If you're building a game that reaches players in different countries, you'll need a solid roblox policy service script to handle regional restrictions without breaking the rules. It's one of those things that might feel like a chore compared to scripting a cool combat system or building an open world, but ignoring it can get your game flagged or even taken down. Nobody wants to spend months on a project only to have it restricted because they didn't account for local laws in places like Belgium or the Netherlands.
Why Does This Even Exist?
Roblox is a global platform, and that means it has to play nice with the laws of every country where it's available. Some countries have really strict rules about things like "paid random items"—which most of us just call loot boxes—and others have specific requirements for how ads or social links are displayed.
Instead of making every developer guess what the rules are for every single country, Roblox gave us the PolicyService. When you write a roblox policy service script, you're basically asking the Roblox servers, "Hey, what is this specific player allowed to see or do based on where they live?" It takes the guesswork out of compliance and lets you focus on making the game fun for everyone else.
Getting Into the Scripting Side
The heart of any roblox policy service script is a function called GetPolicyInfoForPlayerAsync. This is an asynchronous call, meaning it takes a second to go out to the internet, grab the info, and bring it back. Because it's a network call, you always want to wrap it in a pcall (protected call) just in case something goes wrong. If the Roblox servers are having a bad day, you don't want your entire player loading script to crash.
Here's the basic logic of how you'd set it up. You grab the PolicyService, wait for the player to join, and then ask for their specific policy info. The information you get back is a table full of booleans—mostly true or false values—that tell you if they can buy random items, see external links, or trade items with others.
Dealing With Paid Random Items
This is probably the most common reason people look for a roblox policy service script. If your game has a crate system or a mystery egg that costs Robux, you have to check the ArePaidRandomItemsRestricted property.
If a player joins from a region where these are banned, and your script finds that ArePaidRandomItemsRestricted is true, you need to hide those purchase buttons. You don't necessarily have to remove the items from the game entirely; you just can't let those specific players spend currency on a "chance" to get something. If they can buy the item directly for a set price, that's usually fine, but the "surprise" element is what gets you in trouble.
Handling Social Links and External Info
Another thing the roblox policy service script manages is how you show links to Discord, Twitter, or YouTube. Roblox is pretty protective of younger players, and some regions are even stricter. The AllowedExternalLinkRefs property in the policy table will tell you exactly which platforms you're allowed to mention to that specific player.
If you've got a "Join our Community" button in your UI, it's a good habit to run a check. If the player isn't allowed to see Discord links, you should probably just hide that button or replace it with a generic "Follow us for updates" message that doesn't include the link. It's a small detail, but it makes your game feel way more polished and professional.
Why You Can't Just Ignore It
I've seen some developers think they can just skip this part because their game is small. The reality is that Roblox's automated systems are pretty good at spotting games that offer paid random items without checking for policy restrictions. If your game starts gaining any kind of traction, it's going to get looked at.
Using a roblox policy service script isn't just about avoiding a ban, though. It's also about the user experience. Imagine a player in a restricted region seeing a giant "BUY CRATE" button, clicking it, and then getting a vague error message—or worse, spending money and then having the transaction flagged. It's much better to just tailor the UI to what they can actually do.
A Quick Note on Testing
One of the biggest headaches with a roblox policy service script is testing it. Unless you have a VPN and a lot of patience, you won't naturally see these restrictions if you're living in a country like the US or the UK.
Luckily, Roblox Studio has a built-in way to simulate different regions. In the "Advanced" section of the Studio settings, you can find "Policy Service" and override the settings to see how your UI reacts. You can toggle "Paid Random Items Restricted" to true and see if your loot box shop actually disappears like it's supposed to. Honestly, do this before you publish. It saves so much stress.
Making the Script Efficient
You don't want to call GetPolicyInfoForPlayerAsync every single time a player opens a menu. That's a great way to lag your game or hit rate limits. The best way to handle this in your roblox policy service script is to grab the info once when the player joins and store it in a variable or a local folder.
If you're using a modular approach, you can create a "PolicyManager" module script that fetches the data once and then provides simple functions for your other scripts to check. For example, your shop script could just call PolicyManager.CanBuyLootBoxes() and get an immediate answer without waiting for another network request.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- Not using pcall: I mentioned this before, but seriously, use
pcall. If the service fails and you didn't wrap it, your script will stop dead. - Assuming it's only about China: While the "Roblox China" (LuoBuLeSi) situation changed things, policy restrictions still apply globally to many different countries. Don't think you're safe just because you aren't targeting a specific market.
- Forgetting about the client side: While you should check policies on the server for security, you must also check them on the client to update the UI. There's no point in having a policy if the player can still see and click buttons that shouldn't be there.
Wrapping Things Up
At the end of the day, a roblox policy service script is just another tool in your kit to make sure your game is accessible and stays on the platform. It's not the most exciting code you'll ever write, but it's definitely some of the most important for the long-term health of your game.
Once you get the hang of it, you can basically copy-paste your logic from one project to the next. It becomes a standard part of your game-initiation process, just like setting up data stores or player GUI. Take the thirty minutes to set it up right, and you'll be able to sleep much better knowing your game isn't going to get hit with a random compliance strike.
Keep your code clean, test your UI overrides in Studio, and always remember that a little bit of prevention is worth a lot of "please unban my game" emails later on. Happy scripting, and hopefully, your game becomes a global hit without any legal hiccups!