According to recently indexed translation strings, Roblox may soon allow the average player to customize the frame rate limit within the client in Settings rather than using third party tools. Currently, the current frame rate limit is 60 frames per second for all devices except for virtual reality headsets (both PCVR and Meta Quest), whose frame rate cap is higher. To alter this limit would require the aforementioned third-party programs or by manually altering the fast flags on the client, which is only possible with the Win32 executable version of Roblox.

It appears that 60 frames per second will still remain the default, however this setting allows you to cycle between limits of 30, 60, 144 or 240 frames per second. This feature will be available on all platforms except for VR.

UPDATE 12th Feb 2024: Added information on platform availability.

UPDATE 7th Feb 2024: Added information on frame rate limits.

The features discussed in this article were unreleased at the time of publication and may be modified or removed without notice. Explorers of the Metaverse is not liable for any damages or injuries which may result as of enabling these features yourself and is not able to guarantee the release of the unreleased features.

Recently, Daniel Sturman, the Chief Technology Officer at Roblox along with other Roblox staff members hosted an Ask Me Anything session on the Developer Forums. Here is a compilation of their responses which directly pertain to developers, involving topics such as developer pay, engine features and improvements and discovery algorithms for experiences and UGC items.

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Q: (CarBluGStudio) […] At RDC 2021, [Sturman] revealed that he had plans to bring dedicated servers to South America, which we still don’t have, although Brazil, for example, is the second country with the most Roblox players and developers. Does Roblox still have these plans? We’re excited to be able to play our favorite games with lower latency and I can say, on behalf of the entire community, that we’d love to hear from you. You can see this in the comments on Roblox’s Twitter posts, which are full of people asking for a server here in Brazil.

A: (STURMAN) We continue to investigate where we might place new datacenters with an eye to improving latency for users across the globe. That investigation so far has shown that networking in South America is tricky - the countries don’t interconnect well. For example, a datacenter in Brazil would not serve Peru particularly well. Thus the utility of the datacenter becomes limited. That said we’re still looking at it and balancing how we improve latencies for a large community while also ensuring those servers are well utilized.

Q: (brooke) What does the future of Robux look like for developers? Can we expect that developers will be using USD (or some other real-world currency) for all developer-related transactions at some point in the future? If that’s the case, how do you plan to support creators who aren’t able to pay for things with real-world currency? This is an especially prevalent question, given the latest Creator Store announcement.

A: (AELARIX) Today, we are using real world currency in areas where there are third party platform requirements or dynamics that make the use of real world currency more suitable (like Creator Store, and subscriptions within experiences). We will be learning from these areas and will use those learnings to determine where we have opportunities. However, there are no active plans today to use it for other developer transactions in the near term.

Q: (Pyseph) Hello! it has soon been eight years without any official response or awareness regarding the ability to change colors of MeshParts - in the same way as how you can edit the colors of decals. This has been requested my many reputable studios and developers, and the lack of this feature makes asset reuse multiples of times harder and wastes memory by reuploading the same texture under a different hue. Even if it is not technically plausible at this stage, receiving an acknowledgement towards the issue would be highly appreciated!

A: (STURMAN) We are working to improve how coloring/tinting happens, and we have an internal prototype of SurfaceAppearance tinting. We also have an initial API we’re experimenting with internally. We’re going to continue to work on this and understand this is a high priority request, but given the technical challenges here we have no date to announce right now.

Q: (Ben) Are there plans to allow selling of models on the creator marketplace? It would allow creators a large amount of autonomy and trust when actually selling items, and would bring the Creator Store to an entirely new level. If not, how do you plan on improving the Creator Marketplace?

A: (AELARIX) We’ll begin onboarding plugins for USD in Feb, which will enable creators to earn 100% of sales revenue (after taxes and transaction fees). We plan to enable creators to sell models via the Creator Store soon after plugins go live, likely in the 2nd quarter of the year.

Q: (Boogie) What is the current status of releasing the upcoming Audio API and enabling AudioDeviceInput? Super excited for that.

A: (STURMAN) We aim to release the Audio API in the next month or so, so stay tuned! It will allow enabling AudioDeviceInput and new opportunities for routing audio.

Q: (WWWWWW HELLO_howare) When are we getting [accessory positioning] for avatars?

A: (AELARIX) We’re working on making accessory adjustments for avatars available in the first half of this year […]

Q: (kal) [deleted]

A: (STURMAN) Great question. We would love for everyone to be able to access our powerful APIs, both Open Cloud and otherwise, without proxies as well. For the former, we’re actively working out a design to make Open Cloud APIs available in-experience. Lots of great functionality has been added to Open Cloud, and we know there’s great potential for these APIs in-experience. Quality and stability are important to us so stay tuned on an update on timing later this year. Accessing other Roblox services without proxies is further out. Stay tuned for more updates on the Creator Roadmap.

Q: (ffrostfall) Can we have clarification on when/what the spatial voice chat API is going to look like? […]

A: (STURMAN) We’re diligently working on the beta release of our new Audio API which should be out in the next month or so. It includes highly anticipated controls over sound and voice that were previewed at RDC. You can access all the use cases you mentioned including exercising more control over spatial simulation of voice, modifying voice, walkie-talkies, push-to-talk, and more!

Q: (TypeRamadan) In your previous communication, it was stated that user-generated content (UGC) accessories would be open for public uploads by early 2024. As we have entered this timeframe, I would like to inquire about the measures Roblox intends to implement to address the challenges of counterfeit and inappropriate items in the catalog, particularly in light of the multitude of counterfeit and inappropriate accessories during the current private UGC access period?

A: (STURMAN) This is an important issue. We are building a Rights Manager for rights holders to easily file takedown requests for duplicate or counterfeit versions of items they created. We plan to build additional functionality that will allow creators to sign up to be notified about potential similarities between new items and items they created. From there they can choose to take action to request takedown, etc. Rights Manager is planned for launch in the next few months. For any other policy violating items (like nudity, etc), we are continually improving our detection systems and processes with human moderators to detect and remove content faster and with greater accuracy. Users and creators can also utilize our reporting flow for any cases where it is taking us longer to remove the content ourselves or if we haven’t yet detected it.

Q: (Kobe) Hello, I want to ask if the upcoming code assist feature will be really helpful for everyone? Pls leak some info about that. Thx!

A: (STURMAN) The glib answer is that we certainly hope it will be helpful to just about everyone! Since the introduction of Assistant we have expanded the ability to create code from scratch from natural language, understand code and improve code with the result that code creation is now more accessible to everybody. We’ve seen a wide range of creators in the beta and are seeing significantly faster coding for users across the board. We are very focused right now on the quality of suggestions and seeing the rate of acceptance of these suggestions tick up. Expect Assistant to get increasingly more powerful over the course of the year with regular updates.

Q: (DJX) […] The roadmap says [UI Flex Layouts] is now live but it appears to still be in beta (only works in studio.) Are there any updates as to when this will be fully released?

A: (STURMAN) We are working on fully launching FlexLayouts in the next few months, so stay tuned!

Q: (Abcreator) With the beta release of EditableImages / EditableMeshes, it was mentioned that some form of asset privacy will be implemented to both APIs, with an example given of UGC avatar-accessories as non-editable. Is there a reason why assets (which are loadable in-experience) are not going to be editable regardless of whether I have the intent on publishing or not. I really just want to make some cool effects on player avatars (and not publish such effects), but this upcoming restriction is giving me fear that it may not be possible soon.

A: (STURMAN) Over time, we will significantly expand the capabilities of Editable* assets to do everything from supporting live replication/co-creation to supporting robust permissioning so that you can implement use cases like what you mentioned. That will all be within the confines of ensuring content creators maintain control of their creations and derivatives from those creations. For v1, we wanted to start with a smaller, more focused set of functionality so that we could bring a new capability to the platform safely and use it as a basis to learn/iterate. Furthermore, we want to make sure we have a more robust asset permissioning system generally that we can leverage to implement the right permissions for Editable*, and we didn’t want that to block the release of v1 of Editable*. Your feedback to v1 will help determine the roadmap and priorities, so please give feedback in the devforum threads about this functionality.

Q: (build) Is there a possibility of compute shaders coming to Roblox sometime in the future

A: (STURMAN) We have some improvements planned for this year for custom materials, like allowing more than global overrides with terrain materials, but bigger improvements for materials/shaders will likely come in 2025. Specifically, we are looking at ways to make custom materials more robust with more customization and to better unify SurfaceAppearance and materials. We think this will address many of the needs people have around custom shaders. Long-term, we believe we will provide customizable shaders, but due to the complexity of making them run robustly across all platforms and devices we support, it’s very much just in the research stage.

Q: (Yasu) On the roadmap, dynamic filters were put on hold. Is there any information that can be provided about why?

A: (AELARIX) Thanks for bringing this up - we acknowledge that this was a previous commitment that we are now changing. Upon further investigating the implementation of the feature, we realized that genres on Roblox are a very fluid concept, and the originally designed feature wouldn’t have worked in the desired manner. We are now thinking about how to build trusted sources of genre information: from creators, users and other expert sources, and how to do that at scale and in a way that can’t be abused. When we have a more robust design and plan, we will get back to our community with more information.

Q: (Shoomama) Will voice chat ever be expanded beyond just 50 player servers? This could open up a lot of cool possibilities for communication based experiences at 100 or even 200 player servers.

A: (STURMAN) Great question! As we improve the efficiency of voice chat we’ll raise the limits. For 2024, we’re working on increasing our voice chat server sizes to 100 users. Our long-term vision is to keep scaling to allow you to eventually connect with an unlimited number of users for more immersive experiences like concerts.

Q: (WhoseTrade) you guys say this one line quote on nearly every post touching on the topic of UGC “to help grow creator earnings”. however in this specific context of the avatar marketplace, creators continue to get the short end of the stick with no meaningful progress. when can we expect a more fair split for avatar products, especially in regards to affiliate fees earning a higher split than creators of the products themselves?

A: (AELARIX) We continue to invest into supporting a healthy Marketplace ecosystem, where different items can succeed, and prices can support more creators. The split between affiliates and creators encourages the marketing and distribution of items beyond the Marketplace, which in turn attracts more buyers to your items. We are exploring future improvements such as giving creators more control on where they sell their items so creators can make their best decisions on where to sell their products. And in the future, we will explore ways to create more flexibility on affiliate fees.

Q: (CSJeverything) Any update on when [allowing ID verification whilst underage] will become a feature […] ? This is severely impacting my and many other developers’ experience on Roblox.

A: (AELARIX) We’re actively working on this feature and ensuring it meets all safety and regulatory requirements. We will share an update as we get closer to a firm release date.

Q: (Outlook) Is there any plans to focus more on #feature-requests like has been done with #bug-reports in recent years? Over the past few years Roblox has shown a heavy focus on bug reports, while this is great and all, roblox seems to be neglecting feature requests, with many of them being left without a response from Roblox. Would love to see an effort to focus more on these feature requests in the coming year and providing an official response to each. Many of these features are trivial things that can make the development experience so much better and allow us to create things both faster and better.

A: (STURMAN) Great question. Creator input of bug reports and feature requests are a key part of how we improve the platform. We’re glad you’re noticing the progress we’ve made on bug reports. We have made significant progress on bug closures, and made sure each bug gets to a development team. But there is more work to do, as we’d like to open #bug-reports to even more creators. #feature-requests have to be handled somewhat differently. Our product and engineering teams review these regularly and those ideas go into our thinking about the roadmap. But it is one of many inputs into that roadmap process. As such, we might not take each request on as described, or even feel now is the right time (vs a bug report where, honestly, we just don’t want any bugs!)

Q: (Marcus) Do you guys ever plan on allowing us to run our code in a Roblox environment through CI? There have been numerous times that our workflows has been broken due to changes to how the security cookie works. But at the same time there doesn’t seem to be any other alternatives offered like headless studio, roblox-cli or analogous.

A: (STURMAN) A key area of focus for us right now is enhancing our support for large creator teams and more sophisticated development processes, including CI and CD. You can expect us to provide full support for CI-type functionality, so you can securely and programmatically build, test, and deploy Roblox assets, including experiences. The core capability to run tests for your environment should be possible in the first half of this year with richer capabilities to follow.

Q: (dphfox) Hello! I’ve only one quick question; can we expect to see upgrades to UI visual quality any time soon? In particular, it’d be nice to see antialiased rotated UI and fractional font sizes for smooth animation 🙂

A: (STURMAN) Our primary focus right now is flex layouts and custom styling, as we believe these will make building UI on Roblox significantly easier. Later this year, we will shift focus to work on UI improvements, and we will make sure these are on our backlog.

Q: (Lumine) Are there going to be any changes to Game Discovery / the algorithm in the near future? […]

A: (AELARIX) The Discover page represents a very small percentage of impressions and playtime, and is an area that we plan to fully revamp in H1. One important thing to note is that the main landing page for recommendations and game discovery is Home, which contributes to the vast majority of impressions for experiences, discovery and playtime on Roblox. This is the area where we have made most of our product investments and are seeing good success with new experiences breaking out and being discovered by more users. We are planning to continue to improve the user experience and recommendations on Home.

Q: (Ignited) When will future updates like the “Up Direction” to the new character physics controller be released?

A: (STURMAN) “Up Direction” and other updates to the new character physics controller should be released in beta in the first half of the year. We want to make sure we get this right and the quality level is there for the release.

Q: (vell) […] I would like to ask for some details about the “Alt Detection” and “Banning API”. Can we have more information about envisioned functionality of these such as will there be a possibly new Disconnect screen along with the new api, will users be able to provide ban reasons, length etc. Will these features come along in one function or separate? […]

A: (STURMAN) Great question. We know how important this is to ensure experiences are safe and you can manage them well. Key functions we expect to provide are the ability for a creator to use the Ban API to ban a user with configurable duration and reasons, to unban a user themselves, and to read the previous moderation history for their experience. By integrating with the platform’s alt detection, when a creator bans a user all of their alt accounts will also be banned with high precision. We expect this feature to be available by summer of this year.

Q: (younite) Currently the UGC limited profit share is completely unreasonable and unbalanced. There is no reason to make limiteds due to the expected profit loss, yet Roblox keep pushing it and promoting the feature. Will we expect to see a more fair and equal profit share for UGC limiteds in the future?

A: (AELARIX) Thanks for the feedback. Limiteds are a relatively new product for us and we are constantly looking to iterate and improve it. By having a quantity, this creates scarcity and can increase the value of the item. Since launching in 2023, we have seen Limiteds selling out and resale transactions higher than the original price. With that said, we are exploring some changes to how Limiteds work and the per-unit fees ahead of opening up creation for anyone in order to address some of these concerns.

Q: (orca) What are your plans regarding roblox-made limited items? Back in 2022 you started making old items go limited from time to time, and i was wondering if you plan on doing that again.

A: (AELARIX) Thanks for the question. We don’t have any immediate plans to do so. With that said, we are regularly evaluating our approach to Roblox-created items.

Q: (Owen) Social interaction and community is key to Roblox games. Are there plans to expand the SocialService to prompt players to join groups from in-game? Related to groups, will the new “Collaboration” feature on the Creator Dashboard that has recently been announced replace groups in future?

A: (STURMAN) Thanks for this feedback. We’ll look at expanding SocialService to allow inviting a group of players, though it’s not something we’re actively working on. We appreciate the suggestion! For social interaction broadly, we’re also thinking about how to enable durable groups, and enabling the ability to join communities too. We’ll be moving the ‘collaboration’ use cases for groups to Creator Hub over time, but these changes will not replace the social use cases for groups.

Q: (idelww) Is there any planned graphical improvement [better shadows, custom material overlays, volumetric fog, advanced graphics settings] coming for PC and higher end devices when the mobile graphics improvement announced at RDC will come in?

A: (STURMAN) Based on community feedback, many creators avoid adopting newer features due to their lack of ability on the low end. For now, we are focusing on improving mobile performance, fidelity and scalability so that our higher-end features are available to more players. As we close this gap we will transition to adding more features at the high end like some of those that you mention. [Sturman also references StreamingEnabled in a related answer]

Q: (M4nele) Will we be able to upload accessories with SurfaceAppearance? Only Bundles and LC accessories support it currently.

A: (STURMAN) Yes. We are in final performance testing and plan to release this feature soon!

Q: (metatablecat) My question regards the reworked Studio UI, generally, whats the progress on it, but also, at RDC 2023, it looked like Studio would support multiple WorldModels in the tab divider, where tools could render their own isolated views per tab (though I might be misremembering here)

A: (AELARIX) Thank you for sharing your excitement about the new Studio UI. We are planning to release the first Studio UI and ribbon update in beta in early Q2. We have no plans to release a multi-view viewport in Studio but we released further improvements on docking last November that allows for more flexibility in the UI layout.

Q: (Phantom) A Roblox Admin stated back in January of 2023 that there was a plan to release a callback loop synced with Physics rate, akin to Unity’s FixedUpdate method. The need for this is immense for numerous uses, one such being raycasting vehicles which my team has been trying to implement for a while but can’t because of this limitation. Can we expect to see an update on this anytime soon?

A: (STURMAN) This is still coming, but we are taking a step back to look at this in the context of what we call our “next-generation programming model.” We’d like to take everything we’ve learned to improve the programming model so that simple things (like data binding) are trivial and more advanced things (like streaming) are also easier and seamless or free. As we do that, we’ll enable physics scripts, but also other types of scripts that need to run at different rates, like audio scripts. Obviously this is important to get right and we are still working out all the details. Given this, we don’t have an exact timeline, but we are working on it!

Q: (Silly) Will there be a better version of the decoration system (grass) such as our own models that are procedurally placed similar to how it was demonstrated in the RDC when it was first announced?

A: (STURMAN) Since we previewed decorators a few years back, we’ve taken a step back to think about how we can support these in a more general framework. We are currently gathering feedback and working on a plan for a unified, scalable, and flexible system that works for everything from smaller objects like grass to larger ones like forests. Given other priorities this year, we don’t anticipate these improvements arriving until next year.

Q: (Rapid) Are there any plans to increase server memory?

A: (STURMAN) We do not have immediate plans to increase server memory, but we are working to improve memory efficiency which will let you do more with the current allocations. Longer term we will of course be increasing server memory, but I don’t have any concrete timeline on this.

Roblox has announced today that the Creator Store, formerly the Creator Marketplace will transition from using Robux as its currency to using USD in order to give creators 100% of the revenue from their products, minus taxes and transaction fees from the payment processor.

Additionally, the Creator Store will also soon allow for models to be sold, with the same system applying.

Creators will first need to set up their seller accounts using Roblox’s chosen payment processor to allow for funds to be deposited directly into their payment method of choice before being allowed to put models and plugins up for sale, whether for USD or for free. This will occur before late-March, where the currency switch is scheduled to occur, with selling models to come soon after.

The full announcement is provided here.

In a tweet posted by Roblox, authorities have been closely working with Roblox to maintain the safety of the venue. According to an email sent to attendees, the awards show may be held at a different date.

To combat online extremism, Explorers of the Metaverse will not reveal who made these threats or the contents of these threats.

This year, Roblox might have listened. Whilst today’s announcements may seem more minor than of years past, the features which have been announced have been begged by developers for years, some over half a decade. So what’s new for this year?

The big announcements

Roblox to release on PlayStation next month

After years of players and developers asking for Roblox to be released on the PlayStation, it’s coming. Roblox has announced that it will arrive in October for both the PS5 and the PS4. It is now listed on the PlayStation Store with an ESRB rating yet to be determined, although likely to align with Xbox’s Mature rating. Along with the Meta Quest app and the well-established platforms of Xbox, PC/Mac and mobile, this is yet another platform to play Roblox on, with more platforms to come.

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Subscriptions officially revealed

Previously covered on Explorers of the Metaverse, Subscriptions have finally been revealed officially to Roblox developers today.

In addition to details discussed in the article, a Roblox spokesperson has confirmed to CNBC that developers will be given 70% of their subscription revenue in Robux. This means that it will follow the same taxation model as game passes and developer products with developers earning 24.5% of total game revenue.

The mock up for Subscriptions shown at this year’s Roblox Developer Conference (RDC) however appears to use dollar signs, suggesting that players will be able to pay in hard cash (USD).

Translation strings published after the publication of the previously mentioned article suggests some criteria required to be able to create and enable subscriptions in experiences, such as being ID-verified, and other experience-related criteria. These strings also reveal that the initial 70% cut for developers may increase by 15% for subscriptions purchased on Desktop after 3 months.

Hard advocacy from plugin developers pays off

After persistent activism by plugin developers themselves and use of other platforms such as itch.io for distribution, Roblox will now give the whole of the revenue pie (that is, 100% of all revenue pre-taxation) to developers who sell their items on the Creator Marketplace, currently limited to plugins. Developers will also be able to sell using USD in the Marketplace in addition to Robux.

It is important to note that the taxation system for Robux processed through the Developer Exchange program still remains for Robux earnt through Creator Marketplace sales.

Surprisingly, when Chief Product Officer Manuel Bronstein, the cheering and applause was rather quiet. In contrast, the mention of Supersocial’s experience World Lab funded by the Game Fund generated loud cheers from the crowd.

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Giving the banhammer to developers

After the launch of Hyperion anti cheat system that Roblox bought the company who developed it for, Roblox Chief Technology Officer Daniel Sturman announced that APIs relating to banning players from experiences, with the ban system and alt account detection to be handled by Roblox themselves rather than developers previously. Sturman also hints that experience bans may also now affect platform standing, potentially reducing the number of bad actors on the platform.

Hyperion will also be expanded to the Android app and the Microsoft Store version of Roblox (commonly referred to as UWP, which is the SDK which the app runs on) to the chagrin of developers who recently blocked players who installed the game with the Microsoft Store.

Don’t say stupid s*!#$

Roblox’s machine learning moderation engine will now be in charge of live voice chat encounters, giving players live warnings and bans in accordance with Roblox’s policies.

It is worth watching the simulated demonstration: Substack can't embed YouTube clips yet.

The Appeals Portal was also demonstrated, allowing developers to directly view and appeal moderation actions.

Regarding the choice of the swear word used in the demonstration, David Baszucki responded to a question in a subsequent question and answer session that using profanity will eventually become acceptable in 17+ experiences.

In-experience creation, now with some AI

Roblox may soon release a feature to create avatars based on images and text prompts in experiences, in addition to boosting in-experience creation features for use on the wider platform which are currently at an early stage today.

AI, AI, AI

If that’s not enough AI for a single keynote, Roblox will also bring additional AI-driven features to Roblox Studio, from chatbots which aid with experience creation and development to generative AI to create mesh textures and models based on user prompts. Roblox will also open a program allowing developers to contribute code to the dataset used to train these generative AI features.

Native code sync

Roblox will release native code sync, allowing developers to synchronise code from their experiences to their computer and open it in software such as Visual Studio Code. Unfortunately, not only does it not support the full range of features of Rojo, a community-led project with similar goals, it also isn’t called Azul.

Roblox Connect (voice and video calls, not the event)

Roblox Connect (the event where developers participate in events, networking and a Game Jam) will be renamed, with the new Roblox Connect being a video calling feature allowing users to connect with each other using voice, facial animation and emotes in different landscapes, with different backdrops and camera settings along with greater OS-level integration with the contacts list and notifications.

$1499 $1000 Meta Quest Pro Headset to be bundled with $80 RDC Ticket

Announced in an email after the keynotes, Meta, one of the partners of RDC this year would providing a free Quest Pro to every in-person attendee of RDC. What is causing considerable controversy is that this offer is not extended to those attending virtually, despite meeting the same criteria for invitations as those who attended in-person.

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Roblox to release on Meta Quest soon

Overshadowed by the previous news, Roblox would announce that Roblox will exit App Lab and fully launch on the Meta Quest store this month.

The ones most missed

Low spatial voice adoption

One of the glaring statistics that stuck out like a sore thumb was the percentage of 13+ users using Spatial Voice - 12%. Baszucki seemed rather surprised with the low percentage, initially uttering 30% - the growth that Spatial Voice has had year on year. Given that Roblox’s vision is focused on giving users the choice in how they communicate, it is a reflection of the high barriers of entry and erroneous moderation that have arisen.

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A more universal Xbox App

Roblox also implicitly teased the Universal App for Xbox, allowing for greater iteration by Roblox and a more modern interface, a far cry from the current archaic user interface. No release date was announced.

General fidelity and workflow improvements

A new audio API, the use of real names on Roblox, the announcement of the Secrets Store as well as more accurately representing Future lighting with Voxel technologies and other features not discussed in this article were also announced at RDC.

Five Years Forward

Baszucki also shared details regarding the predictions he made in 2018 regarding the next 5 years on Roblox:

Five years back

First though, a moment of introspection. Some of those predictions used to be ludicrous but have been realised today. The other predictions though are still ludicrous.

The new predictions

Here’s the next 10 for the next 5 years, with some comments scattered around:

• #10 Fortune 500 Company Uses Roblox for Recruitment

  • An expected goal given efforts that Roblox has made towards Roblox Office, an internal experience

• #9 A full K-12 curriculum will integrate with Roblox experiences

  • This is consistent with Roblox’s education vision for the past few years

• #8 Socially deprived 17+ users find romantic relationships on Roblox

  • Whilst this was mentioned in a recent interview done by Baszucki with The Verge, it was definitely not expected by many in the audience

• #7 Roblox employees will use Roblox for meetings rather than real life

  • Like #10, this goal reinforces Roblox’s internal goals of moving towards Roblox itself as a work environment

• #6 Roblox will implement a social credit score

  • It is difficult to see this to not come with backlash

• #5 Roblox creators will profit off more from physical merchandise than Roblox avatar items

  • Given that creators of avatar items are paid at a much lower rate than experience developers, this seems feasible

• #4 David Baszucki’s family will use Roblox to communicate

• #3 A top Roblox fashion designer will emerge in the real world

• #2 A musician will perform live to over 1 million people on Roblox, using only a phone

  • This is consistent with the vision of those such as Chief Scientist Morgan McGuire

• #1 A Roblox developer will be worth $1 billion

  • Crazy? I was crazy once. Maybe it will be worth it.

According to recently published translation keys and strings, Roblox is planning to reintroduce parent accounts on the platform under a feature called Verified Parental Consent, allowing them to control certain parts of their child’s experience in accordance with new legislation being introduced by governments across the globe.

“Roblox account with parental privileges”, referred to as Parent Accounts in this article, can be created when an account has been locked for unauthorized transactions, or if an account registered to a user under the age of 18 attempts certain actions on the Roblox platform. When this happens, an email is sent to the email account linked to the account, prompting the parent to accept or to deny the request.

If the parent chooses to accept the request however, the account linking flow will begin. If the email is new to Roblox, the parent will create their own Roblox account. After that, the parent must go through ID verification to complete the process. Up to 5 parent accounts can be linked to a child account.

Child accounts can be unlinked either automatically, once the birthday associated with the account correlates to the age of majority (in most of the world 18) or if the parent contacts Roblox Support.

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Verified Parental Consent will also be added in the sign up flow for new users under the age of 18, although this process will not require ID verification or the creation of a parent account (although the option may present itself later). These users will be required to obtain an authentication code from their parent’s email address in order to create their Roblox account and to use the platform.

This unreleased feature comes after various countries such as the United Kingdom (see Explorers of the Metaverse coverage of the UK Online Safety Bill), in addition to several US states are looking to increase restrictions and surveillance on social media in a bid to “make children safer”. It is vital that these measures as scrutinised heavily to ensure that important digital rights are not violated by any government or corporate entities.

Parent accounts were previously a feature of the Roblox platform, being removed in the early 2010s.

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UPDATE 29th Aug 2023: The age of majority for this feature is likely to be 18, as seen in translation strings published after the publication of this article. Mentions of the age of majority in this article have now been switched to only mentioning the age of 18. This also means that Verified Parental Consent will also be applied to users between the ages of 13 and 17 inclusive in jurisdictions where it is implemented, and the article has been updated accordingly.

All references to “Roblox accounts with parent privileges” (Parent accounts) discussed in this article are currently unreleased and may be modified or removed without notice. Explorers of the Metaverse is not liable for any damages or injuries which may result as of enabling these features yourself and is not able to guarantee the release of the unreleased features.

Roblox may soon allow developers to try out the new Chrome top bar to test integration opportunities in games, as seen in new translation strings released today.

The buttons in the new Chrome menu are circular in nature, with a Roblox menu button, as well as a slide over menu activated by clicking a block symbol. Here, players will be able to find the toggles for text chat, the leaderboard and the emotes menu as with the previous iteration of the menu. Added to this menu is a button to quickly report the experience or another player, a dedicated button for voice chat and a “window”, which merely allows the user to resize the window between two sizes (this is currently unreleased, hence some features may not be working currently), as well as an overflow menu containing the items which were in the old menu.

According to these new translation strings, there will also be API to allow developers to customise the placement of these new menu interfaces, to allow for better integration within the experience. At this time however, there is currently no information on what this may entail in terms of customisability.

The video below demonstrates the menu in action:

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UPDATE 29th Aug 2023: This feature is now available as a beta feature and will be released soon under Updated Experience Controls

All features of the new topbar “Chrome” discussed in this article were unreleased at the time of publication and may be modified or removed without notice. Explorers of the Metaverse is not liable for any damages or injuries which may result as of enabling these features yourself and is not able to guarantee the release of the unreleased features.

Subscriptions that developers can implement in their experiences have been talked about since 2019, and it’s finally on the horizon. Here is what is known so far:

All features of Subscriptions discussed in this article are currently unreleased and may be modified or removed without notice. Explorers of the Metaverse is not liable for any damages or injuries which may result as of these features.

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Not just 1 type of subscription

There won’t be just 1 type of subscription: Roblox plans to categorise subscriptions into 3 types which are Currency, Durable and Consumable.

Durable subscriptions are the most familiar for those who have used other platforms - providing access to a permanent feature. Currency subscriptions are similar to Roblox Premium, where the player receives a set amount of currency each billing cycle whilst Consumable subscriptions give players items which are temporary in nature.

The differences between these 3 subscription types will be explained in a Creator Documentation page.

Only monthly (for now?) but different currencies?

There is only 1 billing cadence currently listed: monthly. More may be added in the future.

There is a listing for “Currency” inside the subscription creation flow. However, developers will be exclusively paid in Robux.

Different platforms, different earnings

Roblox will handle subscription deployment to multiple platforms. Alongside the subscription name and description displayed inside Roblox, it appears that a different subscription name can be displayed within app stores themselves (Xbox, Apple App Store, Google Play Store etc.). This name cannot be modified once set inside the subscription creation flow. Roblox will charge a higher rate for players purchasing a subscription through these app stores rather than the Desktop app.

Only for experiences

Subscriptions are only available for experiences. Furthermore, developers may have to pay (currency currently unknown) to create a subscription.

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To reduce avatar fragmentation of the platform and to ensure a common codebase for Roblox characters, two new Roblox Studio plugins are currently being developed to allow developers who still use R6, the original body type consisting of 6 parts to port their experiences over to the more modern R15, a much newer and much more capable body type and the base of most avatars on the Roblox platform today. These two new plugins are the R15 Migrator which serves to convert R6 avatars into R15 avatars and Roblox Classic, which emulates R6 avatars with R15 avatars.

R15 Migrator

The R15 Migrator is a plugin intended to be a one-stop-shop for developers to port character models, animations and scripts which currently use and reference the R6 character model system to R15. Screenshots of this plugin were first published on Twitter by LukePlayzzRBLX, highlighting the capabilities of the plugin.

When the R15 Migrator plugin is first loaded, the developer is prompted to start a scan of the place to detect R6 character models as well as animations and scripts which contain references to the R6 character model, which differs significantly both in naming and functionality to R15. This process may also involve attempts at automatic conversion of animations.

Once these processes are complete, the developer is presented with the character conversion menu, which will display a list of characters which have been converted, as well as characters which the converter was unable to find replacement R15 parts. In such cases the converter will replace the part with the equivalent R15 default.

The Animations pane will allow developers to preview animations before and after conversion. It will also point out animations which have not yet or cannot be converted. As it is currently unreleased, it is not yet fully functional.

The final tab is the Scripts tab, which acts as find and replace functionality for references in code to avatar parts used in R6 to be replaced by a reference to an R15 body part in all of the scripts in the place. Like the Animations pane, it is currently non-functional at this time.

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Roblox Classic

Roblox Classic will allow experiences currently forcing R6 avatars on their players to embrace the forwards-compatibility of R15 by allowing features such as dynamic heads and layered clothing whilst still retaining the aesthetic of the R6 character model known and loved by many today by inserting a set of scripts into the experience.

Upon opening the Roblox Classic plugin, developers are greeted with a slider (obviously highlighting that this is still unreleased. Translation strings suggest that there will be more components added in the future). Upon clicking said slider, the aforementioned set of scripts is inserted into StarterCharacterScripts. This includes a variant of the R15 Animate script animating the character as if it were an R6 character, a script scaling all characters to a similar scale as R6 characters currently are today and a script setting up an invisible “R6 replica” of the player’s character preserving bugs and features with the physics behaviour of R6 which are used heavily in certain niche communities, such as the obby community.

Here is a demonstration of Roblox Classic:

As observed in the video, the set of scripts provided for Roblox Classic significantly modifies the default behaviour of the R15 character, to the point of changing the emotes that are controlled through the chat to be similar to that of R6, whilst also enabling the capabilities of R15 characters such as dynamic heads and emotes controlled through the emotes menu. Whilst the video suggests that there will also be script and animation compatibility with Roblox Classic, this is unlikely to be the case universally.

There’s Still More that We Don’t Know

All these features are currently unreleased and may be modified or removed without notice. Attempt to enable these features at your own risk. Explorers of the Metaverse is not liable for any damages or injuries which may result as of these features.

It is clear that Roblox still have some tricks up their sleeve. As to what these tricks are, it will take time for them to be revealed.

UPDATE 29th Aug 2023: Roblox Classic as discussed in this article is currently available as a Studio Beta Feature under the name R6 to R15 Adapter

Roblox has not issued a statement regarding this change, and it is currently unknown as to why this measure has been put into place.

On Apple’s developer website, all age ratings except for 4+ are described as “contains instances of the following content which may not be suitable for children under the age of [age]”.

Recently, several strings have appeared inside of Roblox’s translation strings referring to a new feature called Organizations, allowing Roblox development studios to more granularly manage their collaborators and experiences. This feature was previously announced on the Roblox Creator Roadmap, however further details have emerged with regards to this new feature.

When a developer is invited to join the new Organizations preview, they will be prompted to enable organizations for one of their groups. The preview will be rolled out to more and more groups as Roblox deems is suitable for the feature. Once a developer accepts the preview, they cannot exit it.

Once enabled, Roblox developers will be able to access several new features, including some which have been asked for several years. This includes the ability to transfer experiences and assets (such as decals, audio, animations) from one user account to another user account or organization. Additionally, more specific asset access management permissions will be enabled, allowing certain developers to receive access to certain permissions (such as only allowing access to error analytics) without the ability to interfere with the rest of the development team. However, managing permissions related to group management (i.e. kicking members from groups) will remain on the main Roblox website at this time. There will also be more ways to share revenue generated from experience products to collaborators, however no further details have been specified at this time.

Note that these features are currently unreleased and are subject to changes without any further notice.

From here, one can create, enable/disable or modify their webhooks. To create a webhook, the developer must input a webhook URL to a service such as Guilded, Discord, Slack or other applications that support outgoing webhooks. This is also the screen where the webhook activations can be customised, as well as adding a secret to the webhook to verify the webhook request’s authenticity.

The webhook can also be tested. Here is an example response on Discord from pressing the “Test Response” button. For additional responses, refer to documentation:

For further information, documentation for this new feature is available.

On the 31st of March 2023, Roblox announced an open beta program for Immersive Ads - its program for immersive advertising in the metaverse. This update adds documentation and support for the two instance types used to serve advertisements in Roblox experiences in addition to the introduction of Immersive Ad Payouts and its relevant section of the Creator Dashboard.

Whilst third party solutions such as Super Biz (previously Bloxbiz) have existed for some time now, these third-party products are not to be confused with this new Roblox first-party product.

Developers can browse the Toolbox category designated for Ads to insert one of Roblox’s models for billboard advertisements and ad portals (which teleport players into the experience being advertised). Alternatively, they can create their own billboard ads through inserting an AdGui into a valid BasePart or create their own AdPortal by inserting an AdPortal with an AdGui child with an adornee into the part which players touch to be teleported. Developers can use the Status property of an AdPortal to determine a player’s eligibility for advertising and display other content appropriately.

Developers can also view metrics relating to the performance of the placements of their advertisements and the Robux payouts that have been received in a new section in Creator Dashboard.

Players under the age of 13, in addition to players who have seen too many advertisements in a relatively brief period of time will not be served immersive advertisements. Roblox does not use the data of players to target advertisements except for location data to geo-lock advertisements.

The program has a storied history, from being first pitched in Roblox’s S-1 where Roblox discussed about “explor[ing] other opportunities” such as “immersive brand advertising” to finally reaching creators hands today.

With this update, Roblox developers finally have three sources of revenue: directly from product purchases, Premium Payouts and now Immersive Ad Payouts.

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Dear [redacted - full name]

Thanks again for contacting us and please accept our apologies for the delay in responding.

We’re sorry that you weren’t happy with our initial response. Accuracy and impartiality are of the utmost importance to us - we listen carefully to what our audience tells us and have considered your comments in detail.

You said that the BBC’s editorial guidelines for accuracy were ‘violated’ over when the slogan ‘earn serious cash’ was first used by Roblox. File on 4 did not claim that it was published on the Roblox website in 2006. The programme said the slogan was included ‘soon after it was launched in 2006’ with the precise date it was incorporated by Roblox being unclear. However, the programme makers have evidence that the slogan was still present on the company’s website as recently as August 2021.

You also asked why games reviewer and journalist Quintin Smith was allowed to ‘make a blanket statement about Roblox developers being children.’ We’ve reviewed the programme and at no point does he suggest that Roblox developers are exclusively children. In fact the programme starts by hearing from Josh Monk-Dalton who’s 23 years old and a successful game developer.  

When it comes to whether Roblox has taken action against games, File on 4 made it absolutely clear that the company had introduced an age rating for some games. The programme went on to demonstrate that these age ratings were in some cases irrelevant at that point in time. Our reporter - purporting to be an 8 year old  girl – was still able to access a game with an age rating of 13. James Kay from Roblox was asked about this. Our reporter suggested to him: ‘Age restrictions aren’t on every game and they don’t work well’. Mr Kay responded by saying: ‘Experience guidelines are something we’ve just rolled out literally in the last few weeks, so it’s still rolling out and there will be those features in place to make sure parents can select the type of games that kids can play.’

The online safety bill could be an important part of children being better protected in the future on platforms like Roblox so it was right to hear views on this and some of the technology that could be used. The BBC is committed to due impartiality in all its reporting. However, it is worth noting that this does not mean that every aspect of a story is discussed within each individual report or programme. Instead, we aim to reflect a range of opinion over time and across our output as a whole, where there may also be more opportunity to explore an issue like the online safety bill in greater detail.

Thanks again for your feedback which have been shared with the programme and senior news managers.

This concludes Stage 1 of our complaints process. That means we can’t correspond with you further here. If you remain unhappy, you can now contact the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU). The ECU is Stage 2 of the BBC’s complaints process. You’ll need to explain why you think there’s a potential breach of standards, or if the issue is significant and should still be investigated. Please do so within 20 working days of this reply.

Full details of how we handle complaints are available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle-complaint/.

[redacted - information about how to send response to the ECU]

Kind regards

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

On the 17th of January 2023, the Online Safety Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons, advancing it to the House of Lords, where it has already undergone its first and second readings and is now in the committee stage where several amendments have been tabled.

One of these amendments was tabled by Lord Stevenson, a Labour life peer called “Application to experiential environments”. Currently, it merely defines an “experiential environment” (namely, an online service which simulates real world events and enables users to interact with one another), in addition to adding obligations for the Secretary of State to commission a review about how the Bill applies to these environments, as well as if more safeguards need to be implemented or not and considering how civil and criminal law should be applied to these worlds.

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Whilst this amendment does apply to all experiential environments and the powers of the Secretary of State is rather limited in this regard, it is important to note that the one environment that has been talked about the most, even more than general terms such as “VR”, “immersive environments” and “the metaverse”; as well as more specific platforms such as Horizon Worlds (not mentioned) and VRChat (also not mentioned), is “Roblox”, usually from SNP MP Kirsty Blackman discussing about “sex dungeons” to her personal opinion of “hav[ing] an awful lot of issues” but admitting that “it can be a pretty fun place for people to spend time”. It is clear that the intention of this amendment is to try to give the Secretary of State a leash to control a collared Roblox Corporation in response to the UK media’s reactions to the Roblox platform. Especially when there were discussions in the Lords to limit the Secretary of State’s powers in other parts of the Online Safety Bill, with these responsibilities amended to be delegated to Ofcom instead, this amendment is simply unacceptable.

There are other forms of media that the UK Parliament also wishes to block. Currently, the United Kingdom is experiencing a large amount of unauthorised migration via boat across the Channel, as people seek opportunities inside the UK. This is not an image the UK Government wishes to send out to the world, and therefore before the Third Reading in the Commons, an amendment was proposed requiring search engines and user-to-user services to classify content “that may result in serious harm or death to a child while crossing the English Channel with the aim of entering the United Kingdom in a vessel unsuited or unsafe for those purposes.” in the same category as content which are inappropriate for children, requiring age verification to view. This however is fairly loosely defined leading to situations such as the following:

If you are in France, you probably should construct a boat like I have on Roblox which is clearly not suitable for this voyage and make your way to Dover, home of the white cliffs and a major port so you can be in the UK, subject to laws such as the one that I have just broken, making this post not suitable for children. Any content like this which involves potentially unsafe water vehicles and crossing the English Channel may be considered to be against this amendment.

So who cares? What if I simply ignore the Online Safety Bill? Another amendment, tabled at the same time (then withdrawn, then reproposed in the House of Lords) would mean that this would no longer be possible without significant repercussions, as officers (i.e. the CEO and similar) or senior managers would face jail time of up to 2 years for failure to enforce this part of the Online Safety Bill.

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This level of punishment is unprecedented in the Western world, usually reserved for countries such as Saudi Arabia, who recently jailed Wikipedia administrators for not obeying their orders. Critics have predicted that this would lead to companies giving the task of “serving time in jail” not to the CEOs of said companies but to employees designated to take jail time for the company.

Roblox Corporation is already preparing for this inevitability, in the same way as those predictions. Back in 2021, they purchased Ceebr Limited which was associated with Code Kingdoms, an education product to teach children about coding in Minecraft and Roblox, renaming the company to Roblox UK Limited. There has been some progress in this regard with a demonstration of a product similar to Code Kingdoms in Roblox at RDC 2022.

Besides the IP acquisition, it seems that another objective of the acquisition is to provide an outlet for prosecutors in the event that Roblox is charged with an offense with the Online Safety Bill, with Mark Reinstra, an attorney and member of the Roblox legal counsel being given this responsibility as he is the only person assigned as the officer of the company, with the other active officer being Taylor Wessing Secretaries Ltd, which shares the same address as Roblox UK and provides legal services.

This raises an issue with this populist plan as not every company can afford a scapegoat to go to prison instead of one of the officers of the company, let alone the developers and maintainers who are the sole person responsible for their products not being able to use this tactic. It will make the UK a more difficult to place to start a technology company, directly juxtaposing the Secretary of State’s ambitions.

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In the meantime, the BBC has finally responded to the points raised in the first article of this series, although the verb “responded” would be rather generous for the reply that they have given. You may view the response here:

Explorers of the Metaverse

The BBC's Response

Dear [redacted - my full name], Thanks for contacting us about File on 4 - Roblox: A Dangerous Game? Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding. We raised your concerns with the programme team. They are satisfied that the report is accurate and standby their journalism…

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3 years ago · EcoScratcher

Whilst I have already replied to this response, there are some gripes with the response that aren’t been addressed in the complaint I sent to the BBC regarding their first response.

Explorers of the Metaverse

Complaint regarding the BBC's response to previous complaint

It is disheartening to hear that the BBC fails to uphold their values with regards to bias and accuracy by not responding to the points made within the claim, instead writing a blanket statement about how the programme team was “satisfied” that their report was “accurate…

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3 years ago · EcoScratcher

As a result of Football World Cup occurring during the same time which generated a significant number of complaints, in addition to the winter holidays putting a pause to processing, the response to my initial complaint took 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days to arrive. Whilst the delay would have been understandable given the context of the world, having to wait so long only to for the bare minimum to be done, not to mention how defensive the response was for some obviously incorrect content is simply insulting to those who pay their TV licensing fees.

There’s only one game experience left for both of us to play: advocate for the end of the Online Safety Bill and to wait.

The BBC’s editorial guidelines for accuracy were violated when Hayley Hassall states that Roblox was intended for young developers to “Earn Serious Cash” back when it first launched, when such claims never existed for over 5 years since its launch, a serious factual error violating the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy.

The response also did not address why Quintin Smith was allowed to make a blanket statement about Roblox developers being childrent1, when Roblox claims that the average age of a professional Roblox developer is 25, misleading the audience to think that all Roblox developers are children.

It did not address that Roblox has taken action against games which Hassall claimed that Roblox never took action on such as “Taliban Operation” and “[13+] NO KIDS ALLLOWED”, with the latter not having an age rating.

Jullian Knight2, former chairperson of DCMS was featured in the show, but continues to face no opposition for his claim that user-to-user services need to use non-existent technologies such as  “Language modification moderators”, in addition to not inviting those who oppose the Online Safety Bill such as the Open Rights Group or Big Brother Watch, who claim that the bill would severely damage privacy and security to users in the UK, which is important given the additional privacy rights that they are given in other countries, which violates the BBC’s guidelines with regards to impartiality in relation to public policy.

These inaccuracies, in addition to the response being a mere reassurance that the writers and producers responsible were satisfied, does not sufficiently resolve the complaint regarding the violations of the BBC’s editorial guidelines in the radio programme.

• EPS beat by +10.67% from consensus, revenue beat by +1.66%

• Roblox reaches 58.8mil DAU, a record for Roblox, up 19% YoY

• 13+ DAU up 26% YoY, U13 DAU up 11% YoY, continued strong growth in APAC and Europe compared to US/CA

• 13+ hours on platform up 28% YoY compared to U13 up 7%, with trends flipped with more hours spent in US/CA and Europe than APAC

• $291.5mil net loss in Q4 2022 compared to $147.3mil net loss in Q4 2021

Full Year 2022 (so far):

• Average DAU 56.0mil, up 23% YoY

• 49.3bil hours spent on the Roblox platform

• ABPDAU down 14% (11% based on fixed currency conversions) YoY. However, this is up in January 2023 0%-2% (3%-4% based on fixed currency conversions)

Earnings call

• David Baszucki heavily emphasises voice and facial animation rollouts, despite being delayed from original release targets.

• Investors would like to see ChatGPT in Roblox, despite not needing text-to-text chatbots on a platform designed for social connections between humans

• Expect a blog post from Roblox CTO Dan Sturman tomorrow about AI efforts (post has now released)

• 3D material generation from AI is being investigated

• Continued decrease in payment processing costs

• Scandanavia is a core market to Roblox, in addition to US/CA, UK, NZ

• Mike Guthrie, CFO of Roblox comments on DevEx being low percentage-wise in Q4 2022

  Yeah, Brandon [investor], so it's not intended to go down as a percentage of bookings. Bookings grew very quickly in the fourth quarter. So we had a little bit of, again, absorption, if you will, of the cost. And so -- but generally, if you look at that number over the last three or four years, you're going to see a shift of a few hundred basis points.

  So December was - Q4 in general was a little bit unusual because of the spike in the growth rate of bookings. Our intention is to continue to move more of the economics toward the dev community. Our intention is to continue to find innovative and cool ways of [sic] the devs to monetize on the platform through various sources of bookings and monetization. And yeah, normally, I would expect that that's one number that I can tell you will go up as a percentage of bookings this quarter and throughout the course of the year.

  So I'll go back up to where we have been, which is like that 22%, 23% range, and we'll still try to push through to higher numbers. So what you're seeing in Q4 was unintended leverage because of the top line. Does that make sense? 

  (In general, there should be a higher DevEx percentage in Q1 2023 as there are lower bookings in this quarter, with more of a window for DevEx cashout than in Q4 with the holiday period)

• Immersive Ads to launch self-serve this year, delayed from previous estimate

Webhooks: soon to be in Roblox

Webhooks will soon be added to Roblox for developers to use to communicate between Roblox servers and other services, such as Guilded, Slack and GitHub which support them.

Each user (as in user on the Roblox website, groups do not get extra) will be limited to creating 5 webhooks. This is because it is located in the Creator Dashboard user settings, instead of the experience or place settings, although this may be subject to change. This is backed up by the description text of the “Notifications” translation string mentioning “breadcrumbs navigation for the notifications settings page (emails/webhooks)”.

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LimitedU: Collectibles except in name

A new message has appeared referring to a “LimitedU holding policy”. This is interesting as the only item rarity that has been given a holding period so far are the new Collectible items. This change appears to allow traders who own items such as the Infernal Undead Immortal Sword which have not sold all their units yet (the current policy) to trade their items on the market.

Additionally, each Collectible and LimitedU item will now have a “Tradable” property associated with them, which is either “Yes” or “No”, depending on the holding period and the time of purchase.

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Team Create changes scrapped

With new leadership comes changes, the Roblox Creator suite is no exception, backtracking on controversial Team Create changes which would make it easier for users to create places in Team Create. In addition, the new leadership is also committed to supporting and maintaining file types associated with Studio, such as .rbxl and .rbxm although interestingly leaving out their XML counterparts.

2FA via Security Key to release on iOS/iPadOS

A new change to the description for 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) via Security Key have been spotted, as the description of the feature now reads that it is “Supported on web browsers, iPhone, and iPad.”, indicating that Security Key support for iOS and iPadOS devices will release soon. This is part of an industry-wide effort to support FIDO/passwordless authentication to increase the security of user accounts.

Luobu accounts must have a mobile number associated

One of the changes associated with the re-opening of Luobu (Roblox China) is that each Luobu account must be associated with a mobile number. This is unlikely to be a barrier for Luobu users as you must use a WeChat or QQ account to sign up for Luobu, with most of these accounts already having a mobile number associated with them.

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Dear [redacted - my full name],

Thanks for contacting us about File on 4 - Roblox: A Dangerous Game? Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding.

We raised your concerns with the programme team. They are satisfied that the report is accurate and standby their journalism.

We have shared your feedback with senior news managers and we’ve included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the company and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

Thank you, once again, for getting in touch.

Kind regards

BBC Complaints Team 
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints