I’m attempting to create a player world system (similar to old Roblox personal servers), and I want players to have the ability to have their builds save in their own personal worlds. I’m using Roblox’s dynamic place creation & saving API to accomplish this.
The problem is that some users may create inappropriate builds in their worlds, and when Roblox moderators see that, they’ll take action against me due to me being the developer of the game in which the sub-place is under. I’m looking for answers regarding the following questions:
What would Roblox moderators do about this issue?
What steps should I take to ensure there are no issues?
I’ve considered creating some sort of moderation system with user moderators willing to delete these inappropriate sub-places. I’ve only been planning this so far, and will execute depending on the answer I receive for the two questions I have. (I couldn’t find any resources online for dealing with this specific issue)
No one here is really equipped to appropriately answer that kind of question because none of us are staff (except those who are actually staff) - this is something more suited to direct to the Developer Engagement Team, who may be able to consult with moderators and give you a response on how to tailor your game appropriately. The rest of us can only answer based on what we (think we) know.
As for what I know, “sub-places” is irrelevant. Regardless, if your place is breaking rules or features are being abused en masse and exposing audiences to inappropriate content, your game goes under review (not an individual place - the game). Typically, you have some options available.
You can remove or modify features that you feel may potentially be abused. In the case of a build set-up, you may want to look towards prefabs (either of entire structures or resources) over allowing customisable builds. This minimises the risk of players being able to actively create inappropriate content in short bursts of time.
Always have a manual moderation system at the ready for something that has a UGC approach to it or anything that depends on player input for a feature. You should be the one to hop to users breaking rules on your game first and mitigate issues before Roblox has the need to step in. Still a slightly valid point, but see below first.
Moderation will only take your game down if you have too many issues with rules in your game, not for small-scale issues that can be resolved expediently by you. They don’t have the time to review every single place of yours out of billions of other games and their places. I’d assume this is case-by-case though.
Word of caution; do not take my word for any of this. I am not staff and I could be saying something that’s completely untrue, unfoundational or uninformed. Like I said, I am merely basing this off of what I see or think I know, not what the circumstances actually are.
If you have any actual concerns regarding developing on the platform, I would strongly recommend sending a message to the Developer Engagement Team. I’ve consulted them in the past regarding a few issues of development, rules and whatnot in the past (as well as licensing concerns, which required me to use a few off-site links in Bulletin Board) - they’re fairly helpful and understanding.
Moderating a massively-multiplayer building game would be pretty much impossible. It caused Lego to abandon the idea, so it might just be one of those things that just can’t be done in a kids game.