This is so dumb. Shadowplay was my main and only form of recording cheaters in order to get them banned, now I cannot record any gameplay, or report cheaters in games either. This is not worth the tradeoff for “security”. If i remember correctly most cheaters just emulate the mobile client now as from what i’ve heard its significantly easier to cheat on. killing recording software wont effect those people
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I agree. Roblox needs to loosen their code-signing permissions
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Where is it mentioned that they’re intending to remove NVIDIA Shadowplay? They’re talking about NVIDIA Ansel, a software that works similarly to ReShade.
Firstly, considering the recent removal of local FFlags, this aged like milk.
How insulting do you think it is, to… gee i don’t know, perform ban-waves only on specific games over a 1.5 week period to protect a specific event? After over half a decade of developers begging for better cheat prevention?
This only proved that you are capable of detecting even the best of cheats, but can’t, or won’t.
All these features and projects we grew to love are being stripped away due to “security”, and yet nobody sees it that way.
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Local FFlags have not been removed as of now.
If you are talking about FFlags, those Features are internal use only settings (unless explicitly stated otherwise, as some flags are provided as a workaround for a specific issue). Taking away something that was never meant to be used by the community, and is quite frequently abused, does not seem overly insensitive.
Also, the issues with FFlags are not only security-related. We get thousands of crash reports caused by folks experimenting with FFlags. Every single crash dump at least has to be quickly looked at by a human here at Roblox.
Furthermore, the plans for local flag lockdown have been extensively discussed over a period of almost a year here, and the community did get a chance to point out flags that they need frequently, which will end up on an allow list, and hopefully, down the line, be implemented as an official engine feature.
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Hi Bitdancer,
I would like to ask you a question that is in part related to your statement about the shader.
Since shaders are banned for security reasons, would this also open up an opportunity for you guys working on Roblox to maybe add more graphical options in the Roblox ESC menu, since the current ones are very limited? To clarify, we are currently limited to the graphics level toggle.
I will not emphasize specific games here because I do not think that is the most appropriate thing to do, but generally speaking, modern video games come with modern graphic menus. Sure, Roblox has been around for a long time and each game is different, but having some kind of universal graphical menu would be appreciated a lot.
To expand on this a bit, adding options like brightness, gamma, contrast, or some kind of HDR settings would be cool, at least in my opinion. This would be especially useful if you have a really dark monitor or screen (as mentioned in KreekCraft’s video, he had to use shaders because his monitor was too dark), or are somehow exposed to a large amount of sunlight.
Take your time reading this if possible.
Thanks.
Hello lst DecentAgent,
When a hack or workaround has been around long enough, it often starts to be seen as a feature the community feels entitled to use. Roblox might not see eye to eye on that, but generally doesn’t object unless a real issue pops up.
Restricting a feature isn’t something done lightly. It’s not like we just wake up one morning and decide to take it away. There are many internal discussions and approvals before any visible external action is taken.
It’s also generally understood internally that if we take something away, we need to provide something in return. So rest assured, shaders and graphic settings are being discussed internally quite a bit, and we’re evaluating different options. However, right now, I can’t speak out of turn as it’s simply too early to share anything that could be interpreted as a promise.
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To be clear, are Vulkan layers still not off the table? I’d imagine any integrated settings would be quite limited compared to what’s possible with previous solutions such as reflections and screen space global illumination.
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Roblox has said they are going to clean up fast flags for a while, it’s not like its just been sprung on the community, and there have been various issues flagged by the community with the current fast flag system, like being used for cheats. Theres probably thousands of fast flags and rigorously testing each fast flag to see if it has the potential to even slightly introduce unfair gameplay is impossible.
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Thank you gencar,
Here is the latest update on FFlags. The thread is about a year old now so nothing really new. If anyone wants to contribute to it, please hop over there.
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Restricting the use of fast flags makes sense, with some fast flags being limited to a whitelist. However, I hope rendering APIs aren’t negatively affected by this since they are already protected by Roblox’s anti-tamper, such as Vulkan. Just like DirectX, it isn’t possible to create an internal overlay, among other things. With the previous code signing requirements, it was limited to basic functionality that would enable the ability to use OBS game capture, among other things considered relatively harmless. I hope we can soon conclude Vulkan layers and support.
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I can confidently say that a fair amount of these crashes are related to graphics API altering. I wonder if the FFlags that change the graphics APIs (OpenGL, Vullcan, Direct3D10, Direct3D11, etc) are included in the allowlist or not.
Everything in that video can be done, except anything that requires the depth buffer.
You could, for example, run an external overlay to capture the window and apply a zoom filter without depth access, and that can be done entirely independent of the Roblox process.
For that game, depth buffer access could be an issue, but for Roblox, I think it would only apply to very niche scenarios like a dark environment or a horror game. I don’t really believe many users are using it on Roblox to cheat, since it’s not exactly a competitive platform. Most of the exploits users use on Roblox are more destructive and meant to ruin the experience for others.
I don’t think buffer access can be put in the same category as the users using destructive exploits on games like Natural Disaster, where they can fling everyone over and over again. I can still see it being a potential issue in some experiences on the platform, though, and that’s why I think Roblox should offer a separate client for competitive experiences.
I think shader programs are more applicable to stuff like role-playing games, driving games, and similar experiences like Jailbreak or Midnight Racing Tokyo. In those cases, it’s not really possible for it to give a competitive advantage, and it would just let users customize their visuals for that experience.
Also, a depth texture or depth buffer is needed for a lot of the popular shader effects users want to use, like ambient occlusion, screen-space global illumination, reflections, and so on.
Even if Roblox doesn’t offer a separate competitive client, I don’t think Vulkan layers pose a real risk to the client or depth buffer access. It’s not something that ruins the experience for others, and honestly, the benefits far outweigh the negatives—especially when you consider the content creation side of the community. A lot of users just enjoy taking screenshots, trying to make photorealistic scenery inside Roblox, or exploring showcase games with it.
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I haven’t had any issues with Vulkan, but I have heard reports of people running into problems with it on laptops that have AMD’s integrated graphics and Nvidia’s dedicated graphics.
Otherwise, if you’re running an Intel and Nvidia system on a desktop or laptop, or an AMD CPU without integrated graphics paired with an Nvidia GPU, it’s relatively fine.
The only issue I had with it was not being able to exit full screen. Once you enter full screen, you can’t undo it unless you switch back to DirectX 11.
Roblox has support for Vulkan because of their Android client, but I’m not entirely sure why they still support OpenGL. It’s pretty old at this point, and I’m not really sure what’s even using it anymore. It also performs worse compared to the other APIs available on Windows.
It’s probably just used as a legacy fallback in case of software issues or for outdated hardware.
Otherwise, their Vulkan support is relatively good on Windows, aside from a few small issues.
It’s also protected by their anti-tamper system, just like DirectX and OpenGL are. However, Vulkan gives more flexibility for applications like OBS game capture without compromising security, unlike DirectX, because you don’t need to write hooks to capture Vulkan internally, which is what OBS game capture took advantage of before the updated code signing requirements.
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I used to be able to run Vulkan fine before (only issue I suffered from is screen tearing), however I can’t say the same for now. It would completely crash when I force enable Vulkan. This only started happening after hyperion was added on the Windows client. I have a laptop with an Intel CPU with integrated graphics and a Nvidia discrete GPU.
I am not sure about the claim that Vulkan support is good for Windows because it never was meant to work there. It never got optimized or made to work there. It would be great for Roblox to fully deprecate OpenGL and either add official support to Vulkan on Windows or support DirectX12 or even both.
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Being competitive is not the reason most people cheat.
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Adding onto that, there are a lot of competitive games.
I’m not necessarily sure if I explained it correctly, but I meant to say that I believe most people cheat to be disruptive, not competitive; they just want to ruin the experience of others on the platform. That’s why I included a natural disaster example.
I don’t think buffer access can be put in the same category as the users using destructive exploits on games like Natural Disaster, where they can fling everyone over and over again. I can still see it being a potential issue in some experiences on the platform, though, and that’s why I think Roblox should offer a separate client for competitive experiences.
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the only thing i can say is: well no shit, it’s a live service game 
i don’t think anyone should be surpised this was eventually gonna be canned. sure there is use-cases, but it was always a grey area.
there is an opportunity to cheat given how some of the top roblox games are competitive shooters, which may be used in future events with a prize incentive.
because reshade is most likely not coming back, file a feature request to add some of reshade’s shaders in, along with a “cinematic mode” feature
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