The law and Roblox don’t exactly have the “best relationship.” That might sound cruel, but it’s true. We’ve talked about lawsuits that the universe has had over the past couple of years, and they seem to keep growing in number. The other way that the title often “skirts the law” is by its player creators making content that infringes upon other companies’ IPs. Now, to be clear, there ARE some games that are officially licensed to use those IPS, and that’s totally fine. However, there are just as many who “walk a thin line” in the hopes of never getting caught. They often do get caught, while others are simply “waiting their turn” and continue to do what they’re doing. It’s a vicious cycle.
However, what we’re talking about today is how YOU can help stop certain infringements in Roblox. Specifically infringement against your own creations. Confused? We’ll explain. You have the ability to create just about anything in this universe. However, that also means that there will be those who look upon your stuff and try to take it for themselves. Sometimes, it’ll be through trying to “recreate” your game as closely as possible to make it seem like you did things AFTER them. They might even steal things like your game’s thumbnail to try and confuse people even further.
How deep the theft goes depends on the stealer themselves; however, that doesn’t mean you have to let it stand. You see, a lawyer over at Market Screener has explained how you can file a DMCA to try and get the content taken down. They have a form you can fill out, and all you need to do is put your game’s link in it, show screenshots proving that someone stole from you, and then email it right to the dev team.
If they feel you have a good complaint, they’ll take down the rival title in just a few days. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can simply DMCA anything you want. We would hope you have better judgment than that. If you feel that someone really is stealing from you, though, don’t feel that you are powerless. You are not. You worked hard to make the game and art that you did, and the last thing anyone deserves is to have their stuff stolen just so others could profit from it.
Ironically, the dev team is working on an IP database that creators can use to get officially licensed stuff in their games. Whether this helps with copyright infringement, though, remains to be seen.
