming paid ads.