Criticism of Roblox

Throughout its history, ROBLOX has been heavily criticized for a variety of reasons. These criticisms have been expressed through ROBLOX forum posts, YouTube, Twitter, and other media.

B0TM0D/MSE6
B0TM0D/MSE6 is a ROBLOX administrator. Many users on the Off Topic and ROBLOX Talk forums have criticized her for being corrupt. She is often accused of abusing her moderation privileges, allegedly banning users for invalid, inappropriate, or outright false reasons and giving out inappropriate and harsh punishments. Although they present little evidence for their allegations, many forum-goers believe B0TM0D to be the sole administrator responsible for all inappropriate moderation on ROBLOX.

Flawed In-Game Report System
ROBLOX allows for a user, in-game, on the site, or otherwise connected to ROBLOX to Report another player's behavior to the admins. This sends a complaint to the ROBLOX moderation team. The team then checks the chat log, to determine whom, if anyone, to punish, and in what way to do so. Because the Report Abuse system allows only chat violations to be reported, many players consider the feature to be useless for offenses that chat logs do not show, like the use of exploits or trolling (depending on the form). Multiple users have also complained that they have been punished for something they did not do. This has led some to believe that ROBLOX's report system is automated and designed to reprimand any user who is reported enough times.

Community
One of ROBLOX's most commonly criticized points is its relatively immature community. A typical player uses hardly any grammar and quite sensitive. The community of ROBLOX has been known to produce a tremendous amount of complaints about everything on the site, most commonly updates and "greed" of ROBLOX, typically without any real evidence for why these things are problems. Some believe that ROBLOX's community largely has issues with understanding the rules.

Guests
Main article: Guest

Guests are pre-configured ROBLOXians who have a multitude of restrictions and differences from normal users: Guests are generally disliked because they tend to cause more problems than do regular users. Guests cannot be reported. This allows users to do anything, regardless of the rules, without fear of repercussions. Due to this, some users troll or exploit as a guest and get away with it. Some users have taken it upon themselves to buy ads and create groups simply to show their hatred toward these users.
 * They used to speak via Safe Chat. However, their ability to use Safe Chat disappeared. However, as of an update somewhere within 2016, guests are able to read public chats.
 * They appear somewhat identical to ROBLOX's official account. In older versions, guests had a yellow head and arms, green legs and a blue torso. For a small period of time, when gear was released, guests had all of the gear that the ROBLOX character had. For a short period of time, because of ROBLOX having TBC, guests were allowed to access BC-only games.
 * A guest's name will be "Guest", followed by a random number between 0 and 9999.

While some users have requested that guests be able to use regular chat, ROBLOX has not yet implemented this feature.

Online Daters
Main article: Online Dating Online Dating is one of the biggest problems on ROBLOX and hated by many players. Players can tell if a player is an online dater by their appearance resembling a real-life person (wearing real-life-like clothes, such as glasses, top hats, headphones, hair, shirts, t-shirts, pants, etc., wearing pastel brown or dark brown skin, etc.). However, most people who are assumed to be ODers are not. City games, school games, and roleplaying games are such examples of common online dating hotspots. Since then, new players are starting to look like humans, because some players believe it makes them look "cool". Online dating is commonly seen as a predatory act and can result in outside interventions, aside from not fitting in with the kid-friendly nature. Many child predators try to online date to lure in children and get information about them outside ROBLOX.

Demographics Change
Around 2010, ROBLOX's demographic experienced a shift from a target age of 10–16 year olds to 6–8 year olds. New and simpler building tools, brighter and more colorful graphics, and sponsorships by products advertised to this age range exemplified this shift. Many of ROBLOX's older users quit ROBLOX because of this shift.

Christina8787
Christiana8787 is a user known for her Club Christy game, and for her rude advertisements of it. These advertisements attacked IronInforcer's Iron Cafe, using false claims, insults, and even lampooning IronInforcer himself. This led to user XiaoXiaoMan finally reviewing the game Club Christy through his Raging ROBLOX Reviewer series (and pointing out several lies and misconduct going on at Club Christy). After receiving comments shortly after XiaoXiaoMan's video went public, Christiana8787 created a video response. XiaoXiaoMan later made a counter video response titled Re: Raging Christy . Soon after XiaoXiaoMan's video was uploaded, Christina removed hers. Shortly after this incident, LegoIsReal uploaded a screenshot of Christiana8787's XFire chat with him. Within the chat, she admits to "being a slut". In response to her XFire comments, XiaoXiaoMan created another video.

Though Christiana8787's tensions with XiaoXiaoMan eventually faded, tension continues to exist between her and other ROBLOXians. At one point, she was accused of plagiarizing Patacorow's video.

SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX
Main Article: SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX

SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX is a user who, while mostly known for Live in A Five Star Island Resort and his F.E.A.R. group, has been the source of past controversies. In 2010, he created Live in A Five Star Resort, a game very similar to user Wierdoking's Original Five Star Resort, which at the time was a populated "hang-out" game. Many claimed SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX copied wierdoking, and used excessive amounts of free models to make his game different. This created a large amount of tension between the two users, and arguments between them began for a short time, but ended quickly. As of March of 2016, Original Five Star Resort has +1M visits, and SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX's Live in A Five Star Island Resort has +9M.

Soon after Live in A Five Star Island Resort was released, military clan F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) was created, which quickly amassed a large number of members. Not long after, F.E.A.R. was excessively advertised in SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX's games, leading some to believe that SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX used his popularity to quickly garner a large clan.

User XiaoXiaoMan eventually reviewed Live in A Five Star Island Resort, like he did with Club Christy, explaining that there was excessive lag, online dating, and an overabundance of free models, amongst other things, which led to him giving the game an overall negative review. He also claims that, in several other videos of his, that certain friends of his have found their accounts "hacked", and their accounts were soon in F.E.A.R.. XiaoXiaoMan also says that many alternate accounts of many users in the group, leading to a false number of members.

Around mid-2011, SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX was stated to have begged and bribed ROBLOX staff for free lifetime Outrageous Builders Club (which was a recent addition to the growing Builder's Club memberships). Although no evidence has been found (or released), many still believe that SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX did indeed bribe ROBLOX Staff for free OBC.

Jaredvaldez2, Jaredvaldez4, and Jared2valdez4
Main Article:Jaredvaldez4

Jaredvaldez4 is a user mostly known for copying games. He has stolen countless games, most of which were previously front page games. Some of the most notorious copies are:

The Infection (The Undead Coming, by Stealth Pilot)

What am I Drawing? (RO-Pictionary, by Ajedi32.) ( Unfortunately, at the time of writing, RO-Pictionary's original place has been deleted by ROBLOX. )

Jared's Script Builder (Script Builder, by Ananimus) ( Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Script Builder by Ananimus is currently off-limits to the public. )

When jaredvaldez4 was deleted, he said that 'he realized his mistakes of plagiarism', however immediately contradicted this statement, with the further creation of multiple alternate accounts and copying places again. His act of hypocrisy further increased the hate toward him.

In early 2012, when Jaredvaldez2 created StudioJARE on YouTube, BlabVoid and several members warned Jared that they would take action against him for copying them. Eventually, StudioJARE and his RoWar series, a blatant copy of the original, was also removed due to a copyright claim by StudioARE.

JuliusColesV2
JuliusColesV2 has been notorious for publishing 1dev2's unlocked game Welcome to the Town of Robloxia and adding free models. He is also known for copying free models and uploading them as his own, mostly as "proof" that he doesn't use free models, but his own.

Prophets
Prophets on ROBLOX will create random false Prophecies, Hoaxes, and conspiracies but somewhere around February 2017, theC0mmunity made a prophecy about John Doe hacking everybody on March 18 which was proven false since nothing happened on March 18 so another prophecy which was about an innocent user called Greg hacking everybody on March 24th which was again fake. these 2 Prophecies are believed to be spread around very fast by YouTubers such as Kazok. This is also believed to have introduced some Minecraft YouTubers to ROBLOX. Later, YouTubers such as ItsKolapo made a few videos on how YouTubers are "Juicing" for views, basically on how YouTubers were using this to click bait more views and subs.

Third-Party Advertisements
Users without ROBLOX memberships are played ads while they wait to be loaded into a game. However, some ads have been criticized excessively for being inappropriate for kids or containing malware, but no evidence has truly been given for either claim.

TV Advertisement (2011)
ROBLOX's old TV commercial was criticized for: SharpTH Media released a video explaining why this advertisement was flawed in its technique of attempting to get the attention of viewers.
 * Not mentioning membership and membership features.
 * The commercial using highly edited skyboxes, CGI, and staging to give the game a more professional look. This may be due to the targeted audience being more interested in exciting advertisements.
 * The "ROBLOX, It's FREE!" is criticized by some users because they believe the game is freemium, rather than free.

What Will You Build (2012)
ROBLOX's 2012 advertisement was also highly criticized by many for similar "offenses" in the past video, such as special effects and false claims: Tzsara released a video about this advertisement and exploring its contents and flaws. However, despite the false advertising, this commercial was not as badly criticized as 2011's commercial (see above).
 * From 0:16 to 0:19, all the models presented are CGI-animated rather than in-game.
 * At 0:20, a Minecraft TNT is very briefly seen among the debris of the exploded castle. This has resulted in high negative criticism from Minecraft players viewing the video.

Forums
The forums on ROBLOX has been criticized because of the amount of spam of useless posts and highly inappropriate users on most of the forum sections.

ROBLOX Talk
Main Article: ROBLOX Talk

ROBLOX Talk is one of the most criticized forum sections in ROBLOX, it mostly consists of internet memes (things which are against the forum rules, along with a useless post that has little to no meaning). Some forum posts will have contents that are off topics such as today's occurrences, advertisements for a user's place and/or group, RT parties, administrator's actions and many other useless posts.

Notable Incidents

 * On April 1, 2012, the infamous ROBLOX "hack", admin accounts began posting unusual threads about "the truth".


 * On November 29, 2012 with the release of the Newshound gift, false rumors spread saying that commenting "Newspaper :D" would grant players the gift. However, ROBLOX stated in a post that doing this could instead give players a ban for spamming.
 * On March 26, 2013, when the egg hunt just got started, users made topics saying "This is a thread discussing the TL;DR egg. This egg can be obtained by writing a long post or thread on the forum." over and over again until the user got the TL;DR egg. However, in reality, to get the TL;DR egg, the player will have to find an advertisement banner that tells the user that he/she can get the egg by clicking on the advertisement to get the egg in question.
 * On April 14, 2013, controversy arose when MrDoomBringer made a post on a thread stating that ROBLOX Talk could possibly be deleted. After a negative uproar from the ROBLOX Talk community, moderator ChiefJustus confirmed that ROBLOX Talk would not be deleted via another thread. MrDoomBringer later said that they were not planning to do this, and it was just a side note in a meeting. MrDoomBringer also stated that they would not merge ROBLOX Talk with Off Topic.
 * On July 2, 2014, another subforum named C&G leaked nude photos of an RT'er, and it very quickly spread into RT and OT. As a result, a few RT'ers and OT'ers kept reposting the link onto their subforum. At least 30 people were banned, many of them were not from the RT forum.

"Get Drawn"
The ROBLOX catalog and advertisements are home to many things, be it good or bad. One of them is both. "Get Drawn" is more or less viewed as a scam, as although many promises to indeed draw whoever buys it (and either comments, messages, et cetera so the creator of the item can view the player's avatar), many remain unfaithful to their word. While there are some who do hold their promise, the "Get Drawn" business is almost universally seen as a scam. The pictures are very misleading and the creator just wants ROBUX.

Builder's Club Only Places
Near the end of 2010, ROBLOX introduced a new feature called Builder's Club Only ("BC Only") that allowed Builder's Club members to limit the users who go to their places to Builder's Club and higher only. Unsurprisingly, the community took a new function very negatively, most of which who spammed comments of BC only places, created hateful threads and even went to videos. Users XiaoXiaoMan and TheAmazeman both created videos explaining the downsides of BC only places and XiaoXiaoMan also pointed out false claims, this time on ROBLOX's side of its currently dubious "free" nature.

Most of the negativity came from user Shedletsky (then named Telamon) made one of his ever-so-popular brick battling game Sword Fight on the Heights IV Builders Club only, and despite the very clear woe he created from the choice, Shedletsky even went so far as to making a small post in the ROBLOX Forum which not only belittled the outraged users with his statements "It's my game, and I'll do what I want" and to see if there would be less "newbs" in game, but also explained that by doing so not only made "a ton" of tickets, but can also ban the main accounts of exploiters, and finishing it off with "Trololollolllll" as a "reason" as to why it's BC only. Not long after creating the forum post, Shedletsky deleted it. However, user XiaoXiaoMan has a video where it is featured. The video in question can be found here.

In July 2011, seth1823 made one of his places reach the front page of games section with a stolen copy of the user Ryanmacd 's "Private Clubhouse." It was a BC only place and he made over 33,500 ROBUX from converting the tickets generated from the visits into ROBUX. He has since taken down the place but Ryanmacd is still trying to get the copy of the place back.

As of July 2015, BC only places has been removed on the games page due to players trying to maximize their profits by making both BC and NBC places, and also due to free ROBUX and Tix scams. However, BC games still exist.

There are still a few game creators who want BC games back on the front page. They have been accused and condemned by many users for making successful free-to-play games and then make an exact copy of the game as a BC Only in order to maximize their profit, since it requires relatively few players (often less than a dozen) to make the highly visible "Front Page" section, as opposed to free-to-play games needing often hundreds just to be in the same spot.

Builders Club games have also been criticized for the non-authentic and liable titles promising them to give a random amount of ROBUX or Tix. Despite the criticism, many of these games are on the front page of the Games section. Many people believe this is a scam. Also, in some of these games, they have a fake Maintenance GUI and they might try to steal your account.

Lifetime Builders Club removal
On August 4, 2015, ROBLOX removed lifetime and 6 month's from a payment option for BC, TBC, and OBC, leaving only monthly and annually as a payment option, which spark a large amount of criticism from players, and which made many players think ROBLOX is greedy and poor.

ROBLOX Software
ROBLOX's software has been described as slow and buggy on some computers. It has caused blue screens on Windows computers and even made computers crash (without the Blue Screen of Death that can occur on computers that run on Windows). User Jazman111 once reported RobloxApp.exe to security company Symantec, (home to their Norton range of antivirus software for home users), and the report was accepted.

Also, sometime around 2011, ROBLOX removed the feature to go into Roblox.exe and into Build Mode to access ROBLOX Studio, but was still accessible in the ROBLOX Studio.exe until 2012 when Build Mode, both in roblox.exe and ROBLOX studio only had the new building tools, which have been criticized for creating less creativity for many users. As of now, only edit mode has access to ROBLOX Studio, and the only way to have ROBLOX Studio with a character is going through the play solo test. Also, in July 2012, Roblox.exe was updated, removing the ROBLOX Browser and sending the user to one of the main browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer and no longer needed the player to download the browser to play games. This received some criticism from some players, saying it was slower, but there was also features that users wanted like copying and pasting URLs, which was difficult to do in the original ROBLOX

browser.

Lack of iPod 4th Generation Support for Games
On December 7, 2012, when the ROBLOX Mobile app on the Apple App Store was updated, ROBLOX received criticism for instead of having support for the iPod and iPhone that are of the 4th generation and beyond, they decided to only have support for the 4th generation of iPhones and the iPod 5. This has received criticism on the forum because a lot of players do not own an iPod 5. Some users have even theorized that the ROBLOX staff couldn't add support for iPod 4 because the device doesn't have enough memory. Also, ROBLOX Mobile is known for being really laggy, crashing all the time, and draining the battery really fast.

NBC Restrictions
On December 12, 2012, the day the full Play on mobile feature was released, ROBLOX announced that Builders Club users could play all games but NBC users would be limited to a rotating, curated selection of games. This was met with a large amount of criticism from the ROBLOX mobile user base due to ROBLOX's decision. However, despite the criticism, ROBLOX never repealed the restrictions until recently.

Gear
ROBLOX Mobile is also criticized because some gear cannot be used without a Mouse and Keyboard. Usually with objects that are used for flying and gun-like weapons.

Advertisements
ROBLOX Mobile has been known to have an excessive amount of ads that don't pop up on the computer. Usually, some games have ads that pop up only when you join the game, but one, in particular, has ads that literally pop up every 10 seconds.

PardonMyFrench's Eric Frenchman and ROBLOX
Blogger Eric Frenchman (owner of TypePad blog PardonMyFrench) had criticized ROBLOX's site and game with [http://pardonmyfrench.typepad.com/pardonmyfrench/2009/08/is-roblox-safe-for-kids-not-sure-so-i-blocked-it.html this blog post. ("Is Roblox safe for my kids? Not sure so I blocked it.")] He complained about the fact that his security program was flashing "like a Christmas tree" and saying that ROBLOX is not parental-safe, and also dubbed World of Warcraft as being safer than ROBLOX. He got many replies, mainly from ROBLOX defenders attempting to get his children back on ROBLOX, parents saying their experiences with ROBLOX. Builderman replied to Eric Frenchman, to which Eric made a [http://pardonmyfrench.typepad.com/pardonmyfrench/2009/10/revisiting-roblox.html new post about. ("Revisiting Roblox")]

Removal of vital Lua functions/properties
During 2009 and 2010, ROBLOX has broken many games via changes in their Lua programming language.

In 2009, ROBLOX secured the Source function on the Script object. This stopped model compilers and Script Builder tools from working. In 2010, this was brought back, but later on, they stopped global variables. Both instances were frowned upon by scripters.

Updates
ROBLOX's updates have been criticized because users claim it "doesn't make it as good as before" and it sometimes goes to an infinite updating screen when they try to play a game. Though people have suggested that the administrators undo the updates, ROBLOX has stated it will never undo an update (unless temporary, such as the Egg Drops), and as of 2013, they have not done so. This has led to many hate and quit videos from many users.

The only update that has been changed after user feedback since then was Player Points. They were hidden mainly because it caused competitive controversy and had no use, as well as the fact that people were buying lots of player points to boost their "skill level".

Filter Update
In early 2017, many users, safe chatted or not, are affected by a wide update causing whatever is said to be filters #. Most of these users have voiced their opinion on the Forums, and tagging other random words like "a", "my", "don't", and other words that aren't inappropriate for ROBLOX.

Investigation revealed that an AI called CommunitySift was powering the filter, and was most likely being hampered by Roblox's strict configurations for said AI (since CommunitySift on its own is powerful enough to avoid mistakes, but can be changed extensively by anyone), causing random words to get filtered before inappropriate words did, the opposite of the obvious intended goal of the configurations. For example, a compound inappropriate word took three months to be detected by Sift, presumably due to the otherwise nonsensical nature the word has out of context.

ROBLOX Studio 2013
In February 2013, ROBLOX released ROBLOX Studio 2013, which was extremely criticized among the Roblox community for it being harder to build and how they released it.

List of known reasons: On February 4, 2013, ROBLOX released a post on the update. [1]
 * ROBLOX Studio 2013 was updated by force without any notice when the player started it up
 * Multiple items are difficult to select
 * Certain items don't save
 * Certain features don't work
 * Studio 2013 crashing when started
 * Duplicating bricks feature being removed (it became visible in the 2014 update of studio when you right click a part or if you press Ctrl+D)

Rules
ROBLOX rules have been criticized for various reasons because community members call it "unfair." These reasons include: Though it is a website intended for children to play, many older users are unhappy with the rules.
 * No links to outside websites (such as YouTube videos or profiles), due to users linking others to shock sites and malicious pages. (Since 2012, users are now able to post YouTube links in their posts, partly ignoring the rule that is mentioned above, so long as it doesn't link to an inappropriate video or channel.)
 * No talking about religious or political content, due to the violent 'flame wars' that are generally sparked by the discussion of it.
 * No debates and rebellions.
 * No inappropriate places such as 9/11 terrorist attacks, Nazis, Execution of Saddam Hussein, ISIS executions, and places containing adult content. They recently added pubs and bars to this list, but many places like Club Boates still contain a bar, where a few of the drinks can leave your character drunk or wasted.
 * No discussion of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in Off Topic (Moderators were more than aware that the popular Brony fandom will reach ROBLOX, so they edited their rules to tell Bronies to visit the Movies/TV Shows/Books forum). That sparked some controversy.
 * No swear words (Some users are very unclean that they couldn't use swear words in the game. They also think that they could get away by using fake letters like * or @ or # but they could still get banned for it).
 * If a swear word is typed into chat, it used to appear as hashtags (#) instead, with the same number of letters as the swear word to others. (or as EverythingIsMacrabe called them in "ROBLOX Fourm Simulator V4Ever", "group of symbols"). It was changed to "[Content Deleted]", but now it appears as octothorpes again. Before hashtags were first used, the whole message a player sent is seen completely blank in-game.
 * Some swear words are not filtered, which allowed many users to get away with using the unfiltered words toward others without getting banned.
 * No politics like Donald Trump, Joko Widodo or Vladimir Putin (The political discussions may sound like an argument but really if someone is interested in politics to talk about it, they should be smart enough to know what they're talking about.)

New Roblox Building Tools
ROBLOX has released new building tools The new tools ROBLOX has releasedExample of the bricks and other building tools that ROBLOX released that many users say are limiting the creativity of many games because of the limited variety of new blocks and the fact that it is often very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to use any other tools, free models, decals or even the user's own items. There are also many complaints that the new blocks are not compatible with the classic bricks. Also, some of the tools have been criticized for glitches and not functioning properly.

There is also mass criticism from many players for getting rid of the Studio Mode button and sometimes sudden canceling ROBLOX Studio when building (believed to be a glitch). Many users look down on this update because they do not have an option whether they can choose between classic tools and new tools. Instead, it is now necessary to use a model in order to get the old tools back, which is extremely difficult.

Many users accuse ROBLOX of trying to copy the look of the popular game Minecraft. Some users believe that ROBLOX released to update to be more similar to Minecraft in order to make more profits. Users have said that it takes away from the uniqueness and the original purpose of ROBLOX, which was to provide a free, creative environment where users would not be limited to a small variety of square blocks since due to the new update they are often unable to use other bricks.

As a result of this update, many old, experienced players quit ROBLOX, causing a rising amount of new, inexperienced players, who think that the new tools are normal and build games out of the new blocks, causing a slow phasing out of the old, classic-brick type games. Users have accused ROBLOX of trying to achieve this phasing-out, claiming that ROBLOX's motive is to make more profit, at the sacrifice of creativity and the quality of games on ROBLOX.

November 2010 Newer tools
Moderate criticism occurred when the new layout of tools was released because the copy tool doesn't function properly and jumps around, and the paint tool removed half of its colors and some on which they're important.

Legal issues
In 2007, ROBLOX released a visor which read the "Got Milk?" the slogan on it. It's been said that Hood got involved for copyright, in which the visor was taken off sale (This, however, is only a well-known rumor). It was put up for limited sales in 2010 and only has 4312 buyers.

A similar instance happened in late 2009, when ROBLOX released a Devo hat for 50 tickets. A few days later, it was said that ROBLOX was informed that they cannot sell it due to copyright infringement of the band called Devo.

ROBLOX 2017 New Logo
Since January 9, 2017, the ROBLOX logo has been changed, causing lots of controversy towards the change. Some say the tilted O that has been used in place of the R looks more like a Cheez-It, Domino's Pizza logo or Bethesda Softworks logo rotated. Due to its shape, or the red end of the Domino's logo. Some say the logo is ugly and prefer the older logos. Many people have expressed their criticism through Twitter, YouTube, and the forums.

Ticket Removal
The removal of tickets is the subject of many protests and one of the most unwelcome changes in the ROBLOX community. See more here: Ticket Discontinuation