As a Roblox developer, we are currently able to select which platforms a game is playable on. This is fine for most games, as disabling the ability to play games on touch enabled devices may be because the controls are not optimised for touch. However, some games disable mobile and tablet due to a large amount of parts in the game. The issue here is that many higher end devices may actually be capable of playing these games, and therefore it’s not the greatest solution.
Adding the ability to set system requirements may be a better solution. This would give developers better granular control over which platforms Roblox games are playable on; e.g. we could specify under an “advanced settings” tab:
Mouse and Keyboard Touchscreen
4️⃣GB RAM
With the ability to select presets from a menu, which simply include the current options (mobile, tablet, desktop, Xbox One).
And possibly the ability to have some sort of “recommend settings” detected by Roblox automatically?
On one hand, I like the idea of recommended specs for most games, like before you buy a 10$ game on steam it would be nice to know whether or not it runs properly. On the other hand, I don’t think this will be a good idea for games on Roblox.
First of all, most of Roblox’s younger audience might not even understand what things like ‘4GB RAM’ even mean.
We shouldn’t forget that Roblox has some built-in features to deal with people running games on low-end systems. A great example of this is the graphics quality slider, if their pc can’t run a game at max settings, they can decrease the quality either manually or automatic.
Not to mention, Roblox’s engineers spend countless of hours optimizing the graphics for lower-end devices like phones etc. As you might know, even lower-end phones can still run Roblox games while maintaining a fun experience.
Finally, you could argue that the goal of a Roblox developer is to make their games as accessible as possible to most of the community, and ‘limiting’ access to games to just people with high-end systems, if that’s what you’re implying, would be a bad idea in my opinion.
I only suggest this as I’ve seen developers disable gameplay for mobile devices as they feel a mobile may not be able to handle the amount of parts in their games (mainly showcases). I feel this would encourage them to allow mobiles.
As for the younger users, Roblox could simply display a notice above the specs that says “ Your device is compatible.”
However, I do see where you’re coming from. Developers should be aiming to make their games as accessible as possible. I personally make any games available across all devices, as I feel you should be able to play on one device, and pick up where you left off somewhere else.
That’s really the developers’ problem. If they want to lose an entire audience because they feel like the audience’s devices have lower specs, it’s their call. If they want mobile users on high-end devices playing, they should just blanketly allow mobile devices.
I think that a notice when the player joins the game saying ‘This game may not perform as expected on your device.’ would be better then requiring the user to have a higher-end device to play.
Mouse and Keyboard
Yes
No
Not sure
Your device is compatible.”