I don’t have an issue with this, as such. But I’ve had my questionnaire rejected twice, and both times a few hours after starting sponsoring the game !! It happened overnight (in my timezone), meaning that for hours, the game/ad was inaccessible from one of our biggest audience, due to the N/A maturity ! Even though, with the recommended changes, the questionnaire would have stayed in the same category (mild) ! So I’d suggest two things:
don’t put the game maturity to N/A if the recommended changes keep the game in the same category! In my opinion, in cases like this, you might as well auto-apply the changes, so we don’t loose players with the N/A label. I’ve lost too many players due to this !!!
PLEASE, pause the ads/sponsors of the specific game when you reject the questionnaire, as an N/A label means I’m bidding for users that are (much) less likely to join my game !
I really feel like these are important issues, since these things really do destroy player count for nothing, and I’m speaking from experience.
I’m not sure if this applies to private or friend’s only games, but I’m suspecting that it might be the case. Most of my games are private or friend’s only, because I simply just don’t feel like working on them until I feel like it, or I don’t feel like publishing them to a greater audience. But does it apply to private and friend’s only experiences?
Please note this is based off personal experiences and conversations I’ve had with other developers who have used similar techniques in attempts to determine a Player’s age. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Yes, using PolicyService, you can determine if a Player is 13+.
Yes, using another method it is possible to determine if a user is 17+, but it is not reliable as it requires the Player to have performed a specific action to be properly labeled.
Based on previous conversations and moderation actions applied to myself, using the above two methods to determine if a Player’s age is not supported and may result in moderation due to COPPA laws considering it protected PII.
Unless Roblox provides an official API, I strongly advise against attempting age checks as you may get moderated for collecting protected PII, even if you do not save it and exclusively use it for checks.
That’s exactly why they’re providing PolicyService though, no? You can’t show ads or social links to <13 users, that’s quite literally an age check.
Using it for other things (like disabling blood for example) shouldn’t really be an issue, no? You’d still have to mark your game as containing blood in the questionnaire (there should really be options to select age groups for certain questions) but you can still disable it for users who can’t see ads.
IMO they should just add an age check api to the privacypolicies since it already exists, but just not consistently. It probably all has to do with COPPA but hopefully roblox will atleast attempt at getting it to work with them
COPPA, to my admittedly limited understanding along with whatever other relevant laws there may be, make this complicated as it involves children and attempts to protect them.
Roblox, in an effort to maintain a global audience along with allowing Developers to be compliant, exposed PolicyService which indirectly allows for Developers to determine whether a user is >13 or 13+. Beyond age, there are other benefits to this API as well for legal compliance.
Determining the age of a CHILD is still a very touchy subject in terms of laws. Even though PolicyService indirectly allows for this, doesn’t mean its a supported use case nor allowed.
Barring legal restrictions, I see no other reason why Roblox wouldn’t allow its Developers to determine the age of a Player. Its quite useful information now.
In gist, it is likely LEGALLY SAFER to provide PolicyService as it stands verses a blanket API for determining the age of a user due to the potential PII nightmare of allowing Developers access.
TL;DR: PolicyService was intentionally designed to allow legal compliance while not explicitly being designed to determine the age of a Player.
Fine, I just hopefully this gets added for the future for users that are supposed to be trusted like being old on Roblox, ID verification, etc. Because that might be messed up with new users.
The thing is, I want to know if this will apply to games that are set to private, or friend’s only. Because I’ve set most of my game’s to either private or friend’s only, because I either don’t plan on finishing them, or I’m working on them.
I have encountered the problem of repeated false reports about my place.
I quote one of the reports:
In this experience when the players attack us realistic light blood splashes out from the body.
Please clarify: do you really consider a red SMOKE effect to be “realistic blood splashes coming out of a player’s body”?
It also raises a question: why can someone easily and without any proof submit repeated reports that lead to lowering the age rating and closing the game?
I submitted an appeal 15 days ago. During this time I have already received four emails with standard responses about high workload (“Sorry, we have a high workload, we will respond soon”), but in fact my issue has not been resolved.
Today I again received another false report, after which the game was temporarily closed for Roblox moderation review.
Will there be any explanation for this? Also, because of this, I received a ban on my account for 1 day.
This occurred to me as well. Multiple games of mine were taken down and placed under review.
One had more than 1.2k playing at the time it was taken down and the age guidelines were not even rejected for it. It said to correct the age guidelines, however I am not sure what age guidelines they want set as the place was put under review and age guidelines weren’t rejected.
I accidently put my game or experience into ‘Restricted Label’ where i can’t change it back to minimal anymore. My players can’t play my game anymore. Please i request removal or change my game or experience maturity into ‘Minimal Label’
As of today, Roblox has targeted two experiences that I own with suspensions.
I’ve made an additional post to clarify further to work with us instead of putting us down. Social hangouts are important for all ages and I do the best with my teams to ensure they can continue to exist with safety in mind.
I’ve spent a ton of time into designing tools, systems and features to ensure safety through authentic means. Slapping us with a label which takes a 30% chunk of the userbase should not be the solution.
Hello, Roblox Staff
I can’t get my experience back to minimal after I unintentionally set it on “Restricted Label.” My game can no longer be played by my players. Please alter it to “Minimal Label,” or suitable for everyone.
Hi JaelynNova, this is not something we support at this time. Experiences with a Restricted content maturity label cannot be reverted back to any other content maturity label, which we’ve also made very clear in the questionnaire UI.
Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to make it clearer that once your experience receives a Restricted content maturity label, they cannot receive any other content maturity label even if the content itself has been changed.
Hi andy, I believe that we remove the content maturity label and give moderation feedback first, and only after we detect repeated incorrect answers to the questionnaire are we taking down experiences. We try to work with creators first (by giving feedback and offering them to retake the questionnaire correctly) before taking down the experience.
Has that been your experience so far? It looks like you are not disagreeing with the moderation feedback (in that your experiences are Social Hangouts), but more about the policy that Social Hangouts should be restricted to 13+ users only.
Hi Cranial, can you share which experiences that have been mistakenly taken down? I believe we only take down experiences that have been rejected in the past and are still incorrectly rated. Have you received moderation feedback previously? If you share more information, I can have the team take a look.
Yes, the idea and implementation behind the questionnaire and its system are excellent and work as described, however the feedback is too minimal and doesn’t allow for creators to work closer with Roblox to possibly find solutions to allow lower rating for certain experience types. That results in myself and the team disagreeing and reverting back to minimal maturity. We simply do not agree with Social Hangouts being restricted to 13+ only.
I understand that the genre may be a big target for bad actors, and we’ve seen a lot of misconduct in and outside of the platform while our experiences are used, but we also make the efforts in ensuring said misconduct is dealt with whether through in-game reports, community server reports or team observations through social media.
R6 Dances for example is banning 250~ users roughly daily (11k total as of today) for inappropriate bypassing, bypassed inappropriate avatar items and inappropriate background checks (done automatically through looking specified badges and groups tied to ToU violating experiences).
The same systems are present on my own projects such as Emote Blox & TINEL, with previously 200+ bans issued combined daily. (as currently one of the experiences has been suspended)
All experiences listed also offer an in-game reporting system that’s sent to relevant staff teams to deal with in quick time, successfully dealing with bad actors reported by players daily.
I’m now content and have been following questionnaire policies (and also pending an unsuspension support ticket of above mentioned experience), but I figure with all the reasoning I’ve provided in my linked post & the comments, I was hoping that there’s a possibility to revert on this decision for a short time being as I myself, my teams and partners do our best efforts to ensure safety through manual as well as automatic systems.