Hi there,
Your experience must meet both criteria below to be considered a social hangout:
If you meet this criteria but it is not the primary theme or activity in your experience it is out of scope for this policy.
Hi there, just wanted to clarify that for pls donate, if you can chat with, or otherwise interact with, other users (strangers or friends) with voice or text, but it is not the primary theme or activity in your experience it is out of scope for this policy.
When is Roblox going to moderate larger developers and experiences? I bring this up because Doors is non-compliant, as it contains elements that fall under “Mild Repeated Fear” and it does not have the Fear content descriptor. Doors also hasn’t had the Fear content descriptor ever since it was added to the platform, a fact that demonstrates potential negligence from LSPLASH, the game’s owner.
Please prove to me that I can trust Roblox’s moderation in all cases both large and small, thanks.
Does Doors make you feel fear? Realistically, it has horror elements, but they don’t scare anyone I’ve talked to.
As for your trust issue, this is the first thing you’ll see if you go to DOORS’ page. If you really don’t like “horror” games that much.
Also, this was announced on the Devforum in an unrelated post. Big developers don’t use the forums as often, from what I know.
Yes, you should be starting to see more top experiences and smaller experiences be impacted as moderation works through the list of violative experiences that we have identified.
We are aware of Doors as well as other horror experiences, and they are on our list as well. Thank you for sharing your concern, we definitely want our policies to apply fairly across all experiences.
Horrible Update, My Game Wheel Drawing obby does NOT need to be 13+ just because players get a fat pen on a small frame with only 1 color to draw 3d wheels, Now my questionaire was rejected and I’m loosing 80% of my playerbase for this
We clearly need more distinction here in terms of what kind of a drawing system is implemented, my game and other drawing obbies that are very limited as they are drawing using 3d circles should at most be ages 9+ and I hope this gets fixxed asap as drops in playercounts I notice in other games and mine is shocking
games with unmoderated drawing are getting 13+ed
That’s the point.
And that’s probably a good thing.
personally, I think it’s getting a little out of hand
I completely see where they are coming from with this decision, I don’t want kids to be exposed to nudity in some hyperrealistic drawing game! But not making a distinction between what kind of a drawing system is implemented seems braindead to me. There are currently two other physics based drawing obbies affected other than me and we all only allow drawings with one color and one width wich eliminates most inapropriate uses, the amount of ink allowed is also limited to allow for basic shapes to be drawn. No 12 year old is getting endangered in those games and I’m shocked at how stupid the people behind this update possibly are not making any distinction as such
still. it is free form user creation and it is restricted to 13+
No point in arguing with you but, I simply believe the solution they came up with is braindead and they don’t have the slightest idea how big of an impact this has for studios → -70% of any drawing games playerbase, And to now suddenly decide to harshly enforce this rule right before christmas is diabolical
There are a lot of hangout games in Arabic and they’re still minimum age-rated, and whatever - there’s even a drawing game that’s allowed for 9+ what makes it different. Here’s an example: الرسم على الجدران 🖌️🛹 [اصلاح البيانات!] - Roblox. It’s even allowed for children
And what prevents people from just changing the maturity rating every time you inform them? There’s no actual punishment - it’s just a repeated cycle. You get warned that your experience is changed to N/A, then you just change it again to minimum. You wait for one day until a mod sees that it’s not the correct maturity rating Then You Repeat it Again , And No Actual Punishment Such a Private The Place Or Anything , Some People Abuse Maturity Makes It Violence Through It’s an Hangout Game
Friend Hangout - Roblox ,
❤️ Vibe Place ❤️ - Roblox,
excuse me but what
plus. even if you do have drawing in any game that doesnt moderate. it WILL become Maturity Moderate
this update in my opinion shouldnt be seen as an annoying update like some users see it its actualy good that roblox is finally enforcing their rules to keep the younger users safer.
I understand taking the ‘social hangout’ aspect of the game into account on the questionnaire, but I feel like the enforcement of it is a bit extreme and it also creates a lot of grey area in terms of what is and isn’t deemed a “social hangout”.
PS: I know I’m late to the party, this is the first time I’ve heard about this
Here’s my confusion on this…
About a week ago, my game’s content label was rejected, and at first I couldn’t figure out why since the game is a literal baseplate. It is devoid of any content whatsoever, just a vanilla classic baseplate. Obviously, since the game is nothing but a vanilla baseplate with nothing to do, I couldn’t imagine any part of the questionnaire that I would’ve been missing. After re-taking the questionnaire, the social hangout question was the only one I could think of that would’ve been problematic. After selecting yes, my experience was given a Moderate (13+) maturity label.
If you go on Roblox Studio right now, create a new game using the default template, and then publish that template - your game is considered a social hangout and you are expected to have a Moderate (13+) maturity label on it. I don’t mean to point fingers by any means, but I do want to compare this scenario to other games to put things into perspective how silly this policy is compared to other standards.
) on Roblox.
) on Roblox.
) on Roblox
I understand the concept. Social games do attract certain types of people, and I completely acknowledge that it’s especially true with the baseplate. However, it just feels wrong moderating such a wide spectrum of games based on a very vague and unspecific policy. Saying that a tactical shooter game involving terrorists - or a game based on hundreds of people being murdered for the appeasement of wealthy elites (maybe being a tad bit dramatic) - is more appropriate for children than a hangout game… sounds a little goofy.
At it’s core, players in a social game aren’t subjected to anything that isn’t possible in essentially every other game on the platform. Take Fencing for example - a game that isn’t necessarily a social hangout game, but is notorious for exploiters, bypassers, and player toxicity. The only fundamental danger that ‘social hangout’ games have are simply vulnerabilities of Roblox’s platform (via exploiting, chat bypassing, etc.), which exist platform wide. Even if your game has a custom chat module with an efficient custom filter and a solid anti-cheat, it wouldn’t matter.
My biggest issue with this policy is that in a way, it directly acknowledges the vulnerabilities of the platform as a whole, but instead of taking a step towards tackling the vulnerabilities themselves, it feels more like a half step back, only compensating for the existence of those vulnerabilities. Especially with the vast amount of games that might fall under this category, it seems farfetched to enforce it on a consistent basis.
It’s also strange that games like Pls Donate or Trade Hangout, which are completely social based games at their core, are able to avoid the Social Hangout label purely based off of a simple donation mechanism or even just the underlying topic of conversation being Roblox trading. It begs the question - what is the massive difference that allows one to be suitable for All Ages as opposed to the other that is forced to be labeled 13+?
Ultimately, there are a lot of questions with this policy. I don’t think it directly solves any specific issues. The fine line of having a game that is labeled Moderate (13+), and then doing nothing else but adding a theme or small activity to the game to suddenly have it be fit for All Ages just doesn’t hold up in the grand scheme of things. Again, I’m not trying to point fingers and claim that all of these games should have their labels moderated. I’m also not dismissing the obvious issues that social games currently have. I was happy to see the chat restrictions on accounts under 13, and although it still doesn’t address the source of the issues at hand, it was a viable solution that works on a wide scale. I just don’t think this “social hangout” policy is helping, as opposed to being obstructive for creators.
This isn’t coming from a place of jealousy or spite from my game being moderated. I am the last person to sit on a high horse and pretend like people’s behaviour in my game hasn’t been problematic. The behaviour of some of the people who join my game, and many other games alike, are not suitable for children. I am totally content with my game specifically being 13+. Child safety is a very important issue, and I have always pushed for ways to prevent this behaviour on a platform level.
I’ve been trying to solve the chat bypassing issues on my own, but every time I add more to the filter, people inevitably find ways to work around it. It always feels like I’m trying to jerry rig a script together to intercept the Roblox core scripts, or find half-baked solutions to the problems that are too obstructive to the player’s experience. The fact that the only solution I’ve found to filter and remove messages from the chat directly… is either by creating an entirely custom chat module, or by executing this random line on everyone’s client - “message.Status = Enum.TextChatMessageStatus.InvalidTextChannelPermissions”… says a lot about how inaccessible/difficult it is to try and relegate the core vulnerabilities that Roblox has on our own.
All in all, you can’t expect every developer to know how to engineer their own efficient chat filter/anti-cheat, and until the vulnerabilities are addressed on the platform as a whole - or solutions are made more widely accessible, the safety of children on any game will still always be at risk.
This concludes my Ted Talk.
I think this is a very good update, especially when it comes to protecting children online. However, you need to notify developers sooner about their games containing inaccurately reported content.
I lost a significant number of players for a considerable amount of time because my maturity label was dropped. It was only 2 days later that I receive an email informing me about this. I update it (it was a very mild detail that I forgot to include) and now my player counts have gone back up again. My only concern now is whether or not the large drop in users for that period of time will impact my game’s discoverability. I guess we’ll have to see over the next few days.
Update 2 days later: Discoverability was impacted significantly. Thank you Roblox for destroying my game’s growth. Home recommendation impressions have been sliced in half from before the dropping of the maturity label to after resubmitting the questionnaire.
Update: The game fell off really hard. Discoverability did not return to the levels it was prior to maturity label drop, and it’s been in a steady decline ever since. I had hopes for this game after spending 250k on advertising and seeing it steadily grow. That’s gone now. Thank you, Roblox.
Might have to completely rebrand the game now because what used to work with it doesn’t seem to anymore. (Again, this was all after the maturity label was dropped.)
The group wall restrictions isn’t good at all. It cuts our audience percentage because of the lack of communication in our communities, and the community I have literally requires manual approval in order to join which is a very good moderation strategy.
Plus not trying to be rude at all but the bad people on Roblox are the ones that cause chaos in the community, not kids and pre-teens themselves. The people under 13 are not responsible for these actions, the weird people, etc, are responsible for these chaotic actions. Instead, you could have just told people to change the joining ability to manual approval if you want more security (if you cant spend that much on a community or smth) in your community. I have the joining ability modified to manual approval for a reason and for some time since October or so, before this took effect. (THIS POST IS NOT FOR CRITICISM, THIS POST IS FOR EXPRESSING OUR OPINIONS ON THIS NEW POLICY)
