As a Roblox developer and player, it is currently too hard ensure that money spent on gamepasses for games on the platform are safe and given back if the game is removed. I too was once young, and while I may not be anymore, there are still plenty of users on the platform who are too naive to realize a game they enjoy may get banned, and might spend a significant amount of money (to them at least) on gamepasses for these games. Here’s a couple of examples that I myself had done.
I’m sure people could go on and on about this, but the point is, money was spent on these games, which were banned, but they money is just… gone. There is a refund system for a situation similar to this, where if you own a piece of clothing, you get the Robux back if it was content deleted. Why does this not happen with gamepasses either? What about paid access places? Do those also not get refunded either? This is a confusing UX.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience if my game was removed or banned for whatever reason, but I wanted to continue developing on the platform by following the rules more closely, many people who played my old games would be plagued with the idea that I scammed them out of their money - in which I cannot give back to them as no such feature exists. That is on Roblox, not the developer. Similarly, as a Roblox player, it would give more incentive to purchase gamepasses without the risk of possibly that gamepass getting banned.
In essence, the banning or removal of certain games from the platform hurts players who spent money on those games (not dev products, only gamepasses) because those gamepasses now have gone to waste, and the money will never be returned to the player. Roblox should implement a similar system to refunding clothing that is deleted with gamepasses of games that are deleted as well.
Thanks!
PSA for those who want to buy gamepasses like I did: Many of these groups run scams where they sell these gamepasses and then get themselves banned on purpose, create a new exact same game, and sell the gamepasses again to the same people to suckle more money out of them, and so on. This predatory behavior is only happening because these gamepasses aren’t being refunded, and somehow those people were able to cash out before they got the games banned. I don’t know what could be done in that case, but… something needs to change here.
You should add a section for paid access games being deleted and then not getting a refund. It’s really annoying to lose 300 or so robux on a game because of some company overstepping copyright
wouldn’t the problem with that is that Roblox has to create that Robux to give back? They’re not going to be able to track down where and to whom your Robux spent ended up with. More than likely it’s already been DevEx’d, so it doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not sure if this is the same dilemma as CD’d shirts and UGC items, but it doesn’t sound in their interest to pay for a gamepass twice (once to the recipient game, another in refunding the victim)
This doesn’t make sense past a certain time threshold. Roblox can’t be forever liable for the full R$ ever spent on game passes on a specific game if they or the creators themselves have to take it down in the future.
If the purchases occurred within the pending funds time threshold then Roblox can probably automatically refund all of that to the buyers. They could (and I think already do?) have a higher time threshold for newer games/groups for pending purchases.
I mean yes, I understand what you are saying here. I’m definitely not at all an experience fraud prevention expert so I’m not sure how they could handle this. Hopefully that’s a logistical hurdle that could be dealt with!
I think a possible solution to this (and this would be a pretty large change here and again I’m no fraud prevention expert so I don’t know if this could work) but I would like to see it required for a game to be up for 1 month before the creator could DevEx funds from that game - that way if the game is banned (or as I mentioned above, the creator tries to get the game banned on purpose after they DevEx money from it) it’s hopefully within the 1 month + DevEx processing time (?).
As nice as this would be, it’s not possible.
Games get false moderated all the time and can be taken off of review as well. Does this mean that there’s a potential to duplicate robux? (Eg game gets banned > refund happens > game gets unbanned > robux stays, thusly duplicating it)
Not to mention the clothing refunds are entirely manual, presumably only happening when there’s drama and assorted complaining. I know that I personally haven’t received any refunds in my life for anything removed when I absolutely should have.
No - I believe this is false, it is an automated procedure put in place. Check your Roblox messages.
I’m talking about games that are completely banned. Just guessing here, but I assume internally there is a difference between a game that is under review vs a game that has been banned (even if it’s not shown to the end user)
To a certain extent, Roblox should take accountability for the games that get moderated in which money is wasted. It would need to be limited to games that have no chance of remediation from their current moderation status.
The concern of duplicating Robux is little to none, with implemented guidelines that prevent this. Roblox would already have this capability, especially with millions of people getting refunds automatically from content deletion of clothing assets.
Games that are being permanently banned aren’t the type of games you would be spending your Robux in the first place.
There haven’t been many popular and well-liked games that have been permanently banned. Pokemon Brick Bronze is one, but that was in an era where Roblox let copyright violations run rampant and no one cared yet.
Also, popular games usually don’t get instantly banned. Pet Simulator X was violating the ToS for off-site purchases but instead of getting banned, Roblox and BIG Games manually resolved the issue.
In short: If you are worried that your game will get banned, then you might want to rethink how you make games. Follow the ToS properly, keep your account secure, avoid using copyrighted assets, etc. As long as you can follow these principles, you won’t ever need to worry about a true risk about getting your game banned.
Unfortunately I believe there is a section of the terms of use that implies Roblox is not obliged to refund Robux for items that are removed including gamepasses and clothing. I assume this policy is in place even if users were to receive a message prompting them to accept the refund agreement (which is usually for clothing or UGC I believe)
Re-read the feature request. Players frequently spend money if there is some type of incentive, copywrited content, or not. Liability of lost content and currency from the permanent closure of a game should have some type of remediation. An example is the automated refund of content-deleted clothing and UGC items.
Unfortunately the Roblox terms of service covers Roblox against this, they have zero obligation to refund you for content that can no longer be accessed on the platform.
There have been many games which were deemed to be ‘permanently banned’ (the owner was given moderation action) but due to community uproar the game was unbanned. Unlike accounts, there is no true ‘terminated’ state for experiences.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be, when dealing with money that could have been DevEx’d there is simply no way to get that money back, any attempt at this feature will deeply hurt developers who wish to DevEx.
This is not really necessary, there is already an escrow applied to funds coming in, you could in-theory just increase that to always be a month if you seriously wanted a month window?
Plus, what would happen with DevProducts, the largest method of making Robux on a game?
for gsmepasses there should be a rule that not more than 300 robux or 500 robux will be refunded becauses people spend thousands of robux on passes its a complete different story then clothing as its alot cheaper than passes
As stated before, the idea of being refunded for Roblox gamepasses seems like an amazing and simple concept on paper. And in terms of amazing, it is. I’ve had countless gamepasses deleted over the years without ever receiving a refund, and it would be good to get a refund on those
However, we need to consider numerous different factors of how the transaction would work. I know some of you are thinking it would function in the same way as the way shirt refunds work, but it would be complicated to work out for a game. When shirts are deleted, they have an extremely low chance of ever coming back, while games are a larger consideration and are usually focused on in the moderation and appeals process.
We have to consider the fact that you could DevEx on games. I’m not sure if you can DevEx on Shirts (someone please correct me) but with games, how do you refund robux that was DevExed?
My idea may be controversial, but I think it would be best if Roblox figured out how they would work this out on a complicated scale, as I’ve spent the last 15 minutes thinking about how this would work, and I still haven’t figured out how it would be in the best interests of everyone involved, including Roblox, the player, and developers
Again I am no expert at all in fraud prevention so you are most likely right it’s very difficult to figure out the logistics of it - so I agree with you there, I did have a suggestion to cover this (possibly?):
There is no “good” solution here - this is a very broad feature request on purpose. I’m not trying to be an armchair fraud prevention expert here; I’ll leave that to the experts!
I know this might sound like amazing idea for some people, like who doesn’t like getting refunded. So if you think about it, when you create any type of clothing you can’t even edit it, but games are editable, which means this allows people to duplicate their Robux easily, and of course nobody wants that on Roblox.
