I’m honestly glad that a lot of people are finally starting to wake up to the awful truth that sits infront of them about the nature of the program.
I’m ashamed to say that I too was blinded by the prospects of getting into the program. I guess the last straw for me was seeing how many people were negatively impacted from the blatant lack of transparency and favoritism.
My journey started around the time the program began back in august last year when I started to help my friend Trus design various hats to upload for the UGC program.
(Note there are a few more ie the chinese new year collection not on the list). After helping him accumulate a vast amount of bread off of these sales, I was eventually told by him about the nominations process. I felt honored to have been given this information at first, I felt as if my hard work had finally payed off. He had always told me about wanting to give back to those who had helped him.
But then, I began to realize the full picture and the ramifications of a system built up on essentially favoritism and selectivism. I didn’t think too much of it at first, since it felt like a gesture done out of good faith until I started to hear whispers from other users that other developers in the program had essentially also given out this information to select individuals. This suspicion was further confirmed by the discovery of the three obscure tweets and the various friendlist/group connections between newly admitted members.
I started to get a feeling that something shady was going on behind the scenes when developers like Artoru began to openly state that they were under a NDA agreement to not be able to disclose any admission information while other developers had already divulged the process and admitted to the existence of a nomination discord channel. This discontinuity was already a sure fire sign that something was going on and I didn’t like it. The existence of this double standard on the spread of vital information didn’t sit well with me.
After the incident with the Forbidden Shark and the flamethrower, I had begun to lose faith in the program. Users have had been banned if not terminated outright in the past for similar violations on the platform, but nothing happened.
The discovery of the outreach competition in China was honestly what hit me the hardest. I was glad to see that Roblox was taking the more open and fair approach to getting new members into the program. You see, from where I come from in the People’s Republic of China; we got a thing called the “Gao Kao” which is essentially a standardized test that everyone takes for college/university admissions. It offered a level playing field for people to prove their worth. It measured one’s worth through one’s ability instead of through connections and favoritism by offering an open ended competition. The discovery of such a contest led me to question why we weren’t doing this type of open ended contest here for admission instead of relying on essentially favoritism. Roblox has already hosted MULTIPLE contests for UGC across their multiple outreach programs, why haven’t they given us this type of fair opportunity?
I eventually came to the conclusion that if any change was to be made to this obviously rigged system (as explained in my previous post), we would have to first voice our discontent.
So I chose to cut off my ties with my former friends in the program after a serious of unsavory actions enacted during and after the shark debacle and forfeit my position on the nominations. If I had not decided to do this, I’d essentially be supporting a corrupt system which has been proven to be biased and rigged against smaller developers. I’d much rather go down as a martyr then stay silent and watch this unfold. That’s what a real developer would do if they truly cared about the community at large.
Unlike certain developers who only mouth off about wanting to “help developers” and “be inclusive” for a good public image, I am more than willing to sacrifice my progress if it means addressing the flaws in this broken system. I’d much rather start at the bottom with my fellow developers instead of getting boosted to the top and partaking in a rigged game.
UGC started out with the intentions to promote developers and give modelers a chance at making the big bucks on the platform. In my opinion, it has just devolved into a tight group of friends helping out their friends get in on the action. I get that people want to help out their friends in life, but this is just ridiculous based on everything that has happened.
The sheer amount of contradictory statements and the deliberate selective distribution of information regarding admission into the program really speaks volumes about the intent of certain people in the program. Add on the fact that virtually no developers in the program have spoken out about the inherent flaws with using a twitter hashtag and a user nomination/debate channel which handicaps smaller developers who don’t have a vast web of connections and fans and you can assume that they don’t have the intentions on really being inclusive. Yall are great and talented people, but this just ain’t right.
It is all a big club and you ain’t apart of it.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
” 387,166 Sales, R$13,550,810 or USD$47,427.84
Do you even realise people get ranked up to Regular on this forum super regularly.
