The Product Policy team has updated the Community Rules to include details about placing advertisements within experiences and to further clarify our policies on user data collection and sharing.
To summarize, this update covers the following areas:
Added and clarified policies for placing advertisements within experiences
Added language on sharing aggregated information with third party advertisers
Expanded information surrounding use of our PolicyService APIs when building an experience
Remember, these rules and guidelines are not exhaustive. We will continue to make updates to add or clarify policies to make sure that we are fostering a safe and diverse community.
Thank you,
Developer Relations
Q&A
Can I add paid content or ads to my experience?
Yes, as long as the content follows the Community Rules and is clearly marked and distinctive to the user that it is a paid advertisement.
I’m working with an advertising network, can I embed their code in my experience?
Serving ad content not directly uploaded by you, the developer, within a Roblox experience is prohibited. Ad-related code can be used to track users or decide what assets (not uploaded by you) will show up in your experience which means you are not in control of what your experience is showing to your users.
It’s important that Roblox remains safe and appropriate for all users while respecting user privacy. In order to do this, we expect developers and their content to be in line with our policies - meaning, developers must retain full control of the content that is shown in experiences across the platform.
When will the new policy changes be enforced?
This announcement serves as a warning for the policy change. There is an initial grace period of ~30 days for developers to make any necessary changes in order to comply with the new policy. Starting August 15, we will begin enforcing this change in a way that will provide an opportunity for developers to correct an infraction, such as issuing warnings for those that may be in violation.
Our priority is to ensure platform safety - severe violations that break other parts of our Community Rules or Terms of Use are not protected under this grace period and we may remove the content or suspend the experience at any time and without notice.
This feels really out of place and looks like its specifically targeting Bloxbiz. Was this motivated by the growth in Bloxbiz? It kinda seems like Roblox trying to stamp out a great opportunity for developers here.
Bloxbiz has been highly rated in the news and while I do understand that from a business perspective this can make sense. (Not gathering data from 13 and younger), Roblox does not provide us with the tools to know if someone is 13 or younger.
It appears Roblox is against third-party data collection, which is a good thing! It’s also cool that you’re one of those companies which don’t sell the small amount of data that they collect on players.
It would still be nice if Google Analytics was also removed from the site since that used by Google to track people, but can easily be blocked by an extension. Given how Roblox already has its own very useful analytical tools, I wonder why it’s still in the site.
I still want to know just how much Roblox knows about me lol, maybe a download my data button? (besides the rbxm and rbxl files i can imagine thats in the hundreds of GB).
The issue with it though is people can lie about their age, which happens to many younger users who want to gain more access on Roblox. To be safe, third-parties in-game shouldn’t be collecting data like this in the first place. It makes users feel uncomfortable to play the game, in my opinion.
I was working on a radio project that serves realistic semi-“live” radio to games, such as for cars etc. with music, hosts & possibly ads. Does this mean that even if I didn’t include ads & such, it would still not be allowed as I have control over the audio it broadcasts in other games?
This also makes me question about other tools or even game kits, where piece of the script is hosted separately by the creator of the kit or tool & updates it regularly to include more features & smoother gameplay for those using them.
i don’t understand what’s going on in the replies on this topic
how will the community rules update affect bloxbiz shutting down (i’ve known them from the billboards in a game called RoVille)
Yeah! That would be amazing, there are some services like Dashlane which really care about privacy and there are plenty of options for cleaning data, downloading data, denying non-essential data collection, and more.
Roblox experiences seem to be everyday closer and closer to having better politics not only about their own copyright but also about other things like well, data collection and such. I really think this is the right direction for keeping privacy in roblox, although It would be amazing to see Roblox implementing or supporting something similar to Bloxbiz, just take a look at mobile games, they are quite intrusive (something that could be avoided with some work) but their main source of income tends to be ads and they aren’t a bad source of income.
BloxBiz partners with other non-Roblox-related brands for advertisements. This is saying you, as the developer, need to have full control over the ads to display them in your game.
Really approve these changes. Predatory ad systems have no place in Roblox. Also glad devs can still implement their own systems, couldn’t get much better than this.
@Kairomatic
This seems like a step in the wrong direction, while I do believe privacy for players is important there are cases in when serving third party content is necessary such as playing user generated audio on a ‘boombox’. Oh, wait a second… is this something about that lawsuit ye have been having with the music publishers.
Also, does this mean that user generated decals can no longer be shown since there is a chance they could be advertisements?
