Considering the rampant and unacceptable floods of stolen content on the UGC catalog, it wasn’t hard to see this coming. I am pretty surprised to see this seemingly extends to decals and 2D clothing, however. A scorched earth approach makes total sense in this scenario.
I feel pretty sad for a lot of the small developers who have made innocent fangames or non-profit content that will undoubtedly suffer as a result of this process being automated - and the fact that appeals will undoubtedly be ignored, as is the case with many moderation concerns.
Assumedly, this is being done because Roblox’s hand has finally been forced due to non-publicized lawsuits, which, considering there are hundreds of popular anime games that blatantly steal from other IPs in an attempt to make money, I’m not surprised by. I am rather surprised this has taken priority over the copious amounts of bypassed, inappropriate, and unacceptable adult UGC content, however.
I will say I’m surprised people were allowed to upload IP-infringing assets for well over ten years without consequence and only now the hammer is being brought down. It feels incredibly shady for all of this to only be happening now. I wouldn’t be surprised, frankly, if Roblox was purposefully allowing this for as long as possible to bring in revenue from it until they weren’t able to anymore.
It’s the right approach, for now, but it is practically a burning of the Library of Alexandria for many users, and will permanently and irreversibly damage older games, as well as innocent fan projects. It’s a shame, and I think Roblox really should be held accountable for all of those projects they let fly for so long.
All of this to say, though… It’s a relief. Ever since the audio update, and other irreversible, damaging updates, I was very much sure this platform was going to become completely unsustainable eventually unless you were a professional developer working with fully original content and assets. I had seen this update coming practically a year in advance and it’s satisfying to be proven right.
Roblox as a whole seems to be a really unstable and unsustainable platform because of updates like these retroactively damaging older games, forcing updates from unwilling developers or developers who aren’t even on Roblox anymore.
There isn’t really a point to sustaining your older games or fan projects anymore because they’re impermanent, and are under constant risk of being undermined due to changes like these. A net positive to the platform for its own safety and agenda, but a huge loss for young developers looking to make something they’re passionate about.
I hope any new developers who are up-and-coming take a long think about how updates like this can come out of nowhere and nullify years of their hard work, and make preservation of said work impossible. Hindsight is 20/20, and nobody is immune. There is a lesson to be learned here, and I encourage every developer to comprehend it before committing to making a project on Roblox.
On a side note, I do hope this update eventually extends to taking down games that are obviously stealing from other IPs and profiting off of them. I hope fangames can continue to exist, but any games that are blatantly taking from existing IPs without proper licensing should be taken down. I’ve seen far too many anime games on the platform just renaming characters, items and locations slightly to try and skirt around copyright infringement. Some don’t even rename everything, but they still make money off of characters and IPs that aren’t theirs to use. If the UGC catalog is going to get this treatment, I think the rest of the platform should as well. It’s only fair, and it is the logical approach.
