I am currently developing a railway simulator on Roblox in a team. We hope to achieve a map aimed to replicate real-world railway routes and stations connecting real-world places in the UK - specifically the London to Brighton and London to Tonbridge lines.
Recently I have been made aware of a US border patrol roleplay game that has been suspended from the site for being “about real places”.
Edit: to make this clear to anyone viewing this thread later, I was not involved with this game and completely agree that it should not be allowed.
At first, it looks clear that (for no apparent reason?) we are not allowed to recreate real-world places. However, according to this blog post which explicitly instructs you to do so, this is not the case.
This seems to be a grey area at the moment, so before we move onto another game engine we want to make sure with clarity that this is not permitted. If anyone has any information or clarity on the subject please let me know.
Also, the name of the game is called “South London Network”. As you can see, it mentioned the real-world city of London. Is this a problem?
The game takes place in a recently controversial location and It clearly says full body inspections must be removed. Depending on how closely and to the scale you accurately portray a location it can be used with malicious intent.
Have fun with your game, but keep in mind if its appropriate for the platform and does not disturb the safety of the environment you’re referencing. If you’re looking for a more serious simulation on mechanics or topics that may be controversial it may be better to take that idea off platform.
I still would prefer to know clearly what the policy is from Roblox staff because this is very inconsistent and we don’t want to spend months perfecting a real-world map for it to be deleted. We are aiming for the game to be as accurate as possible and have permission from train operating companies to use logos, so it will be recreating real life events. While the game was based on controversial events, Roblox has not mentioned this anywhere in their reasoning for the ban.
Hmm, a tourist place should not be an issue but the fact you mentioned about US and Mexico border would have probably been the reason for your game to be taken down as it is military linked and governmental.
The problem with the Border game was not that it imitated a real place, per say, but because of which place was imitated. The issues with the United States’ current Mexico border are extremely controversial and get very political very fast. As a result, it makes sense that ROBLOX doesn’t want a recreation on their platform.
There are many games that imitate real world places that have thrived, primary examples being literally every Ro-Nation’s capital city. You have Las Vegas for USA, London for the UK, etc. These games have been on the platform for ages without moderation, and have been played by millions of people. Especially when it comes down to something like railroads, I don’t see any problem with replicating the real world inspiration and I don’t think ROBLOX would either.
Roblox’s moderation is all over the place tbh. Very in concise and doesn’t know even the point they’re trying to make. It’s laughable tbh and very unfair. Even I wish they would understand this. It’s very frustrating when you become the target of such behavior.
That’s the best I can say. Other than the regular moderation guidelines and rules that the platform has.
I think it’s the combination of the content and the location. They don’t want those people making a game with things like full body inspections and border patrol at any real life location, because it’s not good for the platform to get involved with border politics and it could easily be seen as either mocking the authorities or telling them how to do their job. That’s why they say not to recreate real world locations for that specific game.
Your railway game can likely be any location in the world and it won’t affect Roblox as a company.
I this they banned your game because it is based on controversial location (USA - Mexico)
You know that USA-Mexico border is very very controversial place in real life and that’s why Roblox mods don’t want really controversial place in Roblox. Roblox just doesn’t want to get involved in border politics in any way
Could you please clarify what the controversial part about this place is though? Like what I said in my previous comment, It serves the same purpose as thousands of other borders.
And I do also know that there are a lot of other border games inspired from real places but somehow they get a free pass and this game does not?
This doesn’t answer the question - we want to know what qualifies as controversial and are real-world games allowed so that we can build our games around these annoying rules.
I mean what qualifies as controversial should be common sense. It’s only when people don’t realize this that things get moderated against. The point is the game in question didn’t realize this.
You have nothing to worry about unless you plan on having a 1:1 relation to an actual train system down to the fine details… Like when your pass codes to doors match their pass codes and all the small nuances that allows a player to use your game to break into said facility then that’s your limit. I doubt your train game should even come close to that. So just enjoy the dev process
There is far too much at stake to be relying on “common sense” or speculation from other non roblox staff. I will email Roblox because I want to know what the official policy on this is.
Any website will often have some extremely broad and oppressive rules.
In this case, the rule is broad and oppressive because depending on your interpretation it could ban everything that isn’t complete fiction. Zero limitations are imposed on what is in the scope of “real places”.
The rule is so broad, it bans the depiction of not just any place on Earth, but Earth as well, and any known place beyond Earth too. Except Australia, due to the “real” part of the rule.
“Your place is suspended for containing the Sirius star system” is something a mod could say, and they would be completely justified by the rule.
Such rules tend to only be enforced if moderators feel it’s really necessary. Powertripping mods will use it to justify their tyranny however, which is why it’s bad for such rules to exist.
The issue isn’t that you violated the rule; you can violate it all you like, and only the pettiest of mods will care; the issue is that you did something the mods didn’t like, and that something just so happened to be a violation of this rarely-enforced rule.
As everyone has already pointed out, it’s because it’s a politically controversial area.
The rule should really be changed to what it is though, because one of the scary things about life is that there’s people who do not think for themselves, they just do what authority says even if it makes no sense like some kind of moronic robot. If such a person became a mod, and they were given rules that aren’t actually meant to be enforced, they could cause some serious damage.
