What’s your evidence that this system has been abused?
People here are debating that the code review system might have issues, but you’re saying that it has a history of abuse. Could you link me to any occurrences of this?
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But then why the issue with small developers like me.
I’m fine with Roblox having to review my code but…
I wasn’t notified about this reviewal and
I was terminated near instantly after uploading a place with no grace period to fix my issue and…
The appeals system didn’t help me for the over 8 tickets I asked for help about.
I can be for sure that this game isn’t that dangerous. Yet apparently to whoever reviewed my game, be it automated or a fast human reviewal team, it’s not fair for a termination on a game that is practically made for the people who need it. A drag and drop, 300 submissions of ten worded sentences. You can’t tell me that’ll be so dangerous Roblox think a PR scandal will happen.
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I’m saying that Roblox’s moderation is known to punish people that do nothing wrong at all, while there are some rule-breakers out there that violate the terms of service. Example:
I got a 3-day ban once for “selling groups”. I contacted Roblox support. Surprisingly, they responded quickly, but unsurprisingly, not helpfully. I’ve seen many people break the rules, without getting banned. This is likely going to happen with this code-reviewing system too. It has already happened, so it will very likely happen again.
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That’s what someone who got banned for selling groups would say 
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This has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
Honestly, I don’t take note in individual cases like this. No idea what the context is, or what Roblox know that I don’t know.
Likewise, every moderation system as such scales (millions of reports / week) will have some percentage of wrong moderation - it’s unfortunately unavoidable. This doesn’t mean that it applies to this context, though.
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If you were selling groups, then it was your fault. Just because some people get away with breaking rules, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be punished for doing something wrong.
A false ban isn’t inevitable - it’s actually quite rare. People don’t talk about how often they don’t get banned, they only make a fuss when they are - how many times has something you’ve done been reviewed or reported and a moderator has agreed with you that it didn’t break the rules?
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any room for improvement - there always is. But people are making a big fuss out of the wrong issues. It’s not at all likely that Roblox will moderate people any more or less than they would have without this system - games being taken down for stuff like filter issues (automatic detection) has been happening for years.
Even if we’re not counting the 100,000,000+ users on the platform, we’re at least counting a few million - the rate of false bans might seem to be increasing, or high, or low, however we honestly have absolutely no way to accurately or fairly assess that. People who are banned and stay banned are far louder than those who aren’t (i.e. some people make it their lifes work to call out Roblox for bans they don’t agree with).
The argument that “if I can get randomly banned now, then I can get more randomly banned for code reviews” sort of crumbles when you analyse it - “If it’s possible I die now, if someone drives a car on a road near me surely it’s also possible I die from that?” - the answer, of course, is (unsurprisingly) yes.
There is no evidence (except a few vocal users on this thread and elsewhere, none of whom we know the actual details of their cases about) that there has been any abuse of this system within many months it’s been operating. Until that changes, there’s no point in arguing the “what if” about moderation.
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The argument I am making is not the same as the one you are making.
Most people here are saying “oh this is a stupid update” (it’s not an update, it’s always been a thing), or “I don’t think roblox should have the right to review my code” (which they do, it’s in the ToS that everyone here agreed to)
The case you are making is that moderation (the people who make decisions on who gets banned) should be improved. Which I agree, I was wrongfully terminated once and it took almost three months and a rant post on the devforum to get the admins to take it seriously. I was lucky because the circumstances that led to my termination were actually not my fault.
Yes. moderation should be better. and yes, Roblox should be able to review all places that are on the platform. They are not mutually exclusive.
They have an ethical obligation to make fair and responsive moderation services, but they have a legal right to be able to access your place at a whim.
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Well said.
This really needs a thoughtful evaluation, and it seems with the fact that literally anyone can post on the devforum now, that the quality of posts and arguments that are made are just rubbish.
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I feel like Steam is a bad example for your case. In the past their quality standards were far higher and often required public demand for the game (see Green Light program). Whoever in recent years their approval process is almost non-existent (see Steam Shovelware). Even then, they never required you to upload your game source code. Can’t think of any better examples off the top of my head (Roblox is an unusual platform, not many like it).
Regardless, your arguments here seems to be in support of black box testing, while this post is in reference to white box testing. I don’t think anyone has a problem with Roblox staff testing their games.
I think it’s sort of in the middle - their system is quite opaque, but from my understanding:
- Individual contractors can’t just download any game and “review” it
- They’re only given the offending script content that was auto-identified
- They only get to target games that are automatically targeted except in very specific circumstances
People are right to be concerned, because I wouldn’t feel safe with a single CS person being able to download a copy of my game or its codebase - however, in my opinion they’re clearly conscious of the security concerns of such and are making good faith efforts to prevent it.
Well, I haven’t seen a single response from a staff member in this entire thread. So I can’t verify any of these claims. If you have any context beyond this and the previous thread that I don’t, please share!
I’m just tracking this thread looking for answers to my questions that they haven’t answered yet. I’m tempted to just stop checking at this point. I quit over a month ago. If they haven’t responded by now, all I can do is assume the worst.
By adding your game to Steam, you are uploading your game (all of its content, including code) to Steam owned servers so that the game can be distributed (downloaded by Steam users).
While I do not know for 100% certainty (It’s not really worth my time to check), it is extremely likely that in the legal mumbo-jumbo you agree to to upload your game, that you give Valve the right to access and inspect your games for any reason at any time. The hot coffee version of GTA San Andreas is an excellent example of why these hosting companies decide to retain these rights.
Roblox has worked this into their Terms of Service and it is highly likely that EVERY SINGLE game sharing platform (Steam, Epic Games, Origin, literally anything else where you upload your content to a server you do not own) has in their erms of service that they are allowed to inspect the contents. They own the servers, and are responsible for everything on them (debatable depending on the legal prerequisites to do so),
There are very big reasons these are worked into legal documents. If it turns out that your company owns a server that happens to have illegal data on it, that the owner of the server would likely be the first target by authorities, and the uploader of the content second. It really depends on how the contracts are worked out, though.
Roblox in particular can be very easily exploited by its users (especially since many of them are young and immature) to share explicit or illegal content on the platform; as such, Roblox has a legal responsibility to try to their best of their ability to monitor, remove, and report these occurrences. While Roblox can legally deny that they created the content, and not be held responsible for it, they can be held responsible for not reasonably removing the content within a reasonable amount of time. They may decide not to use these rights, if they are not obligated to do so; but compliance with COPPA and child safety legislation highly suggests that they use these rights regularly (which they do).
This is why Roblox wants to inspect your places, including models and code.
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Steam doesn’t view or own the source code of any games uploaded to it. They simply review the game to make sure nothing harmful is in it.
From "Steamworks Partner Program"
"Now you have access to Steamworks and can begin preparing your title for release. You’ll need to build your store page, upload your builds, configure any Steamworks features, and enter your desired pricing. We’ve worked hard to streamline our tools and document all the features and functionality available to you. Check out the Steamworks documentation for more details.
- Before your store page or game build can go live, there is a brief review process where we run your game, look at your store page, and check that it is configured correctly and running as expected and not doing anything harmful. This takes between 1-5 days."
Last time I checked, I can’t view the source code of Red Dead Redemption 2 through Steam. Or, any other game for that matter. They upload a build of the game, not the source.
Briefly reading through the history of the Hot Coffee mod, I found nothing relating to being able to view the source code of this game, and more of just the fact that players were able to do this. I found nothing about Steam through this, either. Mainly it was ratings Rockstar was worried about, and the game being pulled from shelves. Those stores do not and most likely never will view the source code of any game they sell.
Once again, the content uploaded is the build of the game, not the source.
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When you publish your game to Steam, I’m almost positive they check the insides of it. But at least they aren’t notorious for a high number of false-positives when they do things like this. I also doubt the people who check your game are even willing to sell/share the code because they likely can make something similar or even above what you made.
can you provide a source? I haven’t been able to find anything that shows they can view your source code. What I found is that they just run your game.
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They have a pile of legal stuff that you have to agree when you sign up for Steam, and when you publish a game. I haven’t read through all of it, but I’m sure they have something saying that they are allowed to check your game’s insides.
Unless you are able to find it and show me it, I have no reason to believe you over what I found on their own website. You don’t upload your source code to steam.
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Alright. Let me break down that sentence for you.
We’re looking to flag content that’s dangerous or harmful to our community.
We’re not looking to find swear words in scripts that would never be seen by players.
Just negating the “looking for” doesn’t mean that they won’t ban for it if they find it. It just confirms that swear words aren’t a search condition, if we trust Roblox.
The verb looking is the cause of this. I could write a handful of similar sentences with verbs like trying to or working to.
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You’re repeating something Roblox ‘says they’ll do’ when in reality, that’s the opposite.
I was banned five months ago over this exact code reviewal that was posted last month, might just be a one case issue, but being terminated for 4 months then finally given a staff response into my termination and unterminated at last? Doesn’t sound anywhere similar to this post.
Now as of April of this year, that if you get terminated, you don’t get devforum access anymore as you’ll be logged out and can’t log back in because of termination page. Before in January, this never happened.
Appeals doesn’t listen to your multiple ticket requests, if your first one gets declined, you’re out of sending another email.
Where does a small developer go about appealing now?
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