The new Roblox 64-bit Byfron client forbids Wine users from using it. (Most likely unintentional)

The FPS unlocker is not compatible with our Windows 64-bit client. Your friends still have the 32-bit client because the new client has only been rolled out to 25% of the player base. You are one of the lucky ones who got the new client. The new Windows 64-bit client should perform better than the old one, though.

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I definitely do understand that, I was trying to avoid language that could be overly confirming cause of this.

Also that is great to hear that internally at the company there is effort being made (even if it is small, I appreciate any and all effort)

Some things that come to mind is:

  • Does Hyperion support Linux natively, outside of Wine?
  • Might be challenging to answer, but besides lack of market share, is there anything specific to the Roblox engine blocking Linux support that would require engineer hours to resolve?

One thing that concerns me and is not so much a question but more so a concern of mine (feedback, too), if/when this becomes kernel level, if possible, please be completely open as to what data and telemetry is collected, and how it works (with relation to how it runs/lifecycle). Having that level of access to a system makes it extremely easy for collection of data and bypasses all protections afforded by the system, such as permissions. Exploit-ability also is a great concern, depending on how this is separate from the client or if it is tightly integrated. Due to the nature of Roblox, this would require a great level of trust when joining experiences & attack surface is exponentially increased.

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I cannot provide much information on this topic. However, I can tell you that the reverse engineering community is aware of every channel and channel change, and this information is publicly available.

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Hyperion does not natively support Linux

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Maintenance and QA is a significant cost factor

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Bitdancer, I really do want to thank you a lot for taking out what appears to be your personal time to answer our questions. All the information has been super helpful, and as a 15 year veteran of the Roblox platform I highly appreciate this level of transparency which I haven’t seen since the Roblox website would publicly state it was still a “Beta” in the footnotes.

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rbxfpsunlocker developer here: At first glance it appears the new client has a couple security measures that make RFU inherently incompatible. Nevertheless, I’ll be looking into adding some form of support in the coming weeks, either via the DFIntTaskSchedulerTargetFps flag or, if I’m lucky, a new technique that doesn’t upset Hyperion.

I’ll be releasing an update in a bit that ignores the new client completely as it appears to cause Hyperion to crash the game.

EDIT: Scratch that, looks like an update released yesterday disabled the detection causing the crash. I wonder to what extent RFU was clogging their telemetry :stuck_out_tongue: .

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Thank you for your kind words. I understand that the bug forum can be challenging, but please know that the people here at Roblox share the same passion for the platform as all of you out there.

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I apologize for rehashing an older discussion in this thread, but is it possible that the block on VMs (and Wine) may be removed in the future? I know you cannot speak for the company, but a simple yes or no on the possibility would be helpful to figure out where to go from here. There’s a wide variety of reasons to run a VM, and it would be a shame to permanently block them in pursuit of clean telemetry.

Also, I’m guessing I know the answer to this question but would it be possible to just outright disable the sending of that telemetry with a FFlag? I’m anticipating the answer to be ‘no’, either for technical or “we don’t want to do that” reasons, but it’s worth asking just in case. I don’t like sending data automatically regardless of the reason or intention, so a toggle would be appreciated.

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Then what about laptop users? Especially those with only one dedicated (or integrated) graphics

This is a very nuanced discussion. There was never a hard Yes or No on either of those two technologies. It is much more of an ongoing discussion, where we try to balance the desires of the community vs. protecting Roblox creators. It’s important to keep in mind that cheating doesn’t just hurt other players, but it can also greatly harm experience creators.

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There are various methods to block telemetry. However, every bit of data is crucial for us, and we would greatly appreciate it if users refrained from taking such actions. As many of our users are minors, we are subject to thorough vetting, perhaps more than other companies. I can assure you that no personal data is transferred over the wire.

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When the market share becomes big enough sure, a linux version is warranted, but for now its not worth the time or effort when they could be focusing their efforts on much larger platforms such as PlayStation or Nintendo.

I’m a bit confused by this. Filtering out the telemetry of VM users has the same result for Roblox as VM users not playing, but it is the difference of Linux users with the extra hardware + VM experience being able to play Roblox vs giving us literally no option to test our games. Now Roblox is asking us to intentionally bypass this restriction with VM hardening.

Just to quickly expand on how much of a pain Linux is for QA: consider how many distributions (Debian, Arch, Alpine, etc) and desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Budgie, etc) there are. In theory, you can combine any of those together and get a whole host of issues. Some are interchangeable while others are very different and can have very different assumptions about what libraries exist and what don’t. With Windows and macOS, you mostly have a small list of versions (<5 for Windows, <10 for macOS) to QA test.

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I feel as though my question was misunderstood. I fully understand why anti-cheat needs to exist and I actively support it (provided it doesn’t overstep its bounds by trying to get kernel access to my computer). My question is just whether VMs and Wine should be considered permanently blocked or if this is a (potentially) temporary step to prevent them from polluting telemetry data ahead of a new product launch. I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression here – I am 100% not interested in cheating in Roblox experiences. I am however interested in knowing what the future of Roblox on Linux looks like, and part of that involves VMs and Wine.

The way we have to approach this changes rather fundamentally if this blocking is temporary, because then it’s just inconvenient. If it isn’t though, we should probably know as soon as possible so people can adjust.

I’m not strictly speaking worried about my personal data being sent to Roblox. It’s definitely something I thought about, but I have a Google account so that ship has sailed.

My main motivation for wanting telemetry turned off is that I simply do not want Roblox gathering data about me and then sending it without my explicit consent. It doesn’t have to be personally identifying for it to be disquieting.


I know other people have said it, but I want to say it again: thank you for taking your personal time to respond to us here. It’s rare for any employee to speak plainly about stuff like this, and I really appreciate it.

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Do you have an estimate on the performance boost 64bit will have over 32bit?

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There is potential to unblock both technologies. For Wine, it depends on making Hyperion compatible. For virtual machines, it depends on how much they are being used to reverse engineer our technology.

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From that, it sounds like VMs are going to be locked out for good. With how big (and profitable) the exploit community is, they would already be on this the moment VMs aren’t blocked. Sounds like we are going to have an arms race forming like people with Rainbow Six Siege using VM hardening.

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There are quite a few data points. Most of them are in the 1-3% improvement range. However, there are a few outliers, such as Time per frame spent on physics code. In certain situations, the improvement is over 50%.

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