Removing Support for Third Party Closed Source Modules

Multiple users use closed-sourced modules as a business foundation. There are multitude of services that use this system to protect their IP, and avoid a stolen malicious asset that will fool others.

There is security to be used if people would actually background check what they’re using. If you use a free model tree, and there’s a script in it, there’s a high likelihood that it’s a malicious model. If there is at any point in your game a time when a user is abusing it and doing malicious things via server control, simple Ctrl+Shift+F “require” and disable it. It’s not normal to be using more than 3+ private modules for any game. The failure of the ‘developers’ who do not do this is what caused this issue. Yes, the feature may have never intended to become this but as @WhereAreTheLights has said, this should have been a scenario where the feature has a unknown development. If you cannot background check the assets you use, closed-sourced or not, you have no business to being a developer if you cannot check what tools you use.

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Seranok has said there is a ‘possibility’ of a late 2019 usercase for this, but when is information ever right with releases? For all we know, there will never be any protection of a users’ Intellectual Property ever again.

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If you ask me they would bring back private modules, but more secured like developers should have limited in their code what can they use or Roblox should add the permission system (I know this sounds stupid) for example there will be a check box

  1. Allow Player Kicking.
  2. Edit DataStores.
    Ect

Removing private modules “removes” IP security for private module creators,

Keeping them removes security for game devs who use them and can’t see the source code.

Incorrect. Unless you’re an actual developer, new or not, you should use common sense in which things you allow in your game. Private modules are no exception. Removing this feature destroys user’s rights to protect their intellectual property.

All my modules broke so I suppose this has finally been implemented.

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A feature that allowed people to safely import their arenas into my game is now broken, so I’m assuming this update was pushed through?

It also doesn’t work if the module is public, and I don’t possess the module in my inventory.

The update was pushed through today.
image

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Seems like that you cannot use modules that are uploaded inside group A (Modules Storaged + testing group) and require it in Group B (official group with the games). Both groups have the same owner.

How does it work now?
Module must be uploaded in both groups, what can cause confussing and is double upload work.

I would like to see if they add that all modules can be required by all groups owned by the same person/user.

But other than that it’s a good update.

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How come my game still works? It’s published to a group, but requiring my private modules.

Maybe it works from user to group because we had to take 3 of our games down that require from group to group.

Well now it seems like it’s stopping to work.

It seems like its pretty inconsistent. I don’t see an discernible pattern.

Yes, it does ensure safety, but still, big game devs and company devs do NOT want their code to be stolen. People will claim the code is theirs when really someone else made it. This creates an issue for devs because devs don’t want to release their code, but they don’t want it taken down with this update. I use admins, application centers, nojump scripts, and many more things which all run off private modules. My business will be screwed when this update happens as we use these kinds of things to our advantage to give people the best possible experience.

As a game platform generally targeted at a younger demographic, safety is everything to Roblox.

If this change prevents even one person from seeing something they shouldn’t, it’s a win. Safety will always be #1 for Roblox. Everything else is secondary.

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Yes and I completely understand that and support it. There was a comment I made sometime ago about how Microsoft keeps developing microsoft defender. Defender keeps you safe while using microsoft products and safety is one of their number 1 priorities as well. But you know what microsoft gives us that ROBLOX won’t? Microsoft gives users the option to disable defender at their own risk. ROBLOX would NEVER give creators an option to disable this “firewall” and let us explore, browse, and use these module scripts at our own risk.

Images

It’d be nice if groups could buy assets so that devs could buy the MainModule as the group and then being able to execute it without having to update/upload it to the group every single time.

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Absolutely agree. I’m using said workarounds and it’s really not fun. I hope Roblox will soon look into providing a solution for this.

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You are now comparing an established multi multi MULTI billion dollar corporation to an unintended bug.

I don’t see anything wrong with patching potentially harmful bugs.

This is not “patching a bug”, and I don’t believe its as simple as “patching a bug”. My point is, this is a system that many developers rely upon in the community for the safety and satisfaction of users/customers. Countless groups will be forced to close. Countless games ended. This is not a bug, and it should not be “patched” like you said. This is a system that was exploited by users attempting to do harm to other users. Plus, in your response, you didn’t even acknowledge the fact that ROBLOX isn’t going to provide a way to “disable the firewall” that they are creating. I understand this is in the interest of safety, I understand people exploited this private modules system, and I understand that ROBLOX could have been loosing out on profit because of it. But to disable the system means that a lot of hard work will go to waste unless these developers make their modules open source. Which then, they would loose credit for what they have created. So again, this is not a “bug”. This is a matter of protecting what developers have created while protecting players from potentially harmful scripts. ROBLOX needs to evaluate this issue carefully in order to provide the best possible outcome for all parties, or else this will end in more chaos. Which it already truly has turned into chaos.

It most certainly IS a bug as previously stated by Seranok.

This was never a ‘system’ intended for use the way it was. It was simply a bug with the implementation.

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