As of right now, i believe that ROBLOX is only accepting developers that they have worked with in the past to ensure the program gets its proper test run. After that’s over with, they should allow more experienced devs they haven’t worked with in the program. In the mean time, i’d suggest honing your skills and furthering your knowledge on modeling in preparation. After all, there’s always something to be learned!
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I am experienced! 30 CHARSSSSSS
Have you done 3D modeling using programs like Blender or Maya before? That’s what UGC creators use, and that was the criteria ROBLOX chose for the original handful of Devs they picked, besides trust and having worked with them in the past.
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To simply put things, there are many avenues of testing that can be chosen. Again, ROBLOX works with the star creators so that falls under the category of ‘Working with ROBLOX’.
As for the mesh you are talking about, which was appropriately named the “Golden Parrot”, was a blatant copy yes. ANYONE can throw something like that out, from WhoToTrus to Tarabyte. Having smaller access during this testing phase meant that it could be caught. Had it been a much larger playing field like you suggest, it would’ve been far far worse. Its no secret that ROBLOXs moderation isn’t the best, so in this testing phase they need to keep things under control by allowing in people they can trust and removing those who prove untrustworthy.
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So, we now have items that are direct copies of former ROBLOX assets, just seemingly placed lower to make the item a ‘waist’ accessory.
This to me is honestly unacceptable, simply because anybody can rip a previously used asset like this and essentially create this item in a matter of seconds. We shouldn’t be letting professional creators, who are supposed to be creating their own assets, make thousands of dollars off of an item that was made 13 years ago simply because they can publish said item and other users cannot.
I could of sworn that when UGC was first announced, Roblox went on the record to say that previously created meshes (and retextures for those items) would not be allowed, but we have now seen multiple instances where this guideline has been violated. As a user who previously created retextures for items, alongside a previously massive retexturing community that has since fallen, seeing these kinds of items being released feels like being spit on.
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It’s really weird how Roblox has let this happen on multiple occasions. Roblox even says in the Q and A section of the thread:
Q: Will these assets go through moderation in the same ways as other assets?
A: Yep! We are also improving our moderation tools as the UGC catalog expands.
I have a hard time believing that This wasn’t checked for plagiarism. Considering that we’ve had previous instances of developers copying the exact same item before, and profiting off of it.
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Whats funny to me, is that Tarabyte made the biggesthead (which was just an upscaled bighead, colored blue with a different face) and they forced her to take it off sale due to obvious reasons.
This is the point im making is that ROBLOXs moderation team isnt the best and dare i say they aren’t organized at all. If they are, they dont show it. Constantly UGC members are told “Hey you cant do this” but then another person is allowed to. I honestly hope the mods are reading these, because they really need to have their standards more widely known.
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I agree. I thought UGC would be a bit more strict but I see Roblox has been approving a lot of ‘‘waist accessories’’ that cover up the entire body. These type of accessories might interfere on the gameplay of some games.
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After observing UGC for the past months, it’s quite easy to record the trends appearing from UGC creators. In a list below I’m going to state what they are and what issues I believe they might bring.
1. Golden Items,
Working off the peoples fear of missing out (FOMO). They are items that increase in price every so often. It’s an “ok” trend but it gets annoying when overdone. Either a creator trying to push a “limited” item in UGC or trying to work off peoples FOMO.
Issue: It’s overdone and done wrong. I originally expected “golden” items to be rare as in low amount of selection. Now it just feels like a normal retexture that forces it’s way up the catalog due to being updated constantly. It kind ruins the rarity of golden items when 1-2 creators make everything gold (with a changing price). There aren’t gold versions of everything and the low starting price makes it feel worse as you get to watch it rise and watch people’s FOMO force them to purchase it.
2. Mimicing ideas/Bandwagoning Trends
Now first and foremost I don’t really care who made it first. But when you see many creators hopping on a trend it overwhelms the market like you are looking down an isle and seeing identical products. It feels disappointing seeing a market with limitless bounds stuck making the same item. ex: half/half heads, half black/half white and halos.
Note: I do believe following a trend ex half/half vs creating holiday themed items are different.
Issue: Having people capitalize on the idea of others will end up with a market slump perhaps waiting on a person to make the next “big” item. This will only happen if new UGC creators are not constantly added.
3. Recolors,
I honestly think these are great but they should be done in a more proper method rather then spamming 3 recolors in a week. I suggested a way to organize the catalog with similar hats as they share a mesh. But without it, it makes the catalog feel as if you are looking at only 6-7 creators in a page of 60 accessories.
Issue:
In the recently updated tab, almost half of them are recolors. Sadly this is a better score then the last time I had checked.
Creators should focus on a few unique hats per week and release a few recolors instead of bombarding the catalog with 4-6 recolors at once. I consider this image to be a good score when it just screams the fact that less and less unique items are created every day/week. The worst offender which I believe so far of this, has 13 recolors for 1 mesh and they were all/majority were released at the same time as well.
Even while counting “Unique” items, I was lenient as some of the items were built off the same mesh though I counted them as “Unique” nonetheless.
4. Taking Roblox Original Items,
This has generally become a problem with the semi-recent controversy with a certain youtuber who had taken a Roblox made mesh and then had retextured it. I don’t know what the QA team looks at before a UGC creator is able to publish a hat but I feel that they should look more closely as it shouldn’t be much of an issue if people are mainly posting recolors. You would only have to look at 1 item for x amount of recolors the item has for possibly copied/rule breaking items.
Issue:
The main Issue here is that it’s not fair for everyone else, they have to make original hats while you can copy paste a hat and make the same or even more money then your competitors. Basically printing money by using meme/offsale hats as incentive.
Fix?
This could be fixed if retextures/remakes would recieve less compensation for each sale then a normal UGC item. It would incentivise people to make original items while still allowing the permission for people to remake/retexture items.When 1 sale of a remade/retextured hat is equal to 1 unique hat in the catalog, you are doing half the work and getting the same reward. Though I believe removing items from the catalog would probably upset the consumer rather then the creator as creators work off consumer demand.
Example:
Generally the examples for this would be Biggest Head, while the comments were still open and the new Big Head Waist. The consumer is more hurt than the buyer in this instance as its no longer available.
Edits:
- Fixed unique count (44/60)
- Elaborated more on recolors.
- Elaborated more on Mimicking
- Elaborated more on Gold
- Added a bit for Roblox Originals
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I knew recolors were bad, but not that bad.
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There is a simple solution to this. Roblox could do what credit card companies do. When a creator sells an item and it earns Robux, Roblox shouldn’t give the Robux to the creator until 30 days pass to check for fraud or copying. If they find fraud, Roblox could simply refund the users that bought the item, delete the item and not give the Robux. Roblox could also revoke permissions from that creator.
I feel like Roblox should make their moderation system as automated as possible to eliminate bias and remove inefficiencies. They should use automation to prevent people from breaking certain rules in the first place. In this case, instead of having to moderate users who copy hats, Roblox could just fix the Mesh stealing system as a whole. That would effectively make it harder for users to copy hats like this.
Of course, bans shouldn’t be given out automatically, but checking for ToS violations should be.
Allowing only recolors and duplicates to show in the drop down bar you suggested earlier would work.
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That just sounds like what they are doing currently, but with extra steps. A bot moderating that much isnt exactly the avenue that needs to happen. Many of the automated systems used have flaws, most notorious is the chat moderation. There are always going to be ways to bypass the automated moderation, ive seen several NSFW images get past the automation, so the system currently used will still need to be used.
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Just a question:
Are large UGC items OKAY?
What I mean by large, I mean the ones that cover up your avatars entire body, or just the ones that require you to wear smaller body parts to fit in with the accessory.
Here’s one of them as an example:
Some developers are complaining how these accessories impact their own games. If someone were to equip a whole cabinet in a hide and seek game, they can look “apart” of the map and require an unfair advantage compared to other players. It’s honestly like a prop-hunt if you think about it.
The whole concept of being whatever and whoever you want on this platform is cool, but I did NOT actually thought it would go this far. We can literally look like objects, which is pretty insane if you ask me. However, if it comes to a point where it alters gameplay, are these items really worth staying in the catalog?
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Developers have already created scripts to blacklist certain UGC items in their game such as the one you mentioned above. When a player wears a blacklisted item in the game, the script automatically removes it from the player’s avatar.
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About that, I think its quite troublesome to constantly check the catalog for new items to blacklist. If everyone were given access to UGC, imagine the stress developers will have for just blacklisting dozens or maybe hundreds of accessories. It would be time consuming and prevents them from actually working on their games.
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Blacklisting every hat is not the efficient solution in any case of this.
The most effective way would be to code a script that removes any accessory that it above x,y,z in size.
Someone had already created a code for it in HHCL, though you have to join an actual play server to see it work.
I had tested this by wearing a large UGC back accessory (scythe) and joined a play server to have it removed. The game hasn’t been updated since June 2019 and the item/UGC came out months later.
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The amount of UGC creators is very limited so it wouldn’t be that difficult to track down every box, portta-potty or closet that gets released into the catalog. But us developers would need a system to ban all oversized items in the catalog when UGC is availiable to more developers in the future, as it would be too much of a hassle to track down tens, if not hundreds of oversized items per day. The best solution would be to have a script that bans all items of a certain type or size, or if you want to take it to the extreme, ban all UGC items from your game.
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That might work, but it does have a downside. The large scythe you wore isn’t an item that covers your entire avatar. It may be gigantic, but its not as equal to being a literal box. This means that the script will ban innocent accessories for being too big.
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I think the proper solution here is to just simply delete the items that cover up our avatar, just remove them entirely from the website. The script that removes accessories based on their size might ban innocent items for being too big. This could be a problem for some players.
Besides, most people are going to use these items mainly for trolling, so I don’t see the point of them being up in the catalog.
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I believe that implementing a system like this would probably be the best way to go about the problem that’s currently at hand. Many current UGC artists are actually doing fantastic work, and I honestly don’t even mind recolors of certain hats, though it would be nice to organize them somewhat rather than the way we have them.
There are certain creators however, that are simply starting to look at the UGC system from a monopolistic standpoint. It seems that some are looking to put in the least amount of effort possible into their items to cash in while they can, because once the market opens to the public, the amount of Robux made by an independant UGC creator will drastically go down, just from item saturation.
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