The sound of silence
From today, some sounds on Roblox will turn to silence. A short piece on the changes.
From today, some sounds on Roblox, rather than playing as it usually did for the years that our now-former system held on for over eight years, are stopped.
The initial stages of the audio upload system limited users to upload audio filed up to 25 seconds. Costs dropped over the years, audio lengths extended, culminating up to this new system of free audio uploads with the cost of living with a restrictive 10 sounds per month limit, handing your I.D. over for 100 sounds or gain entry into the secretive 2000 club, requirements indeterminate but most likely depending on the number of visits one had on their account.
This move is destructive — many places no longer receiving updates or those who are unable to meet the tight two weeks given for such a task will soon have some or potentially all of their sounds turn into red text on the mostly-untouched Developer Console.
However, the move shouldn’t exactly the mass scale of destruction many had anxieties about on social media. Most of the players of the much-loved-yet-much-shamed front page games will not miss a beat as large developers have either licensed their sounds correctly or hired composers to create them. Sounds under six seconds will remain. So, most (although not all) sound effects will still be audible. Features have been fast-tracked to give developers a transition period, albeit a very short one. The flood of screenshots as a result of the misleadingly named “Audio Discovery” plugin already showed that some developers aren’t acting in the best of faith with some audio files already being removed for copyright, with others clearly not used in good faith in regards to copyright law.
I also refute the claims that Roblox would ever win the lawsuit that they settled with music publishers. It is simply a game of whack a mole — you win in one jurisdiction and you could lose the next. Such effects could cause confusion as the global audience of Roblox ponders why some can hear while others have somehow turned deaf. Not to mention the deep pockets and power developed by those who started such lawsuits.
Roblox is still relatively young in the game of being big and it might need some more acquaintances in this world. It has demonstrated an ability to move fast, albeit with faults when it has been criticised for moving slow. All that we can do now is for the changes to start.