Online presence is not reliably updating

[Radiakk]

Reproduction Steps

Background Information
Sometimes, but often when a user joins an experience - their online presence is not correctly updated to reflect them playing something. This issue occurs on their profile (regardless of join privacy) and on the friends list.

Device Info
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/111.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Platform Type: PC
Device Type: Computer

Expected Behavior

I expect to be able to consistently join my friends in experiences they visit.

Actual Behavior

The online presence is not consistently/reliably updated, resulting in players often being shown as online but they are actually in-experience.

Workaround

Currently I have to search experience’s server list for the server my friend is in, however for non-friend users with their joins set to public - it is impossible to join their game.

Issue Area: Roblox Website
Page URL: N/A
Impact: Moderate
Frequency: Often
Date First Experienced: 2023-03-07 18:03:00 (-05:00)

[Radiakk]

Here’s some additional screenshots to help any engineers with this report.

Here is my friend Saint being displayed as Online - on his profile and on my friends list.

Upon viewing the experience he is in - he is clearly displayed in-game in one of the servers. I can confirm he is connected to this server upon joining.

Note that “Servers my friends are in” did not show this server.

[ValiantWind (Val)]

Can confirm this bug. I’ve been experiencing it for the past few days, and it has been quite annoying to deal with.

[zukirenji]

I can confirm this aswell, and it’s very annoying.

[actinosus (glorious)]

I can relate. It happens to me too. When I hop on Roblox to play with my friends or my brother, it’s showing that I am online on the website, even tho I have already joined an experience. Really Annoying.

[Radicalius]

Hey all! Thanks for the reports. On average, how long does it take for the user’s presence to update to the correct value?

[Radiakk]

Hello there, thank you for writing back.

The online presence never updates to in-experience regardless of friendship status or join settings. The presence is only ever online or offline, affecting users seemingly at random.

In addition, it doesn’t appear that platform or browser matters. The bug occurs on the mobile app, desktop browser, and Microsoft Store Roblox app.

Let me know if you need any additional information - this bug is seriously hampering engagement for users who rely on fans joining them in-experience.

[Radiakk]

Hello again,

It’s been a little over a month since this issue surfaced, however it’s still occurring to this day. This issue is preventing myself and others from joining friends and is hurting influencers who rely on fans joining them in-game.

Is there any updates on fixing this issue? I can provide additional information for engineers if necessary. Thank you.

[actinosus (glorious)]

Conclusion: They stopped caring about the issue and have focused on another more “important” things*. That’s sad.

*Sponsored events COUGHS

[Radicalius]

Hey all!
Our team has done some investigation, and we have found a root cause for the original issue @Radiakk experienced (seeing Saint as online when Saint was actually in game) and are working on a patch that will alleviate the issue.

In the meantime, do let us know if you have more examples of when users appeared as online in presence when they were actually in game. They would help us confirm that there aren’t multiple bugs with the same symptom. Thanks again for reporting this issue.

[Radiakk]

Hello there again,

Thank you for the response, this issue now appears to have been resolved. Online presences for the remaining users affected have now recovered and work as expected!

I will let you know if any regression occurs. Thanks for fixing this!