Greetings! Recently I noticed that Roblox has begun to moderate assets uploaded with a hammer and sickle on them. My games have flags with the hammer and sickle, so what should I do about it? So far I’ve thought of 2 solutions:
Would the first solution be appropriate or should I fully remove these assets?
Would be great to have a statement on this by Roblox, still very unclear whether soviet symbols are allowed or not, some things get moderated, some don’t.
If you wanted to get advanced, you could model it onto the flags, but that might get you into trouble, so it’s likely better to just remove the hammer and sickle. Additionally, you could email Roblox support to ask.
They do. See the Roblox Community Standards.
Namely:
We value friendly debate about social and political issues and topics that matter to the Roblox community. To maintain Roblox’s civil environment, we prohibit the discussion or depiction of content pertaining to political figures and entities, including:
- Political entities, including:
- Political parties, including official party-affiliated organizations
The hammer and sickle is a common depiction (or association) of the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern Bloc. ROBLOX is moderating based on the community standards in this case. You would have to find an alternative symbol (Your Mileage May Vary), or avoid depicting the party and it’s symbolism at all.
Would it be enough to just remove the hammer and sickle? For example having the USSR flag but just without the hammer and sickle.
I do not believe so, no.
Realistically, you may have to settle for depicting a nondescript red flag, but then you may come under flak for either depicting China or the USSR (depending on the pedantics of the end-user viewing your work).
Realistically, it’s safer to not bother doing anything related to communist imagery - even for a war game. As far as it goes, though, should you want to depict a vehicle (i.e. T-34 (1941) or IS-2/JS-2) then you should be fine so long as the vehicle doesn’t share identifiable markings of the USSR.
What makes this tough for me is the fact that i do have a whole gamepass in my game where you can use different flags of the SSR states and it would be a bit of a bummer to have players lose what they paid for.
That may have to be removed. Those flags are of a political entity, and specifically of states under the eastern bloc.
If you convert the flags into fake ones, with an explanation and* possibly offer more content for the flags, then you might not have nearly as big of an issue.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to review the content of our experiences against ROBLOX’s guidelines. ROBLOX doesn’t make it any easier on us, as I believe there’s no dedicated portal on the Create website for this content review / content inquiry stuff for guidelines and policies.
