I didn’t have to think about it because I was affected by the preparation backend update of this change for the past two months. It was not very pleasant, and I have not recovered from it yet. We are talking about losing a 3-5x player count in a couple of days and discovery traffic loss up to 10x randomly. Abnormal behaviors that never happened before until mid-October. I was not the only one affected because someone else filed the report before me.
If I think about it, this tunneling of player traffic will be pushed toward already front-page games rather than other low-mid-tier games.
Not sure how this would make anything harder for smaller developers. The post just says that if you didn’t give your experience an age recommendation, it won’t be recommended to people under the age of 9.
I think it would be great if we can set the age we wish people to be to be able to join our experience (and they must have it verified). It could allow by theory if Roblox allows it, experiences which are like GTA with drugs, swearing and stuff like that. With Roblox wanting to up the age who wants to play I think that it would be a great idea tbh.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t any game get recommended to anybody up until now? Maybe I just misunderstood, but it seems like this could affect small devs who make fps or horror games. Sounds a lot like the ad update we had recently…
Yes, but Roblox wants to enforce proper age ratings for games on the site (like ESRB ratings in real life). You can still play any game on the site (unless told otherwise via parental controls).
Experience guidelines have official been around since September and experiences without guidelines are already treated as 13+.
Besides, its not like Roblox just did this out of nowhere, it was mentioned this change was going to happen in the initial post:
I find the introduction of age ratings to search and discovery really concerning.
It frustrates me that games are still not moderated fairly or correctly. Murder Mystery 2 for example is still listed as ‘All Ages’ and no mention of violence in it’s rating. Loot box games such as Pet Simulator & Adopt Me have no mention of gambling in their age rating.
Yet my camping game Backpacking was moderated and told to place Mild Violence in its rating due to bears and SharkBite given a 9+ rating for frequent violence.
It doesn’t seem like all games are being treated equally or some high profile developers aren’t correctly filling in the survey so their game isn’t filtered out of player searches. This now puts developers that fill in the survey fairly at a disadvantage.
Some of those games have removed lootboxes/gambling from the rating because the people in the countries and areas that those aren’t allowed in due to the laws and regulations that have restricted them have them hidden.
If they don’t remove them from the label then the game still get restricted from those users. I hope roblox allows developers in the future to keep it in the rating without region restrictions as long as it is confirmed that the loot boxes are disabled for those in restricted regions.
(Sorry for the confusing wording)
Sorry for not evaluating the reply, like something related to Swearing, or GTA stuff regarding to the Experiences for users who are 17+, aren’t that would be a little bit weird on the Roblox platform?
The Experience Questionnaire already asks whether you use PolicyService to dynamically respect regional requirements that vary per user and takes that into account in the rating.
Well not really. Sure at the start it would be but Roblox themselfs said they want to age up the platform and lets be quite honest with the current rules not many 18+ year olds would want to play. Also swearing is already kinda allowed inside of voice chat, so all you would be doing is limiting some games to like 18+ or whatever the age limit would be set at.
So does this mean that older games that have been abandoned won’t show up for these younger players? Does it pertain to all recommendations including things like games your friends are playing?
Happy to see Roblox once again try to appeal to investors with a lackluster policy doomed to be ineffective. The questionnaire survey used to determine whether or not a game is considered appropriate for kids is already easily bypassable, what is this update even meant to do? Alongside the removal of player ads for users under thirteen, this seems like yet another policy that will make it more difficult for younger audiences to discover new games… Additionally, on an unrelated note, will this secrete older games with inactive developers who haven’t filled out the survey?
Roblox continues to strip away game discovery features that were already barely helpful in the first place without implementing new ways to advertise products. Why does this continue to happen?
Is there any internal push to also allow PolicyService to be used to make games more age appropriate?
For example, Team Fortress 2 famously had a “Birthday Mode” which would replace blood and other gore graphics with balloons and confetti. With an upgrade to PolicyService, such a system could be forced on for underage users to make a game compliant with both younger users and regions that have stricter control on blood in games.
If ROBLOX insists on stricter censorship, it should allow experiences to upload content that applies to its age guidelines. Right now, they are censoring pretty much every content that is not deemed safe for those under 13. This makes it hard to make games appeal to older ages because of censorship.
Right now, what ROBLOX is doing is:
Hey, we will limit the player traffic to your game to only 13+, but the content you uploaded cannot be 13+, and it has to be safe for those under 13 IN ROBLOX PERSPECTIVE. We will ban you or “shadowban” you if you don’t comply.
Worse, most of the contents are moderated by a robot that is probably not getting brighter in the correct direction over time. Also, god knows what is deemed safe for under 13 from ROBLOX’s perspective anymore.
I hope ROBLOX understands how frustrating this can be for developers. Since November, there has been a massive lack of balance on the changes in ads and discovery.
