Roblox's lack of asset protection and the solution

Feature Requests Website Features
#33

Another possible mechanism would be to detect when a non-free asset is used in a place and provide some message to the offender and/or the author.

3 Likes
#34

Because somebody can bypass an anti-cheat engine does it mean we should get rid of all anti cheat measures?

#35

What would that do?

#36

CheatEngine is not a good comparison at all. Besides, you’re still missing my point in the first place. I said that serious thieves will get it anyway. This is still true. You don’t even need Fiddler, you just need the asset ID. This is why I was suggesting that the asset ID shouldn’t be publicly available on the website.

Maybe what you should argue for is to not default audio uploads to the public library?

Regardless, you should really make more of an effort to keep your posts on-topic instead of veering off about CheatEngine or Fiddler, both of which really have nothing to do with this. And being more polite wouldn’t hurt either. It’s pretty hard to make a persuasive argument with rudeness.

#37

Would you still want roblox to improve asset protection if it meant that a miniscule group of people could still steal your assets?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

You keep missing the point. I couldn’t care less if someone uses some hacky program to steal my stuff, that happens on every game everywhere ever. I just want my stuff to not be so ridiculously easily available on my profile.

1 Like
#38

???

Seriously. I’ve repeated this three times already in this thread.

Maybe what you should argue for is to not default audio uploads to the public library?

I was never arguing against the notion of securing asset rights more.

1 Like
#39

Oh… you and echo got off topic and it confused me a bit.

Yeah, whatever can be done I’m for it.

1 Like
#40

No problem. I was mostly trying to demonstrate why no one should waste time on an elaborate plan to try to seal off everything when the most glaringly obvious method could be stopped with minimal effort…

2 Likes
#42

This mentality of “if it doesn’t fix the problem wholly and entirely, it’s not worth it” that I’ve been seeing lately on a variety of topics is getting old. I don’t want a foolproof barricade to keep my assets from being stolen, I just want it to not be a walk in the park.

10 Likes
#43

I agree with what you’re saying as a short-term solution

I’m not a lawyer, but an “elaborate plan”-type solution like what @Anaminus is proposing would let creators legally upload content licensed for only a single end product–that includes most sounds from marketplaces like AudioJungle or PremiumBeat. Uploading that sort of audio to Roblox is a license violation, as there’s a good chance that the sound will be used in another game.

In a nutshell: We can’t have nice things because other people might take our nice things, which violates the licenses we have with the people who make our nice things. Implementing a reasonable audio protection policy would solve that.

2 Likes
#44

I like that button for viewing offsale hats.

1 Like
#45

I think he meant just the one in the library.

To be honest I thought it was already long gone. It always seemed like an accidental leftover from the catalog, because it doesn’t do much in the library besides make it easier to use assets people probably don’t want you using.

1 Like
#46

I don’t feel like a thief if I search the library for a water splash sound effect and use it because I don’t want to find it somewhere else and spend robux to upload it.

#47

That’s just fine, as long as the person who uploaded it made it free to use by everyone.

1 Like
#48

99% of people don’t because they’d have to spend extra time going into configure and setting it to free. The only free audio is popular music.

#49

That’s why I suggested that it’s free by default.

3 Likes
#50

I’ve expressed my feelings about asset protection many times before, but this is getting out of hand.

It seems as if asset protection isn’t being taken seriously at all.

See that checkbox? Why does it even exist? I mean really, asset stealing has become so easy and casual that it doesn’t even come off as stealing. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half the people stealing assets don’t even know they’re stealing an asset.


(gif example using a free asset, click to view)

Stealing an asset is as easy as clicking on what you want and grabbing the content(not sure if this is a R+ feature or not).Stealing something shouldn’t be as easy as “find on website, copy ID, insert into studio, call it mine”.

Excuse my language, but this is absolute bullshit. @SmoothBlockModel expresses my stance perfectly:

  • Private assets shouldn’t be stored in a public place period.
  • The “show unavailable items” checkbox shouldn’t even exist in the Develop tab.
  • The idea isn’t to make stealing an asset impossible(which is nearly impossible in itself), it’s to make asset stealing impractical.
  • This needs to be enforced, as I said before it’s almost as if no one gives a shit. If people had a reason to be afraid of stealing an asset, I doubt we’d see as many people doing it as we do now.

All in all, I’m tired of hearing excuses. The last thing I need is to spend hours and hours working on an asset, having someone click 3 times to steal it, call it their own, then have me accused of stealing my own asset just because they released a game using said asset before I did.

(excuse my rant, this is just a very serious issue in my eyes)

10 Likes
#51

Since ROBLOX altered their ToS, we still keep ownership of our intelectual content.
Unless I’m wrong, that includes meshes, pictures, audio, code, … almost everything we upload.
That should give us the ability to tell ROBLOX “this is stolen from me, take it down”.
It would be especially nice if the money earned from the stolen asset is given to the rightful owner:

  • I can’t say “you stole this” if I ever made it free
    A nice addition would be that we can give a license for a certain price.
    If the buyer doesn’t fulfil the requirements, we can report it and get that full price, as if the asset is stolen.
    (if he doesn’t (fully) pay for it, he/she did basically steal it anyway)
  • If you stole e.g. a song from me and I report it, your place gets placed under review.
    If the song plays a big part in the game, 30% of the past revenue goes to me, 5% if it wasn’t that important.
    (Customer Service / Asset Moderators would determine that, acting as a neutral third party)
    (could be any value between 5% and 30%, or even different limits than those)
  • Only after the asset is removed from the game, can it be taken out of “under review”
  • If it’s a group game and group funds don’t suffy for the past X% revenue, the group owner contributes.
  • If the place/group owner doesn’t have enough, 50% of all his future revenue will pay for these “debts”.
    If you have several debts (hmm, suspicious), it’s still 50%, which will be divided by amount in debt.
    There’s always the risk of the user just making a new account, but at that point, we reached the limit.

This’ll make ROBLOX seem more profesional, while also lowering thefts.
(there’ll always be someone stealing something, stopping everything is impossible)
If a game doesn’t get reported (by the owner of the stolen asset), nothing happens.
This gives new people the ability to make small games (for friends) using private decals/music etc.
If your place becomes popular or just attracts the asset owner’s attention, and he reports… then it happens.

sitting in a boring lecture, I have plenty of time to write stuff like this

7 Likes
#52

Would be nice if there were 3 categories:

  • Public: obvious (uncopylocked)
  • Unlisted: doesn’t appear anywhere, but can be used in-game (and thus still stolen)
    For modulescripts, this would actually still show them, but copylocked, for require(assetid)
  • Private: doesn’t appear anywhere, only the owner (or group asset editors) can use it in-game
    For modulescripts, this would hide it, it’ll only be require(assetid)-able inside “owned” places
    (being by the asset owner / by the group the modulescript is uploaded to, maybe asset editors too?)

(“doesn’t appear anywhere” obviously doesn’t apply for the owner or, for groups, group asset editors)

Would solve the “stolen during testing” issue, and it being unlisted is also a very nice bonus.
Might require an easy way of selecting several assets at once and switching the mode.
(or an overview of all assets linked to an universe, where there’s a “switch all” option for the mode)

8 Likes
#54

This.

People are not going to want to pour hours of their time into unique and awesome assets if they can just be stolen by someone in a matter of seconds. If we really are serious about ROBLOX wanting to start producing high quality games then ROBLOX should take steps to preventing this sort of thing. Just like no one would want to make a game if their game could be easily stolen and then republished, assets should be the same. If an asset is not copylocked, it’s like that purposefully. Copylocked means copylocked. It means I do not want people having it. Easy methods of obtaining these assets should be patched up. Look at what happened to deadzonezack. ROBLOX failed to prevent his game from spreading and he got up, left, and found major success elsewhere.

1 Like