Official BOT accounts (idea/concept)

[idelww]

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to automatize serval stuff such as “Group ranking”

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because having a “Bot account” would help automating some stuff & help testing experience features.

Bot Accounts

In this post I want to talk about an idea I had a few days ago, about “Bot accounts”, how would they be used, why would they be useful, and how would these work, as well as some other stuff they can/can’t do.

These bots would be very useful for group owners & experience developers because they can test features & make their groups/experiences look better by adding these bots into their experience.

For group owners, I think bots could automatically delete bad group wall comments, instantly kick blacklisted members, automatically rank-up people if they do a certain task in a Roblox experience, or by using a command in a Guilded community/Discord server which would grant them a special rank in the Roblox group.

Customizing this bot wouldn’t be much of a deal, as they would share the inventory of the person that created the bot. Their username would be the creator’s username followed by (Bot [number ranging from 1-5]), but the display name would be fully customizable similar to the people’s display names (allowing only one space or underscore character). The description of the bot could also be changed by the creator of the bot.

Here’s a mockup of the a bot’s profile:

We could as well, be allowed to add friends as part of collaborators to these bots, so they can help us configure & use these bots.

Every user would have around 5 bot slots, which they can create. Once created, these bots can be disabled, but the creator would have to introduce their 2FA code.
If one of these bots breaks the rules of Roblox, the bot would automatically be disabled & the creator would receive a moderation punishment. In order to re-open the bot that broke the rules, the user would have to contact cs team.

Any action done by the bot will be affecting the group owner’s account!

Below the bots list owned by the user, we could also have a list of bots we’re “collaborating” to, in order to help our friends enable/disable or configure & customize their bots.

Another good use for these bot accounts, would be allowing UGC creators to use them as “mannequins” to showcase outfits to their customers.

In order to use these bot accounts, here’s what the creator would need to do:

• Open a bot slot for 100 robux or more
• Have a verified email address
• Have 2FA enabled
• Have a pin enabled
• Set a second security pin for each bot
• Be a premium member

Additional stuff that would be needed:

• Whenever a code outside Roblox is starts running, the creator will be prompted to do a 2FA verification
• introduce the bot’s specific token & security pin when using the bot
• ID verification for more than 2 bots per account.

Can & Can’t do

Here’s the list with stuff these bot accounts can’t do:

• bots can’t buy/sell assets
• bots can’t play any experience
• bots can’t have premium membership
• bots can’t trade items
• bots can’t have friends relationship (friends, followers, following)
• can’t be used to join groups other than groups owned by the creator OR groups where the creator has admin permissions
• can’t be used as a way to gain visits (if a bot is spawned in a game, it doesn’t count visits, or earnt badges)
• bots can’t be used aside from experiences where the creator is a collaborator with edit permissions
• bots can’t use group walls/comments (anything aside from group shout)
• bots can’t become verified
• bots can’t earn Roblox badges
• bots can’t own groups/experiences but could create other type of assets under the creator’s account

Here’s a short list of what these bots would be useful for:

• can be used by the creator to use Group shouts (Or announcements)
• rank up members in groups
• can be used as dummies for experiences (eg. owner of a bot would be able to summon this bot in their own game, and act as if it was a second player instead of a regular humanoid NPC)
• can earn user badges
• can be used to test free UGC games (allow them to test the transaction without being able to buy the item, similar to how it works in studio, but do this in a live-experience)
• can be used by the creator of the bot as a “player” in their own games (you can join your experience using the bot account if you want to test badges, game passes, buying items, etc., as the bot account wouldn’t have robux, and could help you test any purchase/badge awarding without affecting the sales/earnt badges number)
• can be customized with items in the creator’s inventory (would basically share same avatar items inventory, but can still be prompted purchases over items that the bot creator owns, in order to be able to test the purchases for those item ids)
• bots can configure same items/assets/groups/experiences that the creator is allowed to
• bots would have a unique “token” which can be used in codes inside or outside Roblox in case people want to make these bots do a lot of stuff related to their groups/experiences (would only be seen by the account creator in the settings page), similar to “blocked users” these people would have 5 slots for “Bot accounts”, and to get the token you must enter your 2fa code & pin and have it revealed

In case of a bot theft/someone using anybody else’s bot, I’m pretty sure that the security settings will keep bad actors away, but even if they somehow breach into the bots, the creator could turn them off, and have Roblox support fix the issue.

I’m pretty sure there might be more features that these bots could be used for, which I haven’t mentioned, and I encourage people to post more comments about this if they feel like it. Overall I think with a lot of updates and aging up the platform, bot accounts would be a necessary addition & would benefit a lot of developers that are looking for “hacky” ways to introduce bot accounts into their lives.

[Sindious (Michael_ScofieId)]

I agree with this suggestion however I don’t think there is any need to have an entire bot “account” dedicated to it, insteaad you should be able to manage automation in your group via settings.

[thedauser (dauser)]

@idelww

• Open a bot slot for 100 robux or more
• Have a verified email address
• Have 2FA enabled
• Have a pin enabled
• Set a second security pin for each bot
• Be a premium member

It’s easier to use an alt in that case, there is no need for those requirements.

[idelww]

the reason why it would be better to have a bot account instead of an alternative account is because you could “claim” free UGC accessories/badges or buy gamepasses for development/testing purposes, similar to how you do in studio, but in a live experience, without affecting the badge’s earning rarity, or actually claiming a copy of a free accessory as well as testing an experience as a client with more than 1 user without needing the help of a friend, or a second device as you could just “summon” the bot to act like a second player & wouldn’t affect the visits count either

[Solar_Eos]

Isn’t this already a thing - sort of?
You know, your web APIs?

https://groups.roblox.com/docs/index.html?urls.primaryName=Groups%20Api%20v1

I’m not sure if I want to read through the entire list you posted, but I’m pretty sure the web APIs can do at least half of what you listed.

[0Tenth (QuackBack)]

You should focus your feature request more on use cases and less on solutions. I see the issues that you’re having that you suggest could be solved by a bot account are all being added as OpenCloud APIs (aside from the in-game joining, and user actions; they doesn’t sound very sustainable). Is there a specific reason why you need a bot account for the user actions and can’t just make another Roblox account? I don’t see any benefits to the “mannequins” and sharing inventory with the original creator; it seems like it would open up lots of loopholes with the value of items, how limiteds would be handled, etc.

Your main pain point you’ve described is “group ranking” and I think there’s plans to add an OpenCloud API for that.

[Brylan_Leske (Brylan)]

Roblox is expanding their open cloud api just for this purpose, so you wont have to rely on unsecure bot accounts.

[Solar_Eos]

And to add on: bot accounts aren’t any safer than regular accounts either - if anything they’re arguably more dangerous.

Group owners have always had to be careful with their account security, but they at least know what’s happening to their accounts if they’re also using them regularly to play/develop games.

Bot accounts have the exact same problem, except now no one knows what’s happening to them. 2FA bypasses, obscure as may be, are still a thing, and now you’re just moving a problem back a stage.

It also introduces another attack avenue (that is not entirely in your control, in comparison to a .js program you write yourself) that a less-than-savory person can exploit - so now on top of having to protect your own account, you have to protect x amount of bot accounts too. It’s simply not scalable.

Making your own program to do stuff using Roblox’s web APIs is arguably safer than a bot account, to be honest.

[Hooksmith]

The way we’re thinking about this is not as adding bot accounts but allowing you to create API keys and OAuth applications that work against your resources, via Open Cloud.

I’ll double-check during business hours that group rank changing is on the roadmap for being put on Open Cloud, this is one of the most requested Open Cloud features at the moment.

In the future, I highly recommend writing your threads on individual problems instead of proposing a very specific solution like this since your specific solution might not always make sense for us to implement. We’re happy to receive your specific separate problems (e.g. “can’t automate group ranking”, “can’t test badges easily”, …) so we can find the right solutions internally.