New “White List” System Gives Everyone a Voice

By Allen Liu - July 22, 2013

We’ve overhauled our chatting system in order to allow those who are under 13 to speak freely and safely using a new chat filtering “white list” system. We tapped ROBLOX Web Engineer Allen Liu to explain the implementation and recent deployment of this new feature.

We want every single builder–regardless of their age–to have the ability to communicate, interact and participate in everything ROBLOX has to offer, and do so safely. Communication, in many cases, is one of the keys to creating and promoting content on our platform. We recently took steps to ensure that everyone has a voice. Those steps lead to the deployment of our brand new “white list” system.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: July 21st, 2013

By Andrew Haak - July 21, 2013

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: BLOXcon Chicago photos, videos and awards, the fast-approaching BLOXcon London, aesthetics and outlines, Paid Access launch, chadthedestroyer2′s After the Flash: Darkness, City of London, UK, “Klamfest,” and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

14-day Blog Recap

BLOXcon Chicago prevented last week’s Roundup from happening (totally worthwhile tradeoff, for the record), so this time we’re doing a recap of the hottest stories of the last two weeks. In all likelihood, Roundups will continue to be every other week until we’ve wrapped up BLOXcon New York City.

Let the Countdown to BLOXcon London Commence!

By Andrew Haak - July 20, 2013

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the countdown to BLOXcon London actually commenced when there were more than 100 days to go. But now it feels real. T-minus seven days and counting.

Play SFOTH: Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters Edition Today

By Alan Fackler - July 19, 2013

ROBLOX has teamed with Fox Pictures to present Sword Fight on the Heights: Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters Edition. The ever-famous Sword Fight on the Heights level has gotten a watery facelift, as well as some brand new water and ice-themed weapons for you to collect and wield. Battle up to 13 other players using your ROBLOX avatar in an effort to collect all four weapons, scattered precariously throughout the map, and earn the prized Golden Fleece gear.

The four weapons featured in Sword Fight on the Heights: Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters Edition were hand-chosen from the catalog and modified for game balance. The Beach Battle Sword allows you to shoot waves at opponents and the Ice Trident pushes foes great distances on contact– both are useful when it comes to knocking enemies into the bottomless pit below. The Ice Breaker gives you the ability to freeze opponents in a block of ice, and the Ice Axe features a spinning attack that slows the movement of your opponents upon contact. While the damage attributes and cooldown times on special strikes are very different from weapon to weapon, everything has been tweaked for a dynamic and unpredictable gameplay experience.

Presenting the First BLOXY, Hall of Fame 2013 and Hackathon Winners

By Alan Fackler - July 17, 2013

Last weekend at BLOXcon Chicago, we announced the winners of a bunch of prestigious awards. BLOXY Awards go to ROBLOX filmmakers, who crafted films for five unique categories in the ROBLOX Film Festival. The Hall of Fame Awards were designed to highlight some of the best community-created content of the last year. Finally, this year’s ROBLOX Hackathon was the most challenging yet, offering scripting and building challenges that pushed the knowledge boundaries of our cunning participants. In this article, we’ll be detailing the winners of each of these events, though keep in mind that there will be more–different winners will be revealed at each respective BLOXcon, so stay tuned to the blog for more winners after each remaining location. All winners will receive their virtual prizes in the near future.

BLOXcon Chicago BLOXY Award Winners

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know that we ran a Film Festival last Spring, and we received almost 500 entries in five categories: Building Showcase, Commercial, City-Themed, Short Film/Machinima, and Trailer. We’ll be announcing five winners–one per category–at each BLOXcon, so keep an eye out for more.

Everyone Can Experiment with Paid Game Access

By Andrew Haak - July 16, 2013

A couple weeks ago, we launched a beta test for Paid Access – an experimental configuration setting that allows builders and game developers to charge players once for permanent access to their places and games. Yesterday, we enabled the feature on ROBLOX.com, but not before making significant changes to its inner workings based on your feedback.

All ROBLOX builders and developers can sell access to their creations. There is a 90% marketplace fee on Paid Access sales for non-Builders Club members; Builders Club members have the standard 30% marketplace fee.
The price you choose is configurable (from 25 ROBUX to 250 ROBUX).
There is an entirely new game sort (“Top Paid”) for games that sell access, meaning another way to rise to the top. This is in addition to Paid Access sales factoring into the Top Earning sort, which displays by default on the Games page.

The overarching goal of Paid Access is to increase the quality of content on the Games page. After all, players will only spend ROBUX on good games, and we have the ability to “quarantine” any game that is not as advertised, is broken, or otherwise unplayable and refund any purchases still in escrow. This will mitigate scamming and false advertising.

A Retrospective Look at BLOXcon Chicago

By Alan Fackler - July 15, 2013

I imagine I’ll update this article sporadically as I write it. Right now, I’m hovering at 40,000 feet in the air between time zones, making it impossible to know exactly what time it actually is. It’s early. I’m traveling back to California at approximately 537 miles per hour (thanks for the useful info, United in-flight magazine!), and am nodding off occasionally. I am exhausted. In a good way.

You see, the 2013 version of BLOXcon is something we’ve never done before. We’ve had conventions, sure. Last year’s ROBLOX Game Conference here in the Bay Area was a blast, and a success! But it was practically down the road; this year, we’re traveling to three cities, all thousands of miles away. And if our time spent in Chicago was any indication, we’re a third of the way through one heck of a journey.