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Roblox devs now need a subscription to share their games freely
- hallole 6mo ago[dead]
- Imustaskforhelp 6mo agoOh boy, the reason Roblox was this famous was that anyone could share their games publicly and people could play Having a subscription kills Roblox and its ecosystem. For context, Roblox has 170 million peak concurrent players, All of Steam had 85 (I got this data from someone at hackernews's comment) This might be the end of Roblox. I hope more roblox's alternative spring up preferably open-source. There is luanti which is a minecraft alternative but I suppose a lot of games can have overlap to luanti and it runs on lua too.
- mastermage 6mo agoI think Hytale can grab some marketshare because its modding tools are realy good. And they are built into the game.
- NeveHanter 6mo agowill need*
- demaga 6mo agoWow they reached Stage 3 of enshittification[1] real quick. Now the slow and painful death begins. [1] https://storage02.forbrukerradet.no/media/2026/02/breaking-free-pathways-to-a-fair-technological-future.pdf https://storage02.forbrukerradet.no/media/2026/02/breaking-f...
- touwer 6mo agoCapitalism: there is always one more shareholder to satisfy
- 0x3f 6mo agoStakeholder, in this case: the government
- SXX 6mo agoThis is not about capitalism. They will lose money on it long term and they know it otherwise they'll done it long ago. This is move to moderated censored platform under regulatory "protect the children" pressurre and hysteria. This is not affecting publishing games for 16+ audience.
- leosanchez 6mo agoIs that accurate description though? Capitalism: Shareholders need to be satisfied every year.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- SXX 6mo agoPeople here in comments seem to not read past the title that editorized, but in a wrong way. This is basically only requirement to make games available for players under 16 so its certnly done under regulatory pressure because no way on earth they can moderate every game from unpaid users.
- alt227 6mo agoWhat about if a kid under the age of 16 wants to publish a game for other under 16 year old friends, like what Roblox was created for? Now they need a paid subscription with an id check to become a 'trusted friend'.
- calgoo 6mo agoExactly, this will marginalize the creators of tomorrow who might have picked this up and built something, will now hesitate and probably try to find something else to build on. The people building giant games full of "buy this crap" every 5 seconds, spamming my 6 year old with prompts, they will continue doing so.
- rb2026 6mo agoFor friends, they need to do an age estimation only. To publish globally for <16 users, the id check and subscription requirements then apply.
- alt227 6mo agoIn the linked page, point 2 literally says this: Publish to 16+ and Trusted Friends - To publish a game that reaches Trusted Friends and users over 16 you must: a. Complete an age check b. Have an account in good standing c. Have an account on Roblox that’s been on the platform for at least 2 days
- rb2026 6mo agoYeah. Can you point out where what you said and what I said differ? The paid subscription is for publishing to <16 users globally.
- Dylan16807 6mo agoTo publish to the main 16+ pool I need to do "an age check"? But it seemingly doesn't matter what the result of that check is? I'm confused.
- rb2026 6mo agoThe age check is part of Roblox as a whole. It dictates what games you can access and the range of ages you can communicate with. They also extend age check to who you can develop games with, as the Roblox Studio IDE is basically a real-time multiplayer 3D environment with chat. Accounts without age verification can only play all-ages games, chat is fully disabled, and they cannot publish any content onto the platform.
- nusl 6mo agoHacker News is turning into every other platform over time it seems. More and more folks just see a headline and comment rather than understand that headlines are designed to mislead you for clicks. These requirements make sense. They're additional verification steps in place for people trying to publish games for very young users.
- skrebbel 6mo agoI agree with you that the HN title is editorialized and misleading, but I disagree that these requirements make sense. They only make sense if you think it's OK for kids to send face scans to scary faceless corporations. And even if you do that, you can't share your game with friends unless they also take a face scan! (cause that's what "Trusted Friend" means - it doesn't mean trusted by you, it means trusted by them)
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 6mo agoIn what way did you find the headline misleading from the actual content of the article?
- jan_Inkepa 6mo agoHere's an editorialized title in the other direction: On Roblox everyone can make games and play them with their friends. Here's my suggestion for an amendement: "Roblox devs will need plus membership to publish to young users"
- alt227 6mo agoBut the term 'Roblox Devs' can also include other children. You seem to be missing the point a bit that kids used to be able to make games and share them with their friends for free. Now they need a paid subscription and a face scan to do that. Yes it makes sense when you apply it to adults, but Roblox was made for kids to share and play with other kids. When you look at it from that angle it makes no sense.
- skrebbel 6mo agoMy kid is 13 and likes to make silly Roblox games. No way I'm going to let him take a face scan with whatever creepy unaccountable AI data hoarding outfit Roblox decided to team up with, just so share his creations with 6 friends. How is it protecting him that he's not allowed to share creative work with people? Good thing he was already messing around with Godot as well cause this kills Roblox for him.
- rb2026 6mo agoEvery major government around the world is rapidly rolling out online bans and age checks of some form for social media, online gaming, or general internet access. I agree this is dumb but this isn't a Roblox thing so much as "what the fuck are we collectively doing with privacy?" thing.
- wartywhoa23 6mo agoWell, standard drug dealer strategy: hook someone, then milk dry.
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoMy 6 year old likes to make basic obstacle course games and I help him with the coding. There is ZERO chance I’m doing ID verification or paying a subscription. The entire reason we liked this platform was there was barely any friction. I will be checking out S&box by the creator of Garry’s mod as an alternative: https://sbox.game/ https://sbox.game/
- j16sdiz 6mo agoTFA: > Publish for personal use - Anyone on Roblox can continue to publish games for personal use. I know it is not great... but .. is that sufficient for your kid?
- Majikujanisch 6mo agoIn order to able to be trusted by anyone, the user has to also verify their age. Also not every country has this feature yet, I never estimated my age by Roblox so i am also not trustable or can trust others.
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoWe’ve been getting into doing basic multiplayer stuff (I do the coding), so unfortunately no.
- afandian 6mo agoSimilar story here with Minecraft. Luanti + Mineclonia is absolutely excellent open source software. I get a great sense of peace knowing that my incentives are aligned with the people who made it.
- freedomben 6mo agoHuge fan of luanti (minetest) as well. My kids never picked it up though because the client controls were not very polished and they got frustrated. Has that improved in the years?
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- CrzyLngPwd 6mo agoI bet the real reason is to add some friction to reduce the moderation burden generated by AI content creation.
- anthk 6mo agoYou might like Luanti. Is not low-poly but I think it has some support with some full games, such as the Moon base survival one.
- intended 6mo agoYou haven’t had content moderation questions until you’ve looked at games and user generated content. It’s such a stupidly thorn intersection of media, user behavior, and tech. It’s not text, it’s not image, it’s not video - it’s a whole interactive play test. If your mods don’t walk over the right trigger, they you don’t uncover the “secret” gacha arcade room. Even better - one mod runs the map and finds the room, and sends it for review, but the second mod doesn’t find the same room. In contrast something like “School shooting simulator” had enough policy training and was obvious enough to be moderated. People get creative with their tools, I’ve heard of entire copyrighted movies being smuggled into thumbnails. Bonus points if you realize that this is how good things are for America centric moderation, and how it drops off for other nations and communities.
- Charon77 6mo agoa bit misleading title. > Publishing games that are available to players with either Roblox Kids (users under 9) or Roblox Select (users 9 to 15) accounts that we announced in our Newsroom will require additional verification steps than publishing games that are available to users over 16.*
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- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- s_shokj 6mo agos_shokj 12345678