I apologize if I’ve been overly hostile to people defending private modules. I left some of my newer thoughts on a separate thread about this topic.
I’m having a hard time finding the original quote due to the sheer amount of repeated words in this thread … c’mon people can’t we read a bit before replying? The excess extra may cause Roblox to stop listening
HOWEVER … It has been stated it is fine to debate our opinions on announcement threads as engineers do utilize the information to guage how the community will respond, as long as it’s responsible and kept on topic. I’ll quote the original post as soon as I can find it with … All 700+ posts …
Beyond this, I don’t disagree removing private modules is a good idea with how they’ve been abused, and I overall think it’s the best choice. What I’m personally upset about is no alternative. If they made this announcement stating they’d be removing third party support while focusing on an immediate alternative, I’d at least be content knowing it’d be coming sooner than later despite the fact that they possess a shear amount of statistics showing they probably should have started on this earlier. This is why I’m disappointed in ROBLOX and their leadership. They didn’t look at every use case as best as possible, and only took action when it became malicious and began affecting the majority of the population, which is the small percentage of top devs. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big problem for everyone and is why I want an alternative, but the timing for this and when the impact began is … Kinda significant.
Anywho, I’m going to stop posting here so much as I’ve stated my opinion multiple times and now it’s getting repetitive. We’ll learn what’ll happen today, and I’ll focus my attention toward feature requests. Do hope they’ve changed the course of action with announcing they’ll be working on an alternative asap at least before flipping the switch.
I am still confused as to why they haven’t disabled the ability to require closed-source modules yet… When is this happening?
After they provide a viable alternative?
The impacted player estimates they have should be highly accurate as compared to our estimates which were always the lowest estimate possible. I would speculate that the actual number of developers unwilling to give up their IP and thus the down stream affected player count has given pause enough to re-evaluate shipping this without an alternative.
Instead of speculating like that, how about we wait for an official response from staff.
I don’t think you’ve been hostile at all, in my opinion. It’s just this change is one of the most drastic changes roblox has done, if not the most. There should’ve been an alternative given when the announcement was made that they are removing it entirely, but there wasn’t.
It’s a good chunk of the way into day 4 after it should have happened. I would love to see an official response. One way or the other I would prefer to know what is going on.
Originally I was against this feature, but seeing how prevalent the abuse is I am now for it. Packages promise to be everything modules were and more. I look forward to their release.
My 2c.
I support this update, as Roblox is protecting users/Developers from the new malicious backdoors. I am glad that Roblox decided to provide an change instead of completely destroying this feature. Developers who are making modules shouldn’t be scared to show their code for Source Modules. This is a good step Roblox is taking, I just hope the next thing they do is the enter password feature when a different IP is found, to prevent cookie logging.
At best I saw a ‘maybe’ type of response along with ‘late 2019’ at the earliest. I believe this was associated with packages, but was never confirmed. If they have confirmed that a replacement is coming, please link it as I would love to see that.
Protection of intellectual property and security related concerns are the chief motivators for keeping source code private.
They said this in the post
On February 1st, we will be removing the ability to use closed source modules from other creators on the platform. If you want other developers to use your modules, you must open them to the public or publish them under the same account as the game.
That isn’t an alternative. That is exactly the change many of us are opposed to.
Yeah I meant a change sorry, I’ll edit it.
Is it normal that you get this message even if the module is uploaded by the group owner in the group?
We tested if you upload it on your own account profile and require in your own game you do not get the message. But in group games whatever you do, you get the message. We first though it was because we uploaded it with our own account and not the group account. But seems like it still happens even when it’s uploaded by the group owner.
Why don’t you guys do what you do to all the other assets? get them approved before they can be used.
You already do it for
Decals
Shirts
Audio
Why not check model’s, I’m not saying go check every single one right now but any new comers why not just do a little check?
Edit: or Heck why not have a option on a script that says “Allow Require”
The man power required for that is completely unsustainable, unfortunately.
Then why can they do it for everything else?
Images and meshes are all visual, meaning they are easily recognizable when they’re offensive. Audio is auditory, meaning the same thing.
To audit a model or a script you have to know what it does and look at it closer. Finding moderators that can do that consistently is infeasible.
Would you want to read scripts consisting of several thousands of lines, some of them encrypted or minified, making them harder to read, and have that be your entire day job?
Oh, and if you made a mistake, you get punished for it. Your job is to correctly interpret whether a script is malicious, if it’s hiding other scripts inside it, if the script includes other scripts, and if it does, you read those and figure out what they do and if they require any other scripts. This is also counting having to untangle any obfuscation or minification that gets used in those scripts.
Do you still want that to be your day job?
Meshes, clothing, decals, audio, etc. can’t be changed after they’re approved. If they moderate module scripts, they’d have to re-inspect it every time you update the code. Otherwise, you could keep it innocent-looking at first, and then sneak in your malware after it passed.