Roblox needs to rethink UGC's future "features"

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#86

Think you’re the first to mention it, and it’s a pretty good point with a lot to untangle! As explained by this post by /u/BricksmithBillie, Roblox is in a spot where the only way they’ll take down stolen items is if the IP holder says to. In fact, they’ve recently confirmed that in a DevForum post from a couple weeks back.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we start seeing creators simply letting reuploads happen in protest of these changes. Why give Roblox the chance at new high-value items if we’re only being paid a sliver of what they’re worth?

But for anyone who wants to fight reuploads, good luck! We can take a look at what Roblox’s automatic flagging might look like through their “Detection of counterfeit virtual objects” patent. Roblox takes snapshots of your item at different angles, and saves the hash of each screenshot. That might catch direct reuploads, but thieves have gotten a lot smarter over the past year. They’re not renting out billboards to advertise their bootleg Domino Crowns. You’ll find bootlegs which…

  • Use nonsense names so they don’t show up in search results

  • Position the thumbnail to hide the item

  • Dedicate a portion of the texture to adding a fake thumbnail to disguise the item

  • Break the item apart into multiple pieces

  • Add geometry to make those pieces look like unique hats

  • Upload pieces across multiple groups

  • Create add-on pieces to wear with pre-existing hats/faces

  • Combine multiple stolen assets into one mesh / texture to make it harder to pinpoint the original source

  • Target obscure items which less people are likely to callout

So when Roblox says there’s been a 99% drop in reported copies of Roblox-created Limiteds, it’s probably because thieves have gotten smarter. If they’re able to sneak around Roblox’s defenses, where every single item gets reviewed both by the patented automation and human moderators, what are the odds the average UGC creator is going to be able to catch personal reuploads by individual people?

It’s a lot of work for the average player to save a few hundred robux, but for a big spender to save thousands? Sounds like a bargain.

10 Likes
#87

It’s likely because most of their investors didn’t like the public UGC program or the way it was being used by the players, so they probably told Roblox to add in more paywalls so that they could maximize any profit they would get.

So now it’s no longer a “public” UGC program and nobody aside from richer players will be able to gain a profit from their hard work, which completely defeats the point of it in the first place.

What’s even scummier is that all the items UGC creators have made already will soon be forcefully taken off-sale by Roblox unless they pay for Premium every month for rest of their lives, which is completely insulting to their efforts.

3 Likes
#88

I would also like to note in terms of the UGC marketplace, I have a bad feeling we are going down an extremely similar pathway to the audio marketplace. While it’s true US DMCA’s safe harbor laws generally protect them from liability of UGC content until the copyright holder reports it, eventually, it will come to a point where that’s much less of a valid reason when the website contains mostly that, and copyright holders will start to take note. Like with the audio marketplace, if you looked on the marketplace, just about any song you picked (excluding official audio) wasn’t legally licensed at all (either it was straight up all rights reserved with no license or did not have proper attributions). To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that even took as long as it did, especially with notorious music rights holders, I would’ve expected the lawsuit and settlement to happen back in 2017-2019 when Roblox was getting popular, not after they were already quite popular. They did introduce a very simple automatic copyright flagging system in 2018, but this only flagged extremely popular songs. Now, it isn’t that bad yet, perhaps if you open the marketplace, you’ll usually see about 1-3 unlicensed UGC assets, rather than almost all of them being unlicensed on the page. But this will only continue to grow, especially when Roblox decides to make announcements in their favor and have a nonexistent review process.

If we look at the audio marketplace now, it’s both still ‘To Made Public’, and they’ve introduced an extremely strict content detection system. This system currently flags just about any audio that is in a database of licensed music they’re using, which includes virtually any license. This means registered Creative Commons songs are often being flagged, and their current response is they just can’t validate licenses yet.

I’m pretty positive if this path continues and right holders complain, eventually, a similar copyright detection system will be implemented for the Avatar Marketplace, probably also being extremely overly strict with no way to resolve the issue until waiting for new features that’ll come out in ‘a few years’. I really don’t want that to happen yet again, the audios are frustrating enough.

I’m also hopeful the ‘Improved tooling to report and manage IP’, which was only the useful UGC feature I got from that announcement, will include a much more minor scale of this across the website, to help curb stolen assets for the creators on this platform it’s self, kind of like how YouTube has with the Copyright Match Tool as a good example. Content would be scanned on the website. If it was flagged as a match, it would be sent to the creator, who would choose whether to file a DMCA or not and could do so easily within a couple of clicks.

2 Likes
#89

Legally speaking Roblox wasn’t found liable nor not liable for the copyrighted content that was on the audio marketplace. The case was settled before it could go to court. For all we know maybe Roblox could have won the case, maybe it could have lost, but since it never went to trial, we’ll never know. I think Roblox just didn’t want to sour relations with music publishers by attempting to fight the case (even if they could have won) and instead just pay a fine and then strike agreements with them that would allow their audio to (legally) be on the platform.

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#90

-has to pay monthly for a subscription that does not guarantee earnings, but the possibility of earnings
-has to pay for stock
-has to do all the marketing work
-system values richer people and those who joined earlier

you know what this sounds like?

8 Likes
#91

Of course, they weren’t found directly liable in a court of law, which is what happens in many instances of lawsuits. But, that was directly a loss across the platform and for us, which is what I’m far more concerned about here on the DevForum.

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#92

This new Roblox function makes the marketplace well… look like idk theres just thousands of ugcs everywhere and some are even free. I think that if this continues bots will invade Roblox games to get these ugcs and no player will get a chance to get that LIMITED CROWN!!! ugc they been working for. I see this as a Roblox L but I still appreciate all the work they make to get there players happy

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#93

Yeah, roblox is gonna ruin the platform and some ugc creators said that they were gonna quit. Idk if im gonna buy premium just for that

2 Likes
#94

I’m starting to get the idea that Roblox did virtually no surveying with the current UGC program members on this, I haven’t seen a single program member in support of these changes yet. Extremely concerning lack of transparency, which I imagine could be in part due to the UGC Program which used to be more of a small alpha testing group that could easily communicate with staff, now being a very large program that is not the case. I also saw someone else mention this on another UGC suggestion thread.

EDIT: I have been informed that this has happened with very large UGC creators, so I’m retracting the “no surveying” part. I still feel the miscommunication between other creators is quite disappointing. This is a decision that affects everyone in the UGC program, not 5-10 people.

To be fair, they did somewhat mention this in a very vague marketplace roadmap release in May, which just said Our economic systems should mirror the real-world with a very vague description, containing no details of anything like this. I don’t see how they would’ve not got that it appears the majority of people aren’t a fan of most of these features if they actually asked anyone ahead of time in clear and actual descriptions for current members of the program. To make matters worse, the same roadmap release in May also touted seeing a 99% drop in reported copies of Roblox-created Limiteds., after making an announcement that users would be refunded when a UGC limited was taken down. It almost seems like they’re just giving us virtually useless roadmaps with 1 sentence in response to wanting roadmaps published. Just about every other company I know of can provide usually some amount of details on a roadmap, even publicly available ones, but Roblox seems to either provide none or when requested to provide some, intentionally provides meaningless details.

Additionally, if this is part of the concern of revealing features too early, I’m not even fully against an NDAed roadmap and some type of private commutation on this either before being released to public roadmaps, I’ve seen and participated in multiple large companies that have these types of programs, but the public roadmap should still be providing more than a meaningless sentence that doesn’t describe the feature, or it shouldn’t mention it at all. Currently, the only program Roblox has is Community Feedback, which doesn’t have any sort of clear roadmaps available, however does have focus groups and closed betas. This program is also extremely limited access, there are only 277 people that I can view in it currently. I would like to see that number expanded, there are many more large developers on this platform than that.

I’m going to post a feature request later today regarding these transparency and roadmap issues with quite a lot more details both from the current roadmap, past announcements, and the very recent RDC event announcements, because this is a big part of the issue too, beyond the scope of just these changes. I’ve had these frustrations for a very long while, essentially since DevEx was a thing and Roblox was no longer “just a game”, although I have never written a full and proper feature request outlining the full concerns with it. None of this would’ve likely been announced as a “new feature” to begin with if they correctly collected feedback. I was hoping they were moving toward change when Nick and Tian were newly hired for Engineering and Product Leadership for Creator, who said they were interested in making a change for this, but it seems they’ve just gone back to being virtually the same as before.

6 Likes
#95

For those concerned with transparency I urge you to read the quarterly earnings call transcripts that are publicly available in the Investor Relations section of the Roblox corp site.

At the 2022 GDC I attended the Roblox ‘Keys to Creation’ session and after seeing the 5 year innovation plan laid out I could see pretty clearly what direction Roblox was going to move in.

That said, I wanted to know more so I started reading their investor reports and have done so ever since. There is a different sort of transparency for investors with topics that translate into vague generalizations when directed at devs.

I usually stick with the earnings call transcripts but have found helpful information in the longer documents as well. It is worth a close and thoughtful read.

The changes you are seeing now are ones that have been discussed in previous earnings calls. You’ll also get a snapshot of what is to come.

Here is a link to the quarterly reports for those interested. The letters and transcripts are good places to start for each quarter.

Roblox Investor Relations: Quarterly Reports

4 Likes
#96

Right now?, Clearly Roblox needs to clam down from their bad trademarking updates…

Right now its for ID-Verifyed people I think.

Community-led Marketplace - Everyone can publish avatar items to the Marketplace, including Limiteds (Late 2023)

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#97

They’ve been talking about Public UGC for a while as a goal in their roadmap. They said it would be late 2023, which would include this month and the months up until the end of the year.

I’m saddened to know that these are ROBLOXs updates for Public UGC. I was “okay” with the 750 robux fee, being verified and having premium. However, mentioning that new creators won’t be able to make REGULAR UGC and converting everything over to how limiteds work?

No.

I’m not okay with it, and all I wanted was to make cute items that haven’t been uploaded on the catalog for what I’ve been wanting that everyone would be able to access. I don’t have the type of funds to do what ROBLOX is actually asking for.

I’m truly disappointed with their actions and future goals.

6 Likes
#98

Also people are able to use item + bundle, basically it will look different positioned and rotated if you gonna use simple head, but if you make this accessory to work with specific head that has broken or different positioned attachment, theres a high chance of those items to not get downed.

i tried my best to explain so sorry if you dont understand.

2 Likes
#99

I want to add my sentiments here from another thread I posted on prior to finding this one:

There are so many things to love about the current virtual creator marketplace. The fact that it is virtual and has no real world value means there can be so much freedom with how the marketplace operates; and the decision to allow the market to be driven by developers, including the creation of limiteds, has been a very obvious boon for creators and community engagement.

I love to give back to my community for their support in my endeavours. As a creator, I create, and I want my work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible without using FOMO to drive my sales and compromise my values. I want to put my creations in the hands of the community as much as possible without them having to deal with any stress on if they can obtain things or not. We stay away from limited sales for this reason; and where we do have limited content, it is always available for an extended period of time to allow everyone to find a comfortable time to enjoy it.

I do not support the vision to remove opportunities and harm the market and its existing creators, some of who have made a living off the platform. We heard a success story about how the UGC accessory program literally changed someone’s life, yet Roblox wants to constrain us and make it more difficult to have even a bit of that success - in fact, forget about the success, we can’t just let our communities enjoy some items to use on their profiles or around the website.

Our wonderful creators and players deserves more respect than this. The virtual nature of the economy should allow more flexibility, not less. Not everything has to be a simulation of real life, which has its own issues that others in the thread have better insight and have talked about. Just because it’s been announced at RDC and thoroughly planned, does not mean it’s a sunk cost. I dearly hope Roblox will back out of removing infinite quantity items and allow us creators to choose how we want to present our items in the market rather than adhering to a single way to do so.

Time and time again, we know and understand that Roblox’s vision ranks king, and ours is only really secondary. Though if the idea is to empower creators, then likewise Roblox should not be speaking for our creators and instead using their words as a heavyweight in this process. Working with creators to entice and switch them over to this vision is incredibly backwards. Roblox should instead preserve what our creators and players love, while adding more opportunity on top.

This is not the future I was hoping for when Roblox said they were considering the best for the avatar shop and how to prevent it from ending up like the existing UGC marketplace (shirts and pants).

11 Likes
#100

I also think it’s unnecessary to make it require premium, since it would be harmful to people who have no money to spend on roblox, but still want to develop such accessories

5 Likes
#101

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One thing that I wonder about is a quiet part of these marketplace changes that hasn’t been directly addressed that I know of and that is what will happen with 2D clothing.

Eventually it will be discontinued, as discussed last year but with the upcoming marketplace changes and projected by end-of-year platform-wide shift to skinned mesh/animatable bodies, will changes/discontinuation of 2D clothing happen along with this or will the 2D clothing market continue with upload/sales to accommodate the few skinned mesh bodies that support them for a while?

7 Likes
#102

gruh, this has to happen after the announcement of bundles?
I personally noticed that the bundles catalog is kind of garbage right now and wanted to enter the program to provide more diverse bodies beyond (template edit #340) or (recolor #213). The fact that bundles have no upload fee was even more incentive - I’m not someone with spare money. This restocking stuff however seems like it’d completely ruin what they have planned and stated for that, doesn’t it? The required premium is even weird considering they got rid of that for other clothing items. Isn’t ID verification enough?

4 Likes
#103

I don’t wanna see ugc be nothing but limiteds, please rethink this one ROBLOX

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#104

I think making all UGC avatar items “flexible” (effectively limited) goes against the freedom promised by the platform. If a creator wants to upload an item anyone can purchase forever, without resales, that should be an option. Forcing everyone to engage with artificial scarcity and restocks seems antithetical to the vision of Roblox as a democratized platform for all creators to create and sell things however they want.

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#105

Disappointing but not surprising tbh

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