New UGC Validation for Caged Accessories

[HaloArbiter_101]

Hello Creators,

Following our first announcement back in December about our plans to improve our UGC validation pipeline, we are releasing today a new set of UGC validation rules for caging layered accessories.

The new cage validation checks will be enforced on new catalog uploads of layered avatar assets. We will not retroactively take down existing assets in the catalog that no longer pass these validations.

Many of you have reported players wearing accessories that are either too large, too small, or partially invisible in your experiences. After a comprehensive investigation we have identified the root cause of most of the issues being improperly set up cages.

Our goal with this release is twofold:

1. Stop cage setups that negatively impact gameplay from being published to the catalog.
2. Streamline the cage creation process to eliminate the main pain points for you, our creators.

We expect these new validation rules will have a significant positive impact on the overall quality of layered accessories in the Marketplace and provide a more pleasant gameplay experience to our players.

Increased Transparency to Validation Rules

We acknowledge cage set up is complex and time consuming. Our long-term plan is to automate cage generation for layered accessories so you don’t have to worry about it.

In the meantime, as we make progress towards our long-term goal, we have developed a new series of supporting documentation and video tutorials on cage creation, sharing tips and recommendations on how to produce high quality cages for your layered accessories:

1. Guide on caging best practices

2. Video tutorial on creating cages for several different types of layered clothing

3. Validation Cheat Sheet listing all validation rules with detailed information on enforced limits and tips to resolve issues

We want to support you producing the best possible quality accessories for your experiences and players, and will continue creating additional materials covering specific pain points based on your feedback.

Improving Quality of Existing Catalog Assets

There are a large number of layered accessories in the catalog that do not pass the new validation checks.

Existing catalog items that fail the new validation checks will not be taken down. However, as newer assets are published using the new validation rules, these older items will be at a disadvantage, as they won’t fit and perform as well as the newer items.

Roblox is building a new system for updating existing assets with invalid cages without having to remove them from the catalog.

In a few weeks, we will direct message creators that own existing layered accessories in the catalog to work with them on an update to their assets. We will share more information about this process on a separate post.

What’s Next

We are expanding our Avatar Auto-Setup product to auto-fix body and accessory caging issues even when these assets are created outside of Studio. This will remove the need for you to create cages yourself.

You can expect these changes later this year.

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Your feedback is very important for us to continue refining our validation rules to support great gameplay experiences for our players while still enabling a wide range of creative freedom to our developers to produce high-quality content.

Please, share your thoughts and suggestions below.

Thank you!

[slav4335 (slav)]

does this mean no massive ugc items? if so, splendid.

[Valkenheim (Valk)]

On the topic of increased transparency in validation rules - Any update on this lingering issue of transparent accessories? Is this allowed Will items utilizing this bug be taken down?

[player14141414141414 (tootpopper69)]

what is caging???
this is now long enough

[Kampfkarren (boyned)]

@HaloArbiter_101

Existing catalog items that fail the new validation checks will not be taken down. However, as newer assets are published using the new validation rules, these older items will be at a disadvantage, as they won’t fit and perform as well as the newer items.

I feel like you have this backwards. People use these extremely large clothing items to troll, so the older items will be at an advantage. Either the older items need to be retroactively moderated/fixed, or devs need a way to get rid of these assets. I don’t want huge broken layered clothing items in my game regardless of when they’re uploaded.

[bvetterdays (roman)]

Can we get some clarification here on what specific issues have been fixed as a result of these patches (orbiting items, invis. items, etc)? The post is quite vague and doesn’t have much detail pertaining to this.

[HaloArbiter_101]

@Kampfkarren the new validation rules aim at preventing among many things, these extremely large clothing items from being published to the catalog.

Regarding the already published items that don’t pass the new validation rules, we will work with their creators to fix these assets, and the ones not fixed that have game breaking behavior (like the extremely large ones you mentioned) will be moderated. We will go into more details on this process in a future post.

[idelww]

As I’ve previously uploaded a few handheld accessories, I got a question.

The announcement says there will be no change for already uploaded items, however, if any handheld items get taken down by the AI moderation what can be done?

Also what is the future of handheld/holdable items? Will we still be able to create them in the future? Will a new category or method be provided?

Overall I don’t think this is a bad update, and we needed some sort of overhaul, but I would like to make sure that accessories that used to follow the rules at the time they were uploaded won’t be taken down by this.

I would be happy to have any of this answered

[HaloArbiter_101]

@bvetterdays the specific issues that are being addressed were already mentioned in the previous post back in December announcing these changes and linked at the very beginning of this post. Please, refer to the column “Gameplay Effect” in the table in that post. We refrained from repeating that table here to avoid duplication of information.

And yes you are correct we want to fix the non-malicious assets, and at the same time fix or take down the malicious ones.

[HaloArbiter_101]

@Valkenheim instead of taking down transparent accessories we are trying to work a validation check that allows some transparency to all accessories. I can’t promise we will succeed and might end up having to take down all transparent accessories … but we are trying to make this work. Will share more information as it becomes available.

[HaloArbiter_101]

@idelww we are aware that there needs to be more categories to support the demand for different UGC accessories. We are working with other teams at Roblox to provide more options to our creators. For example, handhelds and body suits are two categories that have high demand with no corresponding categories.

At the same time, we can’t have too many categories and introduce confusion to creators and users looking for items in the catalog. We are working to find the right balance and will report back as soon as we have more information to share.

[Gogithyy (Gogithy)]

Hi there, regarding this. I’ve been in contact with a staff for marketplace and I was curious to inquire about static heads, I know it was discussed previously of a category being made for it or announced but how would we move our current dynamics that are static to this category? I can definitely assure you that a takedown of all current dynamic static heads would be an extremely loss of profit for numerous creators, small to large. It would be in the best interests of all creators for a way to find a way to move the dynamic static heads to its new found category if possible. Moreover, when and if this new category releases would there be a more efficient and easy way to make static heads? The current process involves the deletion and movement of several dynamic head features currently.

[Blizzei]

While this is a good update in general, im overall concerned about the missing limb cage no longer validating. While this could cause caging issues, it did have its own benefits where it actually helped with compatibility and fitting for numerous bodies. For example sometimes with shirts where its neckline is more closer to the neck, it causes the neck collar to stretch to the jaw of the head. I normally removed the head of the cage to make it so its compatible with everything regardless what head you wore whether it be headless or a UGC head, etc so it wouldn’t stretch out… Would there be an alternative work around so that is still possible to do?

Edit:

The method of removing the cage is actually a documented practice by you guys as well as stated: here

And in the Best practices for caging and the Validation Cheat Sheet, it says otherwise showing an example of part of the outercage gone…

It’s just weird to see two similar threads on the create hub contradict each other and this can lead to confusion from layered clothing creators that have experience with modifying the character cage.

[pl1ushie (bee)]

i heavily agree with this, i usually would remove the heads from my cages and fill in the hole left by the head+ neck to avoid the issues shown in @Blizzei 's post! please update us on any possible news/workarounds surrounding this. thank you

[SpookyMeril (MeriI)]

@HaloArbiter_101

handhelds and body suits are two categories that have high demand with no corresponding categories.

At the same time, we can’t have too many categories and introduce confusion to creators and users looking for items in the catalog.

I would argue that not having specific categories for handhelds and bodysuits would be more confusing than if those categories did exist. Because there isn’t a category for them, it meant that they were previously uploaded as either shirts, t-shirts, jackets or sweaters, and if someone wanted to find a specific kind of handheld item, they might need to search through all of those categories. Same goes for full body suits too, those might be uploaded as either tops or bottoms.

I don’t believe having those categories would cause “confusion” for either creators nor players, as I think most people know what handhelds are. I also think that having a set category for handhelds/bodysuits would also be beneficial for preventing further miscategorization on the catalog too, as there wouldn’t be handheld stuff popping up when users are trying to find an actual jumper to wear while looking in the jumper category.

[Beloathed (Gamer)]

This is absolutely MASSIVE! Oh, wait, no it isn’t. Not anymore.

[Rockerite]

I’m really not a fan of rewarding creators who break Roblox’s Marketplace Policy by abusing glitches to access these features early. The method they are using to create transparent accessories is done through a glitch in Roblox’s accessory validation.

I am glad to see that you are considering an official method of adding transparency to items, but I am disappointed this wasn’t addressed earlier. This bug was discovered 2 months ago and legitimate creators have been waiting for an official response that whole time.

[Valkenheim (Valk)]

Thank you for the update on this. I certainly believe it’s crucial to establish clear guidelines and address these issues sooner rather than later- It has been 52 days since this bug was initially reported. Unintended behaviors like these continue to see a lack of official response, and eventually it creates an environment where those abusing these bugs benefit, especially after the 30 day hold, and those attempting to stay within the rules are at a disadvantage- I believe this ultimately jeopardizes the integrity of the marketplace, and I question the point of the lengthy 30 day hold if issues cannot be efficiently commented on, or solved, within that timeframe.

[WhoseTrade]

I really want to echo this

The current transparent items are abusing a glitch which clearly put good faith creators who are trying to do the right thing at a competitive disadvantage

While I love the idea that transparency is being looked into deeper to officially support — this has been requested for years in more proper outlets and wasn’t a serious consideration but only now other creators abusing a glitch the feature is finally being explored feels wrong

These items utilizing the glitch have significantly impacted good faith, policy abiding uploads in certain categories and we were left in the dark without a reasonable course of action to compete faithfully

these situations including transparency but also other violating content are negatively impacting good faith creators trying to do the right thing and seeming continuously rewarding bad actors for taking leaps on faith on Roblox’s inaction

tl;dr it just feels the playing field isn’t fair to well intentioned creators