Provide automatic refunds for ads that are moderated while active

As a roblox developer, I shoudn’t have to constantly worry about my ad getting rejected and losing my robux especially after roblox has approved the ad. Today I uploaded an advertisement for my game, and it was approved by the moderators. Once I put 50,000 robux into the ad, which is the equivalent to $175 USD through devex, roblox suddenly decided they didn’t like the ad anymore and took it down with no refund.

There is nothing wrong with the ad that I posted, but roblox decided to take it down anyways. Roblox accepted the ad when it was uploaded, so there shouldn’t be any problems with the ad after I launch it. However, after investing heavily in this ad, roblox declined it for no apparent reason and no refund was issued.

This is unacceptable because roblox is effectively stealing robux from it’s developers. I upload an ad for roblox to tell me that it’s approved and suitable for the platform, but once I spend robux on it roblox changes their mind, declines the ad, and keeps the robux for themselves.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would be able to launch ads without having to worry about roblox deciding to moderate them and steal the robux that I put into them.

As you can see, 50K robux was put into the ad below only for it to be rejected an hour later. No refund was issued and the ad was initally approved by roblox so there was no reason that this should have happened.
Screen Shot 2020-04-24 at 6.43.21 PM

As you can see below, this is the actual image for the ad we launched and was denied:


There is nothing violating the Roblox ToS in this ad but it seems roblox will reject anything they want without an explanation, even if they’ve approved it before.

All in all, roblox needs to fix their moderation system and there should be no reason to decline ads after they’ve successfully passed through moderation. If the rare occasion comes up, the developer should receive a full refund automatically for the advertisement, without needing to contact customer support first.

101 Likes

I’ve had this issue myself. I once had ads for over 400,000 Robux running and roughly 5 hours after I ran the ads Roblox decided to content delete all of my ads. That’s $1400 down the drain.

At that point, it almost feels like I’ve been scammed. It is quite unsettling to run ads for big sums when you don’t know whether they will be moderated. Makes it very difficult to plan marketing strategies.

39 Likes

This happened to me too pretty soon after I ran the ad and I lost all of my robux spent. The fact that I split up the ad into multiple channels didn’t help; all similar ads were declined at around the same time.

It feels like a penalty for not predicting the whims of Roblox’s moderation.

12 Likes

Tip if you’re stuck in a similar situation:

I appealed to the “Robux” category (with proof) and got refunded. It may take a few days of back-and-forth, and there’s no guarantee, but it’s definitely worth trying if you lost a lot of robux.

8 Likes

if roblox now refunds deleted clothing it should apply for ads too!