I too had this issue. Without any warning or notice they took our game down from searches/recent. I was gone for several hours and my only update or clue the game was removed was my friend who dmed paniced saying our game was banned. I would have not checked for another day or two, until today, August 18th, and found this out myself. This was a very ill, sudden, and messy update that hurts a lot of developers.
Then the worst part begins now. I did exactly as told to for my appeal. Still the automated reply told me I had selected the wrong category for my request. I can confirm this did not happen because I talked about briefly before I found the right option and put it in, so I know I didn’t mistakenly put the wrong category in.
Finally a reply came, wrong category, we will put you in with someone who can help. They did.
The asked for our game link so I gave them the link.
Finally they replied saying our game was still breaking content maturity and we had to remove “content.” They did not tell us WHAT was wrong.
I had to ask, and when I did, I found out they were playing the WRONG game. Despite me providing a link directly to our game.
Then they followed up again and still insist we are in the wrong.
Our game, Springs Rock, is a exploration/adventure game with mild ratings (for fleeting blood.) About almost a year ago we got forced to use a social hangout tab despite not being consider one at all according to Roblox’s own Documentation page. I tried to fix it then, but to no avail.
In our game we also have three houses intended for roleplay. If you play our game and talk to the players, the most requested feature is “I want to roleplay as if I live here, this place is beautiful.”
Three houses had three open bedrooms, not private spaces. And one open bathroom. Under the context of the new content maturity for social hangout this would require us to be 17+
The problem is we are not a social hangout! The purpose of the game is to explore, adventure, collect, and has support for roleplay, as its not a primary focus for us.
I made this clear in my appeal on why it was not fair to force us into a social hangout tab as it would KILL our game. We are a small game, and going 13+ previously took us from 40/70ccu down to 10 on the BEST OF THE DAYS we had.
This has done nothing but make our lives much harder and unfair.
I tried to appeal this today, making it clear we are neither a social hangout, an adult focused game, nor is the game primary location bedrooms/bathrooms.
Their response?
“We’re sorry but we’re unable to provide you with any further information or response regarding this inquiry. We encourage you to review the previous information sent to you as we have provided you with all that we can at this time. However, if you need further assistance with a different matter, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”
No idea at all how long we’ll be taken down for, if I should start a new email, or what. No direction given or provided.
This turned into a brief vent, I am sorry for that. I put a lot of work into this game, and we work harder to try to get it to go somewhere. I am worried about trying to maintain this game in a future where it can silently be soft banned without any proper notifications outside of roblox itself.
Roblox is my job, less of a hobby. I am not always online to see it. I would greatly appreciate something like this being very clear, with time to react and prepare (like how we did with the audio purge) as opposed to a panic and dms I get that scare me.
Personally I think getting a pop up tab on the creator dashboard of studio home page would be far better than roblox dms, because as stated above, content removal requests can flood your inbox.
