The magic of Roblox was that the characters didn’t have any real human-like features. It was just a bunch of characters akin to LEGO minifgures running around blowing each other up with rocket launchers.
This is the sort of stuff I think of when I hear “Roblox”, not a virtual metaverse with human-like rigs.
Exactly, and all the features Roblox has been introducing HAVE been beneficial in some light, but the majority of the platform which are users, not developers and video creators, would not see half of that. They only care for what is on the front page, people don’t think about hyper-realistic avatars, they think about the majority, as you mentioned, blocky characters and plastic blocks flying around.
I 100% agree, in the only 6 years of using the platform, Roblox is differs greatly in many ways from when I joined in 2016, all of the technology that has been implemented in those years is quite impressive, although I can’t ignore the shortcomings of the platform in recent years, such as the over usage of Rthro in advertising, and how as you outlined, layered clothing being built around an avatar type that sees little to no use, and with all of the controversial metaverse branding, some people may never join the platform if they don’t enjoy the idea of living a second virtual ‘life’.
R6 not blocking emote clip, sometimes counted as cheating.
Does this mean that if I make a Roblox experience and promote it on an external social network like Twitter I can put “On Roblox” badge on it as long as I follow the rules?
Every time I see this kind of an update, the more I want to move to another game engine or just completely move to web development.
I do not understand why Roblox started downgrading their platform by forcefully suppressing fun and iconic R6 characters to instead replace them with human rigs that are wearing layered clothing which look like an absolute joke, and in fact they’re a big meme at this point. Just to be clear, I am not against newer technology, but rather the fact that Roblox is actively trying to get rid of that one unique thing about the platform. We used to make games, and now we’re “experience” developers.
Roblox has proven that they will not listen most of the time despite the fact that plenty of developers spoke out about the issues on this platform, such as ignorance, unfair payment, lack of improvements, and lack of transparency. When will Roblox start listening to their developers? Will that ever even happen?
We don’t want “metaverse”, we want the iconic Roblox that we used to play, so please don’t push something that the platform wasn’t made for. All these “new and improved” sites didn’t show any signs of improvement but mostly downgrade in quality.
As much as I love this platform, I dislike it a lot due those reasons, and the most sad thing is that Roblox hasn’t improved a single bit so far. Plenty of my friends already had moved away from Roblox because of these things.
I think I can understand the reasoning behind sunsetting Stars; endorsing random creators by selling their avatars or IP is dangerous if they do something bad, and the scalability of this program is questionable. This was honestly a long time coming.
Further, I think I can understand the reasoning behind preventing developers from creating experiences titled after the Roblox brand; Unity games never refer back to their engine, that would be weird, and Roblox in the past has made it very clear that they want to step into the background in a similar way, but I think Roblox’s pursuit of this is getting aggressive and artificial. Roblox was incredible to users of all ages for years for a good reason, and I don’t think this new direction is compatible with that reason. We are losing something.
Instead of embracing what makes Roblox unique (the entire concept of the Roblox Community, and the almost family-like togetherness the platform itself created over almost 2 decades), Roblox has now dropped everything that made it truly special to its userbase and is chasing some sterile corporate ideal, distilling itself down into its minimum required components and dissolving everything else, trying to become a gargantuan and faceless platform, which is honestly just very sad? If I found Roblox today at the age I was when I discovered it in 2007, I likely would not have become a developer. I’m starting to lose that feeling like I belong to something greater. I don’t feel like I matter anymore.
I cannot say anything towards whether or not this vision will make Roblox more successful as a platform or as a company, but to us as developers, we are absolutely feeling the loss of Roblox’s identity and involvement with us. We are losing how approachable and friendly Roblox was, and trying to engage with the platform we love is getting increasingly out of reach.
Further, lately it has felt increasingly like the people in charge of the features we love just don’t care, don’t have the time to dedicate to managing them, are themselves mismanaged, or are getting priorities as they matter to developers just plain wrong. Roblox’s communication with us on important matters is getting corporate and terse, or completely nonexistent. Questions go unanswered and language is often infuriatingly vague or rife with legalese. Our feedback most of the time doesn’t feel like it ever goes anywhere (see below).
I left a lot of other related feedback in a private discord server. MisterGreenTurtle has notes from me and the other people in that server, including some great examples of instances where our feedback on matters that affect us has simply been ignored, even if low-effort, with no communication funneled back to us.
It really feels like the direction this platform is going is losing us something important.
Hi all, I work with Jazwares. If you are interested in learning more about working with us on licensed product, please send me a DM here on the forums. Thanks!
Not really making me want to keep my games on roblox, Unity is a lot more chill
Wow, I uh…think you’re 100% right even if you’re sorta guessing most of this.
Truth be told, this sort of thing did actually happen once in the past believe it or not…
COUGH
COUGH
And it’s kinda easy to tell that Roblox doesn’t want a repeat of this to happen on their platform, so it really does make sense when you think about it.
I mean, they’ll literality do almost anything for their investors so…yeah.
Yeah, that’s the sad truth unfortunately.
I thought that maybe things would get better over time, but copyrighting the likeness of R6 and R15 just because they want Rthro pushed even more is a new kind of low for them.
Maybe in 2035, we’ll see a Roblox animator get sued for having an R6 charcter in a Youtube video for 8 seconds.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they become the next Viacom by then.
This change is in no way endorsing Rthro characters. Blocky character can still be used in media (youtube, twitter, ect). This change only applies to physical products, packaging, retail displays, services, NFTs, film, TV, books, stage shows or amusement parks. R6 and R15 blocky characters have very strong brand recognition. Roblox does not want developers working with toy manufactures to exploiting that recognition and create knock-off Roblox toys. You can use blocky characters in your game and game icons but when it comes time to manufacture a toy for your game the toy design can’t have that Roblox blocky aesthetic. It will need to be altered in a way that is recognizable as your IP but not recognizable as a Roblox toy.
The reason Roblox wants “Roblox” and “Blox” removed from future games is to that when a game starts working with a toy/merch company, they won’t have any reference to Roblox on the packaging
It’s a shame they completely removed the stars program. Though stars was a terrible deal for large games it allowed smaller games to get a toy who otherwise wouldn’t. Just some changes to the exclusivity clauses would have been enough to free large games.
I’ve made a post outlining, in detail, why this is problematic for developers & the community as a whole, & requesting for it to be restored with a facelift. Support is appreciated!
The only issue is the wording is a bit more fuzzy than that, as it simply cites not using the R6 characters in a commercial circumstance.
If you make a living off of YouTube, and use a generic R6 character there, whether it be a video thumbnail, or as your brand icon, does that not seep into the realm of commerical activity?
The wording is a bit fuzzy. The examples they listed on the usage guidelines was very commercial. Doesn’t seem like they are targeting youtubers imo but it is vague enough to go after youtubers. https://gyazo.com/c3d8025a346372e58ab1ad53070705be
I doubt they would shoot themselves in the foot that much as to target the influencers that attract players to the platform in the first place, but it remains that these rules implemented by Roblox have had a trend over the past few years of being vague enough to be a cause for concern.
More often than not the concern is validated once moderation occurs further down the line.
Would be nice if Roblox replaced this program with something else, Stars program has been super helpful in manufacturing/marketing toys to major retailers and there would of been no way I would of been able to do the same myself
This absolutely terrible change is gonna do so much damage to your reputation as a company.
Well not like they always had a good reputation to begin with. But changes like these is what will make developers stray away from Roblox and onto actually good platforms like Unity or Unreal Engine. And that’s starting to be the case here for me. If garbage changes like these are kept up eventually I’ll just end up quitting developing and go to a real actually good platform.
Welp, I’ve tried to give this platform a chance, even gave it one more after the audio changes, I tried to even defend the platform a bit within an argument with some friends. (unity vs roblox)
Obviously, that was a mistake, the way we get mistreated here, we are the bloodline of the platform are we not? I’m going to admit the loss and say my friends were right all along.
I love how only us developers are affected and not the YouTubers, say what you want, but obviously the crop has their favorites let alone with quite a few people who shouldn’t be in the program at all.
Let’s talk about rthro, obviously nobody much likes it, but I guess the corp will continue pushing something that’s super dead, the only people that I see use rthro are ROBLOX staff and rarely players.
If I were to market a game, I want it to have the classic R6/R15 characters in it. In my opinion, rthro has no place here, it looks so ugly on the platform, and I would be forgiving if this were VRCHAT, but this isn’t. (If we can’t market it, why not just fully remove it??)
Seriously, what are they thinking? The platform already has bad publicity, and now this…?
This is the worst update I have ever seen; I don’t see what they’re trying to accomplish apart from “let’s spend less money on developers and let’s force branding down their throats”.
P.S. Might as well get rid of the name “ROBLOX”, it’s a shadow of what this platform once was, we might as well call it “rthro-tropica” since it makes sense for their agenda they’re trying to accomplish nowadays.
The fact we can’t use “BLOX” in the names of our experiences anymore too, why? that’s one of the iconic things about this platform.
If my game has the word “Blox” in it and was created well before 1st July, do I need to change it?
Frankly, I disagree with the discontinuation of using the Roblox-themed names. I make games and stuff aimed at people in the Roblox community, not just random people, I get the idea of them trying to allow us to “Expand out our Experience’s” potential but to do so by forcibly forcing people to not even associate with Roblox is a bit of a step too far. If we want to make Roblox-themed games on Roblox, we should be able to use Roblox-themed names.
Kinda not interested in marketing my games to Facebook so…
