I literally completely agree with like everything you said.
Playing devils advocate though I can kinda see where people are getting a big upset with the situation.
I think everyone understands that the UGC catalog has to be tested and that ROBLOX had to choose people to test, but if we continue for a long while it will allow those users who were selected to monopolize off of it. Even if you release UGC a year later to everyone, the ones who had initial access already have their fame.
UGC doesnât really concern me that much though. I can just see where some people could be upset but I think we need to look at the big picture.
Iâm assuming you mean trolls because bots are just computers and they can be programmed to be on the DevForum all day in theory.
That would be crazy, considering that DevForum now has automatic approval I can assure you that malicious users will be flooding us in attempt to gain privileges to create hats and some of them will undoubtedly upload bypassed hats.
This is because UGC is relatively new and Roblox doesnât want to have another shirt, pants, and/or t-shirts situation so they only picked the most trusted users.
No, new developers emerge all the time on Roblox and I am sure it will be the same with UGC.
Why should they be removed? That would be totally unfair for them.
Yes and no. Yes because theyâll have more items on sale, but that would happen regardless anyway, and no because if new people are added to the UGC, they can make quality hats and people will buy them. Name and fame donât always help sell an item, the item in question does. I didnât buy UGC accessories because some big name made them, I bought them because they looked good. Same goes for many users.
Staring at your computer screen, having the Devforum window open and doing nothing does NOT increase your read time. Discourse has a very good algorithm to stop botters from getting read time.
The amount of malicious users will be relatively low for the following reasons:
You need to use up ~7 hours of your time to get into the developer forum.
You need to have Roblox premium to make hats.
Any malicious users who have the money and patience to upload hats would likely get banned pretty quickly so most users would never see their âbypassedâ hats. Roblox should not give any refunds to them if they get banned for uploading their dirty âbypassedâ hats.
Itâs been six months already and iâm pretty sure that the âtestingâ part of the process is over. Actual testing is having staff accounts upload hats like this one and it seems like Roblox is just letting only notable creators to create hats for like six months now. That takes away the whole concept of âUser-Generatedâ.
They had their time to monopolize the market. They should have their UGC permissions revoked if UGC is open to more developers in the future. Not doing this would allow them to monopolize the UGC catalog even more, with all their fame and their often large fanbases. Roblox could take away their permissions one at a time, depending on who got their permissions first.
Thereâs a good chance that the UGC creators will try to mass-upload hats once they know that they wonât be able to create hats in the future, so why not rate-limit them? E.g., one hat every day/week would help out. Additionally, their existing hats could also be forced off-sale once they lose their permissions to prevent them from monopolizing the market even more. People might rush to buy their items which would create a better monopoly for them so Roblox shouldnât disclose this information to everyone if they do this. If it has to be disclosed, it at least doesnât have to be put on a billboard.
We have a problem of the âover-saturationâ of hats already, so there is a solution
Theyâre not âmonopolizingâ the market, both because thereâs a daily upload limit to prevent spamming the catalog, and because the UGC exists specifically to both create accessories, and for users to make money from their creations. ROBLOX encourages them to upload.
Thatâs not how ROBLOX works or what they stand for. Thereâs no point in creating the UGC if theyâre going to revoke permissions from those who they trust and work with. Thatâs counter-intuitive to what the UGC stands for anyway.
Honestly, at this point it feels less like youâre wanting the UGC open for others, and more like you have a personal grudge/vendetta against the current UGC creators, especially the big-time developers, and thatâs not a good thing.
One of the UGC requirements I personally believe should be implemented is that the user must not have any moderation for scamming, such as warnings or bans, on your account.
Itâs one of the requirements for DevEx, so something like the UGC makes sense too. I know thereâs most likely already something in place in the system to prevent users from editing their Accessory once itâs published, but an extra lair of protection wouldnât hurt, right?
What is that even supposed to mean? Are you seriously complaining about them making money off their hats? Who cares, thatâs what ROBLOX implemented the UGC for. Thatâs the intended feature.
If theyâre a well known developer, their fame will not go away, nor should it. They earned it and nobody has a right to say otherwise. ROBLOX wonât do that either, as it is counter-intuitive to what the whole website is about, and the UGC reflects on that.
Being a member of the DevForum should not a criteria for UGC. Itâs not for DevEx, and being on the DevForum isnât a badge or honor to brag about, itâs the official alternative to the ROBLOX Forums. There is very little chance of it being a requirement for UGC.
It will be released to everyone publicly when the staff are ready to release it, which will be in their time, no one elseâs. As it has already been made abundantly clear multiple times already, the staff chose the developers they trust, have worked with in the past before, and who have experience with 3D modeling and blender.
The downtown denizer fedora thing youâre digging up has been already debunked 3 times in this post. Please do more research before you bring up stuffâŚ
OK, your constant insistence on that is getting old. No theyâre not, plain and simple. Nobody is losing out on any money from the current devs being on the UGC. All the current UGC creators are profiting, regardless of how differently they do it. They are not âmonopolizingâ anything, as there is currently nobody to monopolize it from.
ROBLOX are listening; specifically they are taking feedback from those who they trust and know can and will give feedback on the UGC. It is one thing to give opinions on something you are not part of, and another entirely when youâre actively using the feature.
Again, the reasons for everything have already been explained from the beginning;
What does even mean âmonopolizeâ for you in this case? Thereâs no monopoly here. Even if they have a ton of sales, they still have a 70-90% tax on their items. Not to mention that they have a lot of limits on stuff. Using this term is seriously disrespectful to people who work really hard to make the UGC feature work perfectly for everyone.
Like we already told you, theyâre TESTING THE FEATURE. Testing anything (not only UGC) never takes 10 minutes. They needed 7 months to catch the QA letting the âpee parrotâ go through (for context - a star program member stole a mesh of a limited that went to the catalog. Was taken down once people started calling them out on it).
Like @The13thHippie said, you arguing that theyâre BiG bAd PeOpLe is getting tiring. Youâre ignoring what others already told you and pushing the same things. Besides, you complaining about UGC being in closed testing phase, in the way youâre doing is definitely not helping your case at all.
They get only a 30% tax if they have premium, which almost all of them do. If UGC is available to more developers in the future, they would be able to surpass all the smaller creators in sales, due to their fame that they aquired while UGC is exclusive to them.
Roblox could start fining people Robux if they steal meshes to publish them to the Catalog. This would discourage people from uploading stolen hats that they did not create. Of course, the Robux has to be âearnedâ rather than purchased with real money directly.
Iâm complaining about it because it is exclusive to a small circle of developers. Those developers have little competition, and that is how they monopolize the catalog, which is extremely unfair to less well-known developers. And as mentioned in the previous posts, many of which wernât mine, they can even do it more successfully by cloning a popular pre-existing hat which would earn themselves fame and extra sales.
At the moment itâs quite unfair. Unless you know someone in UGC that can nominate you to be in the UGC, you canât get into it. These roblox developers are making millions a month, and as stated above, have very little competition.
That is very true. I feel like if its going to be called âUser generated Contentâ then there should be a way to get users involved in it other than nominations and ROBLOX selecting people. In the future I would hope there is a way to apply to become a UGC Creator but im sure they have something in mind for that. (such as a public application in the future)
For starters, you could remove the MeshID stealing system. This would solve the most common way of copying meshes and it would prevent plagarism. This would solve most problems.
Roblox could also add a CAPTCHA when uploading hats to prevent botters from spamming the catalog. In fact, the shirt catalog could be mass cleaned by removing all shirts with repeated words such as âSUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUITâ.
To take this one step ahead, Roblox could even delay the Robux payouts, just like how credit card companies do, just in case the transaction has to be reversed because of a chargeback or other reason. For example:
You upload a hat. It doesnât matter if you made it or you stole it, but it starts attracting lots of sales and it makes a lot of Robux.
You donât get the Robux until 30 days pass for Roblox to approve it.
If Roblox finds fraud or copying, Roblox doesnât pay you the Robux and could even moderate your account. If you made the hat yourself, or enough confusion or doubt gets in the way, Roblox pays you the Robux.
This system would work well because it would discourage users from doing bad business practices such as hat copying and it could prevent other types of fraud too. I know Roblox would have to hire more staff to do all this, but Roblox could keep 100% of the profits that the fraudsters made, without giving them DevEx.
Thatâs easier said then done. The mesh ID system is set up in a way that allows UGC and Roblox content to be implemented into scripts as a distinguishable ID to be loaded in and out of games. Furthermore, outside of scripts, it gives each identifiable part distinguishable structure from others for proper usage. In short, this isnât possible.
âBut wait,â you may ask. âWhy not just ban the exporting of materials offsite if the person is not the owner of it?â While this could, in theory, work, it undermines the spirit of development that exists within Roblox. By limiting a developerâs ability to create using programs such as Blender, Roblox hinders itâs own growth. Itâs just not a viable option for innovation on Roblox.
They already have a CAPTCHA. Repeated words are used to increase their chance of showing in the algorithm. Thatâs what you should be lobbying to have THAT adjusted.
I donât have any other comments for your suggestions for punishment.
I never said that meshes made offsite should not be imported to Roblox. Iâm saying a roblox user shouldnât be allowed to simply steal someone elses mesh imported to Roblox unless it is on-sale.
Users who upload hats, shirts, etc, should have this happen if they manage to bypass the CAPTCHA and bot items:
