Criticism of Roblox/Website features

Currency and Catalog items

Tickets Removal

Main article: Ticket

On March 15, 2016, Roblox announced that they will be removing tickets. This caused an outrage in the community, mainly users who chose not to spend money on Robux and/or Builder's Club. This would also make game development far more restrictive for non-paying users, as they would be limited to free models and could no longer promote their games on the site. Regardless, the removal of tickets also removed the ability for non-paying players to do many things such as buy items from the Marketplace (then known as the Catalog) and create ads. This also caused the amount of free Robux scams to be increased. Users have accused Roblox of greed after this change, especially as there were instances wherein players were banned after complaining about this controversial event.^{⁠[citation needed]} This became one of the most controversial events to ever happen in Roblox's history.

Unobtainable/Inflated Limiteds

The prices of many Limited items have been pushed to exorbitant amounts by those who own it, frustrating users who want to purchase them but cannot afford due to extreme inflation. While these prices are dictated by players themselves, it leads others to think that Roblox is greedy by pushing players to spend thousands of dollars for a single Limited item. An example that demonstrates this fact could be the Super Super Happy Face, which sold for 300 Robux after selling out in September 2016. A year later, it costed 6,000 Robux, another year, 13,000, 15,000, 35,000, then selling for 103,000 Robux at its peak in February 2021, despite it's original stock being over 30,000 copies. As of July 2021, it sells for around 80,000 Robux which equates to $1000 in US Dollars. Another example is the Shaggy, being one of the most affordable and popular Limited, but as of late 2020, it has inflated to over 1000 Robux, making it much harder to afford than in the past.

New Robux Icon

Main article: Robux

Sometime in November 2019, the Robux icon was replaced from the classic R$ icon to a hexagon shape with a square in the middle. This sparked criticism from many players, with many players claiming that it looks like a hex nut rather than a coin/token (what it was probably meant to represent). However, the change was not a big surprise to some players as in early 2019, the icon was found in the Roblox files. The icon was named robux@2x.png.

Gear items

In recent years, Gear hasn't been as popular as it was before. With many of them breaking down through Roblox updates, some of them losing their usefulness, and many of the front page games outright banning gear, there hasn't been a valid reason to buy any gear items. There also hasn't been any new Gear added to the Marketplace since 2018, many sponsored events preferably making accessories instead.

Oversaturated Trends

A major problem that consistently plagued the UGC Marketplace include trends that overstayed their welcome, were sometimes lazy, and even an outright cash grab in some cases. They tend to dominate the main page, to the point where half the first page was filled with them.

Early into the program, a major trend was the Cartoony Rainbow line of items, these are black items with a rainbow outline and rainbow highlights. Aside from the oversaturation, they were also controversial due to how easy it was to make, and often being created for profit. This simmered down in mid 2021, but isn't dead.

In early 2021, a flood of hats based off characters from Friday Night Funkin', as well as mod characters. This has since been slowed down, but for a while it would dominate the main catalog page. As they received permission from the owner of the respective characters, they were technically allowed on the catalog.

Rule breaking UGC items

For a short period from October 2 to 4, 2022, a wave of UGC items of poor quality have been surfacing. The quality of these items range from lazy bricks with decals, to copying old unavailable hats or other UGC creators. Some creators were even making items outright based off other properties, with many of them from Minecraft. There is no explanation for why this happened. On October 5, 2022, Roblox has taken action by content deleting the affected items and kicking the creators of them out of the UGC program. Any Robux spent on these items were also refunded.

Limited UGC Botting

Starting April 8, 2023, UGC creators were now able to create Limited UGC items. It was even discovered that they can set the price of them to be free (Where there's normally a minimum price that' dependent on the accessory type). Because of this, players were excited on how they're able to express themselves with a lot more options. The program then immediately saw a botting situation, with stocks of limiteds vanishing en masse, leading to "Invalid Argument" error messages. This issue has gotten so bad that limited items tend to vanish before players can even load the page.

Roblox has attempted to take action by adding a limit to how many times you can buy an item. This limit was revealed to be 26 items within 1 minute, which was little help at all.

Marketing

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 to either claim. Very few people also claim ads to be "unfair" cause this gains Roblox money over them.

Following a claim by the FTC for false advertising, Roblox announced that they'll remove all ads on June 6, 2022.

TV Advertisement (2011)

Roblox's old TV commercial was criticized for:

• Not mentioning membership features.
• A user named "TimmyMcPwnage" is nowhere to be found in the Roblox website or in the game client, making the user non-existent. Though the remaining users that are mentioned do play Roblox, it's unknown if they had any involvement in the commercial at all.
• 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. It became a meme, with many people making fun of the slogan. What the ad possibly meant was that Roblox didn't require real money or using a virtual payment such as Bitcoin to create an account, or simply Roblox is free-to-play.

SharpTH Media released a YouTube video explaining why this advertisement was flawed in its technique of attempting to get the attention of some viewers.

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:

• 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

Before its removal on December 11, 2017, the Forums on Roblox had been criticized because of the amount of spam, useless posts, and highly inappropriate users on most of the forum sections. Moderators such as OldBaronMondo and MSE6 were also scrutinized due to suspicions that they were deleting posts and issuing out punishments to users based on their personal biases.

On December 4, 2017, due to the Forums not providing a positive environment, getting raided and them being abused, Roblox announced that the Forums will shut down on December 11, 2017. The forums became read-only 7 days before its removal.

Notable Incidents

• 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 on 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 a Roblox admin called 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.

New Forum 'Update'

On July 27, 2017, an 'update' was made to the Roblox Forums. The update removed several subforums, leaving only 6 left. The subforums that remained were Roblox News and Discussion, Help, Clans, and Guilds, Let's Make a Deal, Game Design, and Scripters. This update was very controversial, since lots of different subforums, including the entire entertainment section, All Things Roblox, Roblox Talk, and Off Topic were removed. Some players thought this update was caused due to the recent forum raids from YouTuber Quackity.

Builders-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 on 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 former admin 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 "Trololollolll" 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, a user called 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 user Ryanmacd is still trying to get the copy of the place back.

As of July 2015, BC-only places have 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.

On October 17, 2017, Nightgaladeld announced that BC-only games will be accessible to everyone, including NBC users, which did happen some time after.

Lifetime Builders Club removal

An image of Lifetime Outrageous BC.

On August 4, 2015, Roblox removed the lifetime and 6-month payment options for BC, TBC, and OBC, leaving only monthly and annually as a payment option, which sparked a large amount of criticism from players, and which made many players think that Roblox is greedy.

Roblox Game Client

Roblox Game Client has been described as slow and buggy on some computers. It has caused blue screens on Windows computers and made some computers crash. 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.

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 to the play solo test. Also, in July 2012, Roblox.exe was updated, removing the ROBLOX Browser and sending the user to the default browser set on their computer 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.

Roblox Mobile

Outdated information

The information on this article may be outdated. You can help the Roblox Wiki by updating it!

Lack of fourth generation iPod 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 fourth generation and beyond, they decided to only have support for the fourth 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 laggy when playing large experiences (sometimes resulting in crashes), heating up the player's device rapidly, and its tendency to drain the battery life of the player's device.

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.

Advertisements (Mobile)

Roblox Mobile has been known to have an excessive amount of ads that don't pop up on laptop/PC. Usually, some games have ads that pop up only when you join the game. Some creators have started to make their games have ads that appear very frequently.

Removal of vital Lua functions/properties

During 2009 and 2010, Roblox broke 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 (sometimes unfixable). 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). The only updates that have been changed after user feedback since then was Player points. Player points 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 or going to places specifically made to farm Player Points to boost their "skill level".

Captcha System

Players have criticized Roblox because of the captcha system they use, which can occasionally break. Many players have stated that this featured is very flawed. This can happen when you select the right answer multiple times but yet says you picked the wrong answer.

Roblox 2017 New Logo

Since January 10, 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 (officially titled the "Tilt") 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. It may also look like these. This caused it to become a popular meme. Many people have expressed their criticism through Twitter, YouTube, and the forums.

Default Clothing

Main article: Default Clothing

The default clothing applied on a white avatar.

On June 16, 2017, Default Clothing was added to Roblox. However, this change has sparked lots of controversies, claiming that players were no longer able to wear classic outfits (like the Roblox 1.0 default Noob outfit). This affected all players who had one skin tone for their whole body, and are not wearing pants nor a shirt. However, this change can be bypassed by wearing clothing that has been Content Deleted, or by using the 'Advanced' body color feature to change individual body parts.

Clothing Fee

On January 20, 2021, Roblox administrator givenothingback had announced a new clothing fee for shirts on the Roblox Developer Forum. The plan was if you were to attempt to upload a shirt on the website, Roblox would ask you to pay 50 Robux in order to get your shirt published. This caused criticism around social media as people threatened to quit designing/uploading clothes because of this update, since some earnings could be lost. Many people also agree with the clothing designers statements, saying that the fee is a bad idea and should be repelled. It is thought this fee was implemented to combat bots from generating unlimited amounts of Robux.

On an unknown date circa 2021–2022, Roblox made it so that you have to pay 10 Robux in order to upload shirts and pants. The 50 Robux plan for uploading shirts/pants may have been shelved due to unknown reasons. It was most likely because the original 50 Robux asking price was too much for the player base.

Temporary Server List Removal

On July 13, 2017, the servers would only show what server the player's friends are in. This caused a major uproar in the forums as players are no longer able to see all servers for good and sometimes are forced to rejoin the same server or the server their friends are in, repeatedly. The website went into maintenance that day as well, but it didn't revert the Servers list back to its former glory. On July 14, however, the developers have responded to this case. Click here. On November 1, the servers returned as “Other Servers” but the users shown in the lists are displayed as "A Roblox Player." You can't view their profiles unless they are your friend.

Viewable Sales Removal

On September 22, 2020, Roblox had removed viewing the amount of sales on items from the avatar shop on their website for all users worldwide excluding the creators of their own accessories. This had sparked criticism on social media, as users were asking Roblox to bring this feature back because many have said this feature was useful for them. Almost one month later on October 21, 2020, Roblox had been rolling out viewable sales back out to users again. This had made many players happy this feature was re-added.

However, on an unknown date towards the end of 2020, this feature was removed again, though silently from the website for unknown reasons.

Anthro Update

Main article: Anthro

The Anthro Robloxian is an old version of the avatar type now called Rthro. Many older players have expressed dislike and even hatred of this new avatar, with many claiming that the new body shape encourages online dating, and conflicts with the usual blocky avatars. Users had even gone far enough to worry that the Anthro avatar type will replace the R6 and R15 avatar types, though this has already been proven false.

Censoring numbers

In February 2017, <13 accounts had all forms of numbers blacklisted from being seen and sent permanently for security reasons - namely, to avoid underage users sending messages with personally identifiable information such as age, addresses and telephone numbers. This has caused quite a commotion in the Roblox community, and criticism flew around from all parts. In February 2021, the safe chat was updated with this feature being slightly removed allowing <13 accounts to be able to say numbers, but excessive use would still be filtered.

Removal of Game Genres

On October 26, 2017, game genres were removed from Roblox, causing major outrage on the forums. It was possible this was only a glitch but there was no attempt to re-add them for 6 years afterwards, vestiges of the system remained on every game page and in the Marketplace. In early 2023, Roblox rolled out a version of genres to some mobile players although the system functions heavily different from classic genres.

Experimental Mode game restrictions

On July 4, 2018, two exploiters injected an 18+ script into a game with Experimental Mode on and virtually performed inappropriate actions on a seven-year-old girl's avatar. Her mother saw the incident and reported it publicly on her Facebook profile, which became viral, caught media attention, and spread over the news. Roblox responded by permanently banning the exploiters and putting the game from the incident Under Review.

On July 13, 2018, in order to prevent further incidents like this, Roblox blocked users <13 from Experimental Mode games, unless they are friends with the creator. A majority of the <13 users complained that they couldn't play their favorite games anymore. However, on July 20, 2018, Roblox extended the restrictions and blocked all users from Experimental Mode games, unless they were friends with or are the creator. It effectively made the majority of games unplayable. This received a massive backlash in the community, as they could no longer play any older games. Veteran developers of old games were either inactive, meaning that they wouldn't turn off Experimental Mode, or wouldn't accept random friend requests from the games' players.

On July 25, 2018, Roblox removed Experimental Mode and all Experimental Mode games were set to Filtering Enabled. This brought rejoice from many, even though some former Experimental Mode games broke as they were coded without Filtering Enabled.

Roblox Studio 2013

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

List of known reasons:

• 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 Roblox Studio when you right-click a part or if you press Ctrl + D)
• No way to get the older Roblox Studio until after the incident

On February 4, 2013, Roblox released a post on the update.

New Roblox Building Tools

Shortly after Roblox has released new building tools, 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 cancelling 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.

Cancelling of Events/Traditions

As of 2017, Roblox has started to cancel more yearly things that have been on Roblox for a long time, which makes many Roblox users angry at Roblox for ending them, saying that Roblox is lazy for not doing them, or Roblox is greedy because they do other things instead of doing these certain things.

Below is a current list of discontinued events/traditions.

• Gift Accessories (2007–2017)
• Giftsplosions (2012–2017)
• Bloxtober (2009–2018)
• Gear being released/made (2009-2020)
• Yearly visor being released (2007–2019)
• Yearly hats going on sale (2011–2019)
• Egg Hunts (2008–2020)

Changes to Audio Asset Uploading & Privacy

On March 9, 2022, an official announcement on the Roblox DevForum stated that there would be changes to the audio asset uploading process.

• Instead of paying a Robux fee, all players will be able to upload a certain number of audio assets each month for free. Unverified users will be able to upload 10 audios for free, ID-verified users can upload 100 audios, and developers who have made a DevEx transaction can upload 2,000 audios.
• From March 22, 2022, onwards, all audios longer than 6 seconds will automatically be made Private, and any new audio upload will be set to private by default. Private assets can only be used by the uploader in their own experiences, but this Roblox also confirmed that users will temporarily be unable to set audios to public.
• By March 22, Roblox estimates it will receive and upload more than 100,000 licensed songs and 100,000 new professionally-produced SFX from audio and music music industry partners such as APM, Monstercat, Pro Sound Effects, Nettwerk Music Group, and Position Music freely available for all developers to use.

While there was praise over no longer needing to pay Robux to upload audios, this announcement and change was met with immense criticism from developers and players alike. Concerns were raised over many experiences and assets using publicly-available audio going silent and being wiped from the platform (especially with older experiences that don't receive updates). Players grew worried that boombox gears and radio gamepasses would be rendered useless as this would greatly limit playable audios within experiences. Furthermore, developers also believed this change would limit how unique or immersive experiences could get. Even if Roblox announced it would expand its library with more licensed music and generic sound effects to work with, developers are not guaranteed to find audios that best fit their needs.

Users speculate that this sweeping change may be related to the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) lawsuit among other problems with copyright and intellectual property (IP) infringement on Roblox.

Sponsored Events

Within recent years, since Roblox has brought back events in 2020, and Roblox going public on the stock market, many players have started to notice that Roblox has shifted to a more corporate/advertising attitude when it comes to event games. Ever since the last Egg Hunt, and events like 8th Annual Bloxy Awards, there have been much less genuine Roblox-made events, ultimately being replaced by Concerts, and branded games. While some of the companies that Roblox collaborates do try to make their event games as entertaining so players can enjoy the event, (such as Vans World, and My Hello Kitty Cafe) most games seem to be a corporate shill, as they simply offer a few free items while doing barely of interest or entertainment, ultimately just leaving them as "Advergames."

Players have noticed this sudden shift of the way events are done, since the outcry of the Gucci Garden items, with there being no free items to begin with. Many players have been voicing their concern towards this shift in mentality.

Prohibition of commercial use of R6 and R15 and usage of the Roblox logo

On June 22, 2022, Roblox introduced new guidelines that prohibit commercial use of R6 and "classic blocky" R15 without permission, meaning that only Rthro and R15 avatars which its classic form isn't apparent can be used on advertisements and other services. They also announced that the Roblox name and anything named similar to Roblox like "Blox" are prohibited on any game created after said date, enforcing the limited prohibition. This caused extreme criticism and backlash by many people on Twitter and YouTube most notably people who have been using words like "Blox" in their names. However, these rules are rarely enforced and when they are broken, there is often nothing Roblox can do.

Replacement of the “Oof” sound

On July 27, 2022, due to the copyright disputes with the Oof sound's original creator, Tommy Tallarico, Roblox replaced the Oof sound with the new Deh sound. This caused major backlash from many Roblox users. Roblox also stated that they would have a sound library for the original Oof sound but this sound library hasn't been created yet.

17+ Contradictions

Roblox has repeatedly censored, banned or even deleted 17+ games that follow their guidelines. Even if a player is allowed by the written rules to swear without malice towards another for example, content filters will still enforce censorship of the message. Players find that this defeats the purpose of the 17+ games, as they are meant to be exempt of said censorship and drive away mature audiences.

Additionally, even if following the guidelines and what themes are displayed from the questionnaire, said themes could still get the game or even their creator banned, even if they followed the rules due to the automatic moderators ignoring the exceptions listed.