Hi Creators,
We’ll soon be introducing controls that empower users to control who can see when they’re online or are in-experience and reflect our commitment to giving everyone on Roblox control of their privacy, especially the youngest players on the platform. We’ll be rolling out new privacy settings that let people on Roblox manage the visibility of their online and in-experience status. As a result, we’ll be making changes to the GetFriendsOnline API in the coming months as it’s dependent on what players select in these new settings.
Depending on their age, they’ll have access to a few different options for who they can share their online and in-game status with; these could include (1) everyone, (2) friends, followers and people I follow, (3) friends and people I follow, (4) friends, or (5) no one.
As a result, when GetFriendsOnline is called, the values returned will depend on the privacy settings of individual users. GetFriendsOnline will only return a friend of a player if you as the creator of the experience can view that friend’s online status, and if the friend either allows everyone on Roblox to view their online status or is in the same experience as the player. This setting’s default will be more restrictive for younger players, and we anticipate this change may impact experiences with a younger overall player base.
How does this impact me?
If you don’t currently use GetFriendsOnline or if your use cases for GetFriendsOnline API is limited to in-experience friends, this change will not affect you. However, we know that some experiences use this API frequently for invite/referral systems that allow players to invite their friends into the experience. Because of this new privacy setting, it will likely return an incomplete list of online friends that can be invited.
What can I do?
We recommend migrating any referral systems in your experience to PromptGameInvite which, when called, will display an invite prompt to the local player through which they may invite their friends to your experience. The friend list on the invite prompt prioritizes online friends and friends that the player frequently interacts with. Additionally, we recently launched the Friend Referral Program that allows you to provide rewards for players who invite their friends if the invite is accepted.
Here’s an example of the new referral functionality in use:
When PromptGameInvite is called, it will automatically bring up the ‘Invite Friends’ screen, without the player needing to click the Roblox logo and ‘Invite Friends’ submenu.
Players over the age of 13 who invite their friends will see the option to ‘share with people you know’ which will open the standard share options for the device they’re currently using. If the player is under 13, they’ll get a link which they can send to their friends to invite them to your experience.
When will this change happen?
We’re aiming to introduce the new privacy settings and make the associated changes to the GetFriendsOnline API sometime between June and August; as we get closer to the switch, we’ll update this post a few weeks beforehand as a reminder. Start migrating to PromptGameInvite now to ensure compatibility. Thank you!