[Update] Changes to Asset Privacy for Audio

[Sir_Highness]

The post said to use SFX in your search and gave an example: Water sfx

Maybe it will work. (spoiler alert, it does):

[Sterling_ODeaghaidh]

I appreciate they actually responded to our over 4,000 comments. I still feel they should have gotten input from us sooner, but I don’t know if they could have or not.

It’s not like we don’t know why they are making the updates, the news has been plastering the recent legal cases regarding them for a couple of months now.

[Jmacattk2021 (BobTheBalloon)]

Wow! Did we actually do something to bring roblox updates to a slower pace? This makes this so much clearer! I am still not in favor for this update, but thank you for reading our feedback!! My developer strike has stopped, and I will put all items back on sale! Thanks again

[GazilionGrandGadgets (Gaz)]

I’m not sure I clearly emphasized that, as the secret 2000 limit could be the case for some <13 users as well.

[Itsyourdriver (Driver)]

I’m very happy to see that the criticism the update had has somewhat (not entirely) improved this.

@BitFist

This release is specifically targeting music. We understand your concern that many SFX assets will also be made private on the 22nd. We have a dedicated team working to keep many SFX public, even if the asset is longer than 6 seconds. This work will continue past March 22nd, until we can re-enable the vast majority of public SFX assets.
We are also fast-tracking the addition of over 100,000 professional SFX to the catalog in partnership with Pro Sound Effects . These assets will be available for public use in the marketplace tonight , and can be found by searching for “[name] (SFX)”. For example: Water SFX .

Thank you for adding more clarification and providing sfx for developers to use, this cleared up one of the main issues that I had with the update.

[RBPrest (プレスト゚゚゚ ゘)]

the truth is that the changes in private audio have become a total disaster and the community is very angry with these changes.

[mariocav (Veriouss)]

make a way so the user can make an audio public for everyone lol

[kinightgaming2 (S7Z)]

@BitFist

Minimizing the Impact on SFX

This release is specifically targeting music. We understand your concern that many SFX assets will also be made private on the 22nd. We have a dedicated team working to keep many SFX public, even if the asset is longer than 6 seconds. This work will continue past March 22nd, until we can re-enable the vast majority of public SFX assets.

We are also fast-tracking the addition of over 100,000 professional SFX to the catalog in partnership with Pro Sound Effects . These assets will be available for public use in the marketplace tonight , and can be found by searching for “[name] (SFX)”. For example: Water SFX .

Thank you for the response to the mass frustration regarding the March 22nd update on audios! I’m glad that you guys are minimizing the impact on SFX… SFX is the most valuable key along with music for any experience creation, but I know and everyone knows that this update is targeting music.

@BitFist

Asset Permissions

Later this week, we will be introducing asset permissions for audio. Creators who have edit access to an experience will be able to grant permissions for that experience to use audio assets from their account. These permissions will be managed from the Configure Item page of audio assets and will help those who have uploaded audio using personal accounts avoid re-uploading to a Group in order to keep the experience’s audio functional.

Great feature! with Asset Permissions we don’t have to worry about setting our inventory to private so anyone cannot steal audios (SFX and Music). I’m glad that critisim improved it and my image for this update is brighter and better.

[crazyblocks234]

The updated statement makes me feel a bit better, but what I’m still wondering about a few things:

@BitFist

Asset Permissions

Later this week, we will be introducing asset permissions for audio. Creators who have edit access to an experience will be able to grant permissions for that experience to use audio assets from their account. These permissions will be managed from the Configure Item page of audio assets and will help those who have uploaded audio using personal accounts avoid re-uploading to a Group in order to keep the experience’s audio functional.

We will update this post by the end of the week to let you know when permission granting is available.

If an experience has been uncopylocked by the original creator of a game, will we be able to use all of the assets that are in the game and from every version of the game?

I’m not sure how ROBLOX would be able to tell if a place file is from an uncopylocked game or not, but if a game is uncopylocked we should be able to use everything from it since that was most likely the creator’s decision.

We need more clarification on this, as this is one of the things that I’m concerned about the most that could either make or break this update for me.

Also, will games made a decade ago still work if the audio was made by the creator of the game? This is probably obvious but I’m just wondering. I know a lot of games from around that time used Toolbox audio like Caramelldansen, Fire Emblem, One Winged Angel, etc.

I’m also kind of wondering if this update means that the Toolbox will be wiped of all audio or not. Will we even be able to use and add to the Toolbox’s Audio section anymore?

@BitFist

The Future of Privacy for other Asset types

Our vision is to give you full control over the privacy of your assets and how you share them with the rest of the community, other users and groups.

In a separate update, I will share more details on our long term plans for asset privacy. We are committed to doing a better job with future privacy rollouts, both by minimizing the impact to your work as well as providing longer time frames to adapt to any necessary changes.

If this is done for more assets in the future, I would like for there to be a notice quite a while in advance and for it to be something that’s optional and not going to break a lot of older games like this update could potentially if I’m understanding it correctly.

[GazilionGrandGadgets (Gaz)]

They say that will eventually be added but is not one of the features coming on the 22nd, so some experiences may go silent regardless. I’m thinking Roblox might ensure less scripts break though…

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

While it does, it only works in this specific case. You can’t search for anything other than what’s specifically the name of an audio. On top of that, there are sometimes 10 or 100 different audio assets with the same or similar name, often with zero relation to each other.

An audio library overhaul is absolutely essential for every type of audio.

[McFlandre (Flandre)]

To all, I do not believe this response has yielded enough for any of you to be content with this response. There are far too many who are blindly going yes response good! roblox the best! without actually thinking about it. I will be mostly commenting on what was said, and stating the issues I have with it. I have a lot of issues, and a lot to say on them so I’ve put each of them into seperate parts.

Part 1

@BitFist

Upload Limits

When we removed the fee to upload audio, we added monthly limits that varied based on different account criteria. By default, creators can upload up to 10 audio files each month, and you can increase this to 100 with ID verification.

While the reception of free audio uploads was positive, we’ve seen concerns around limits and verification requirements.

This is repeating what was already stated, the upload limit is extremely vague and the requirements to get uploads such as 2k (literally have access to a game with players) are not being clarified, there is no point in repeating what we already know. Instead, obviously easy changes such as implementing a paywall to exceed the limit could’ve been brought, possibly even foresight as to what will be changed would’ve been better.

Even if we have free uploads, this does not change the risks of uploading. What if you get banned for reuploading what was already on Roblox? Not knowing it was bad? Assuming all was good because Roblox themselves accepted it? Rules change? This has happened to me, while reuploading audios on an Alt that had 2k and now that it’s been banned for a solid 7 days (Deadline so short there’s no point contacting support who doesn’t read emails anyways as it’ll take too long, this is another issue!), I cannot attempt to upload the remaining 300 I have left. I wouldn’t even know if I need to replace it either as I can’t have Roblox tell me its copyrighted unless I upload! No one wants to bring alts to a group, what if Roblox finds the amount of new accounts uploading bad audios to your group suspicious and take action on the account holder? The group? Roblox is looking at the wrong problems, the main issue isn’t the upload limit. There’s always ways around it.

Part 2

@BitFist

We are also fast-tracking the addition of over 100,000 professional SFX to the catalog in partnership with Pro Sound Effects . These assets will be available for public use in the marketplace tonight , and can be found by searching for “[name] (SFX)”. For example: Water SFX .

I should also mention, the Audios provided to us are 90% useless and the efforts are mostly wasted. For example, I took a quick look at the “(SFX)” provided and guess what? All the audios are so dreadfully quiet that you cannot hear them even with full volume, do you know how loud Roblox plays audios on the website? Yeah, it’s that bad. The naming of these SFX are so vague and inaccurate it’s simply clutter. Here’s two SFX I’ve picked to use as examples.

Headphones 18 (SFX) - Roblox
Gaggling 3 (SFX) - Roblox

Notice how this first one DOES NOT EVEN CORRELATE TO HEADPHONES? It’s more clutter for creators to sort through, there’s so much junk like this that a normal person would give up even trying to use the library. Or how the second one wasn’t SPLIT into multiple segments? No one wants to have to create an entire script just to play audios from a certain position and end at another, there’s a limit of 7 minutes to audios so no one would even HAVE a script in reserve to play and end at specified positions as they cant upload MEGA LONG AUDIOS TO DO THAT WITH ANYWAYS. I do not know a single person who would want to use 23 seconds of the second audio, there is absolutely no use case.

Roblox needs to stop attempting to give the impression they’re trying to help supply audios, when they are clearly mass uploading libraries which is literally next to no effort at all. Some of these even being inappropriate, it shows that Roblox is being unprofessional and is willing to lie to the community.

Part 3

@BitFist

We have a dedicated team working to keep many SFX public, even if the asset is longer than 6 seconds.

Unless Roblox flat out increases the limit past 6, there is no possible way that all the moderators will review all the audios for this. There are millions out there, either tell us that you’ll do just this, or nothing at all because get real, Roblox doesn’t have a good track record for even half decent moderation or even support staff. Did you know a majority of support quite literally don’t read what you say? They’ll paste in responses not even relevant to your issue at times and more.

@BitFist

Later this week, we will be introducing asset permissions for audio. Creators who have edit access to an experience will be able to grant permissions for that experience to use audio assets from their account.

This is quite literally the only thing that we as a community have received from this response, aside from knowing that the deadline will not change. But I still find this extremely niche and pointless, for one not everyone can be trusted to have access to a game, Roblox moderation wont protect you either. That, and the fact that it doesn’t change the fact the people of TODAY will still have to reupload the audios as this feature might not even be rolled out in time for their game to not suffer the consequences. Later this week is too vague, what if it’s the end of the week? What if it’s so late that creators think they’ll have to reupload because the feature is taking that long to roll out? No one wants their game broken and they may as well play it safe and reupload now.

Roblox is not handling this well as of right now, Roblox does not have the track record to back the claims being made and I firmly believe that this post alone proves that Roblox speaks a lot of corporate lies and is not a reliable source. Remember everyone, this is a billion dollar company, we should have our expectations raised high, as high as Roblox tries to make themselves out to be.

I know I’ve said a lot of negatives, but someone has to point it out. I know there are probably like 2 people on the Roblox team who deeply cares for this issue, but it will never change the facts.

also

I believe it is important that people know this, so if you have even the littlest of things to say about my post I would appreciate a reply as that works as a bump as well for when this post gets too hard to find.

[Sir_Highness]

Yeah the search is still bad, I ran into that quickly with the new sfx when searching sfx motor, its flooded with servo motors repeated to infinity.

[Vmena]

Allow us to pay 100 robux again for any audio we wish to upload over our limit. There will always be cases where a developer needs to upload more audio than allowed and this should not be an impossible hurdle where he has to wait another month before he can get his game released, he should just be able to pay 100 robux per audio above the limit. (just like how the new badge system works for free badges)

[cloakedyoshi]

What you’re asking for here is literally the problem this is trying to solve. If you don’t know where the music comes from, and you don’t have permission to use it, you shouldn’t upload it to Roblox and you shouldn’t use it.

I agree with making search better, but you shouldn’t be uploading music that you have no idea where it comes from.

[xXshadowyvibesXx (Toxicity)]

Although this update does have a few cons, I still believe this will make a huge change to sounds on Roblox mainly because throughout the years people have developed strategies to steal audios but with this it could change, this also is great because it allows users to create and publish audios without the fee. Also something that came to mind is bypassed audios, they have been on the platform for ages and do tend to stay short lived due to moderation and getting reported but imagine the amount of bypassed audios after this update. With the audio private nobody would be able to report these and the only people left to remove them is the moderation.

[PataNautic]

I’m glad at the very least there will be an effort to minimize damages with the inclusion of officially licensed sound effects, although it seems that there will still be a massive disruption to games as previously learned, only with it being slightly easier to recoup the loss of sound effects / music.

Unfortunately, in my eyes, this update comes with very little positive change compared to the initial announcement, and as I said previously on this topic, I hope a legal compromise can be achieved without the brunt of the damage being placed on developers. Legacy games are destined to be silent either way, but at the very least, a time limit for sound archiving would be hugely beneficial; such as if a sound is newer than X amount of time (years,) then it will remain public.

[Gatorzgaming (Gatorz)]

You are the problem here, understand some basic copyright law please.

[Sir_Highness]

If they’re private nobody will be able to hear them except the uploader, in their own game(which will get reported if it gets popular).

[xXshadowyvibesXx (Toxicity)]

Oh, ok thank you for informing me