Roblox Oof Sound Removal Explained: Is Oof Coming Back?

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Cody has been in the video game business as part of media and content creation for more than 10 years. During that time, he has contributed and even led some of the largest sites in the world dedicated to gaming and entertainment. He has also dabbled some in PR and was a tester for Activision in the past working on the Call of Duty series. When not playing games or writing about them, he enjoys cooking, sharpening his Japanese skills, and watching the latest anime shows.

Bottom Line Up Front

The Roblox oof sound is the sound effect that happens when a character dies in a game. It doesn’t matter which Roblox game they’re playing or how they die; the oof sound would play over their death.

This became a meme in a way where videos and other memes would use the oof sound to indicate something hilarious happening, typically like in the form of an injury or mistake happens. However, the oof sound was suddenly removed from Roblox in 2022, due to some legal issues that cropped up.

Roblox Oof Sound Overview

Imagine for a moment you pull up Roblox right now after signing up for your new account. There are so many games for you to play, and you hop into an intriguing game called Murder Mystery 2 as your first Roblox experience. The match begins, and you’re the innocent trying to survive against a killer.

Without an idea of how to win as an innocent player in this game that is new to you, you hide in a corner behind a door next to another player.

A minute goes by with silence, and the fear begins creeping up as you wonder where the killer is. Then the killer turns out to be the person hiding next to you as they pull out a knife and slice you up.

Your instantaneous and shocking death is met with a resounding “ehhh” sound. It is nothing like the “oof” you heard in the countless YouTube videos and TikToks you have watched. Before you know it, you’re back in the fight with another round, but something just seems wrong.

That is because you are no longer hearing the “oof” sound that has defined Roblox since its inception. For so many years and for generations of gamers, the oof was synonymous with the Roblox experience.

So, what do we do now that it is gone? Why is it even gone in the first place? These are the questions I hope to all answer here for you.

History of the Oof Sound Effect in Roblox

Let’s begin with a nice little retrospective, a memorial for the fallen oof brother that we will never see (hear?) again in Roblox. A long, long time ago, in the early 2000s, Roblox was released as a user-generated video game platform. The idea was for it to be essentially an interactive video game marketplace and platform.

The idea was that users could use the Roblox video game engine to make their own games and experiences and share them easily with others. Soon enough, players began making classic but simplistic games like Hide and Seek and platforming games.

Of course, both of these games involved the character needing to respawn in the lobby at some point; perhaps due to death or the like.

Instead of simply having the player fall apart in a death animation only to respawn later, Roblox Corp. made the intriguing decision to notify the player and everyone around them of their death.

They did this through the signature oof sound effects that would play. Anyone in the nearby vicinity with their volume up would be able to hear the oof death effect of any player, not just themselves. Before long, it became an ingrained part of the Roblox experience that everyone was simply used to.

For literally decades, the oof sound was one of the few constants in Roblox. No matter what game you played on the platform, you could expect two things to be there: blocky characters that aren’t the most attractive for a video game and oofs all over the place whenever people die in those games.

Before long, people thought the hilarious oof sound could be used for so much more than simply the character deaths in Roblox. As such, people ripped the oof sound out of the game and began using it in meme videos on platforms like Vine (remember it?), YouTube, and eventually TikTok.

An unbelievable and impossible-to-count amount of views have happened over the years featuring the oof sound, many of which have otherwise nothing to do with Roblox. It dominated a decade of the internet and was an unforgettable part of the game.

In the end, oof was the singular focal point in Roblox that you could count on to always be there for you no matter what you were doing in the game. Or, at least, it seemed like it would always be that way. Instead, though, a heart-breaking change occurred that changed the future of Roblox forever.

Roblox Oof Sound Removal Explained

On the fateful day of July 26, 2022, Roblox changed forever. The official Roblox Twitter randomly announced that the oof sound had immediately been removed from the game without warning. In exchange, a default death sound effect had been added as a quick replacement.

There was no chance to say goodbye to the sound effect or hear it one last time as you mistakenly stand outside while the tornado in Natural Disaster Survival tears your blocky body apart. Instead, the sound effect was removed, and the community immediately mourned the ultimate death of the sound.

But once the time for mourning was over — which likely only lasted a second for some players — it was time to ask the right questions. Why was the Roblox oof sound removed from the game? What happened to cause this strange and unfortunate situation? Would it ever return? These are the questions players still have today.

At the time of writing, it has been more than six months since the removal of the sound, and it hasn’t returned yet. Why is this still the situation? Thankfully, I have the answer for you.

Why Was Oof Removed?

In the initial announcement from Roblox Twitter, it was quietly revealed that the Roblox oof sound was removed because of “a licensing issue.”

That is the only statement that we are given on the matter from the Roblox developers. You might be wondering how exactly this sound effect, which is a second long in length, could be breaking some sort of license.

Well, it turns out that the Roblox oof sound wasn’t actually created by the Roblox developers in the first place. Instead, they took this sound effect from another source. In 2020, renowned video game developer and composer Tommy Tallarico brought up the legal issue of the oof sound.

In the process of this, we not only found out the reason behind the removal of the oof sound but where its true origins come from.

Oof Origins Explained

According to Tallarico, the oof sound was not originally from Roblox itself. Instead, it came from Tallarico’s game Messiah released in 2000. There is a cutscene in this game where the little angel character is seemingly on the surface of the moon. At least, that’s what it looks like.

The little angel kid is seen being thrown across the moon’s surface, screaming in the process for his divine life. He ends up hitting his head on the ground of the moon and makes a familiar “oof” sound when this happens. The voice of the character matches the oof sound he makes.

This, in turn, also sounds quite similar to the oof sound that Roblox used. This claim from Tallarico has some water to it, at least from an auditory perspective, as the oof sound the little angel boy makes is indeed very similar to the oof sound that is heard in Roblox.

Given that Messiah came out a few years before Roblox would make its debut on PC, it seems that there is some weight to the argument that the sound effect was potentially stolen from this game without licensing or permission. Unfortunately, this has never been confirmed and likely never will be from Roblox itself.

That said, there is the likelihood for this to be the actual origin of the oof sound since it was instantly removed from Roblox with no notice. It seems that Roblox Corp. likely removed the sound effect to avoid any legal problems with Tommy Tallarico, possibly confirming the shady origins of the sound in the process.

After all, it has been the mantra most recently for Roblox to remove legal problems from the game to avoid any lawsuits and the like in the future.

This included getting rid of the widespread copyrighted music featured in many games, copyrighted imagery, and even entire games. This is why it isn’t easy to find a Pokemon game that features real Pokemon these days in Roblox.

In the end, it seems that the Roblox oof sound was a victim of the age-old copyright problem.

New Roblox Death Sound Explained

In the end, the new Roblox death sound was released on the same day that oof was removed. This new sound effect is a strange one. Some will consider being a yelp of some kind from the player, but I find it to almost be like a scream that the player character makes, similar to the sound of “ehhh!”

This new death sound effect certainly tries to give off the same idea of the oof sound where the player is making the sound themselves as they die in the game. However, this sound effect is not nearly as funny or goofy as the oof one, being far more serious, emotional, and intense, in my opinion.

As such, the new death sound effect in the game is far from the goofy oof sound effect and won’t likely ever become the meme replacement for that effect. Especially since there is nothing stopping the copyright infringement minefield that social media is today, with everyone using whatever sounds and songs they want.

Will the Oof Sound Ever Return?

Finally, the main question that will be on the minds of many players out there is if the oof sound will ever return to the game. There is still hope out there for the oof to return to Roblox. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here once more, but I don’t think that the oof sound effect will ever return to the game.

The chances of this happening are slim to none. The reason has to do with the ongoing legal issues involving it. Even if a lawsuit never happens between Tallarico and Roblox, there is likely an agreement for the sound effect to never return to the game.

Now, there is the option of a path where Tallarico and Roblox come to an agreement where they pay the composer of the oof sound for the rights to either license the sound for Roblox or buy it from him outright. Unfortunately, this is also unlikely.

While it might have been possible under other circumstances, the reality is that Roblox seemingly used this sound effect for literally decades without permission or licensing.

For someone to suddenly be okay with that and give the go-ahead to keep using it, it would be unrealistic to see happen. As such, the chances of the Roblox oof sound returning are essentially zero.

That said, there is a positive factor to this whole story. While the new death sound effect is not nearly as funny or memorable as the previous one, there is some hope for the future. There are plans in the future for Roblox to add custom sound effects in the avatar shop.

Players will be able to buy sound effects for their characters’ deaths, similar to how you buy clothing items there. This way, you’ll be able to make whatever death sound effect you want.

This opens the door for many new goofy sound effects that could become iconic in their own right. Only time will tell if they can truly take the place of oof, though.

FAQs

Question: Why did Roblox Remove the oof Sound?

Answer: Roblox removed the oof sound in the summer of 2022 seemingly because of a legal issue regarding it. The official statement was that it was a licensing issue.
But, in reality, the oof sound wasn’t created by the Roblox developers but was taken from another game that they didn’t have permission to use it.

Question: Who did the oof Sound, Roblox?

Answer: The original oof sound from Roblox is reportedly credited to being made by the renowned video game composer Tommy Tallarico in 2000. The sound effect he made for his game sound quite similar to the oof sound that was taken and used in Roblox.

Question: Where is the oof Sound in Roblox from?

Answer: The oof sound effect in Roblox reportedly comes from the 2000 video game known as Messiah. The little-known game has a scene in which a small angel boy hits the surface of the moon and makes an “oof” sound that sounds a lot like the Roblox death sound effect.

This Is Far From the First Roblox Controversy

The unfortunate reality is that the oof death sound effect in Roblox is unlikely ever to come back to the game. Its swift removal from the game was for a crucial legal reason, and it is unlikely that Roblox Corp. will get the rights to use the sound effect again in the future.

The worst part about this whole situation is that this is far from the only legal problem Roblox has run into.

Scams are literally everywhere in Roblox. It doesn’t matter what game you are playing; if there are other players playing it, chances are you’re going to get trolled by someone, scammed by someone, or encounter toxic players.

This has led to some serious implications for Roblox as there are criminals and even offenders who have seemingly used the platform in the past for wrong deeds. These issues aren’t as easily solved as the oof sound, either.