Both myself and many developers have suffered random bans from very old assets getting moderated unfairly after changes to the ToS many years later.
This creates situations where users upload an asset that’s allowed, then several years a later a small change in the ToS causes many old assets to retroactively break the rules and trigger bans unknowingly.
This is very unfair as it’s very much out of our control and unrealistic to expect every dev to re-check every single asset they’ve ever uploaded to see if it breaks the ToS every time it gets an update.
At the very most, users should only receive warnings for retroactively breaking the ToS, or else we’re put into an unfair situation where we will never be safe. This can also be especially frustrating when the developer in question relies on Roblox games as their career to make an income.
A one day ban is enough to cause missed event deadlines which has knock on financial impact. This happening because of an asset you uploaded when you were 12 and forgot about is inane and blood-boiling. Assets older than a year or two (let alone six years, just absurd) getting moderated should never impact your access to your account, except in special circumstances where e.g. the user has intentionally uploaded shocking imagery multiple times. Deactivating someone’s account for a character asset uploaded six years ago showing slightly too much skin or body form should never ever happen.
Especially given the fact that there is no easy way to delete certain asset types such as clothing. The only way to do so is to email a specific email, but from experience it has mixed results.
It’s truly unfair that I am punished for an asset I uploaded as a young child when there is no real way to delete it. It’s just honestly mind boggling that this problem still exists.
Although I was not banned, I had two multiple-year-old decals of mine get moderated for “real life images” and had to reactivate my account. I know I’ve never uploaded any personal images to Roblox, and I was never able to determine what assets were affected. The ban did not provide an image of the “offending” asset, nor was support able to. All support was ever able to say was that one was named image1 and the other img – not helpful. I now have no idea what game or games are affected by this. Absurd!
The past cannot be changed as we know it, so like how are we supposed to know something’s magically now inappropriate this day? Either not take moderation action but takedown asset or as others mentioned, take it down yourself.
In my case, I was moderated by an AI system that detected an inappropriate brick model which I made purely as a joke from 2020. At the time I had no intention of doing anything with it and just left it in ServerStorage inside an inactive game of mine that’s closed. It only happened once I first joined the game after not having touched it for a very long time.
I had been trying out multiple options besides appealing to get unterminated, but no luck considering I basically got a “no”, even had few friends (one of them is a UGC Creator) contact some roblox staff/mods but still nothing changed.
My main account was perma-banned about a year ago due to a Pokémon game & group I made nearly 8 years ago.
I left the group & removed traces of the game, however due to moderation they still found its links to me and therefore I was punished.
I attempted to appeal this with ROBLOX and basically got a very stern ‘No’ - Over a decade worth of assets, purchases etc. lost due to poor moderation and an unhelpful customer service department.
It wasn’t a model “model”, it’s a simple unioned brick and it was in the game’s ServerStorage that I left it in the whole 3 years and I had forgotten about it.
It is a bit of a difficult process to delete old assets, so I hope to see this change.
I felt compelled to delete two t-shirts that I made when I was 9-10 (over 10 years ago) that contained potentially copyrighted material (which can warrant a warning/ban). I could not delete them myself, so I had to tediously find the email of Roblox’s copyright agent and send a notice that I wanted them taken down.
It worked out for me in the end, with the two t-shirts deleted, but I wish there was an easier way!
This is especially super important given enforcement of copyright is still a relatively new concept to Roblox. That was a massive ToS change, and although it should’ve still been respected, it was not being enforced at all. Now that copyright is more aggressively enforced, older assets can be even more damaging than just bans for now-prohibited content as copyright moderations are permanent and can lead to ineligibility of your person to use the Developer Exchange program.
