Roblox has announced significant changes aimed at protecting children playing on the platform amid increased scrutiny and concerns from parents.
As part of the changes expected to take place in the coming months, users under 13 will no longer be able to directly message other people on Roblox outside of games or experiences (called platform chat).
Roblox will also introduce a built-in setting that restricts users under 13 from publicly broadcasting only as part of a game or experience. By default, users under the age of 13 will not be able to directly message others. Parents can change this setting in Parental Controls.
Starting today, users under the age of nine will only be able to access games and attractions with content rated as Minimal or Mild, with parental consent required to access Moderate content.
Roblox changes are coming heated on the heels a damning Bloomberg report from this summer on the prevalence of child predators on the platform, and most recently a report by the investment company Hindenburg Research in which the company was accused, among other things, of being a paradise for grooms and pedophiles due to the lack of preliminary screening of novel accounts.
She claimed to have encountered open trafficking of child pornography, as well as violent and hateful speech and sexually explicit content in many of the games targeted at children on the platform. Roblox responded by saying that “safety and civility” have been “foundations” of Roblox since its inception. However, Hindenburg continued by pointing out that he did not address the allegations that Roblox is a “hell pedophile.”
“We’ve spent nearly two decades building robust security systems, but we know there’s always more to do,” said Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief security officer, in a press release released today.
“Last quarter saw a record number of average daily active users on Roblox – over 88 million – and as our platform continues to evolve, we have always recognized that our approach to security must evolve with it. Today’s launch is the next stage in this evolution. It is the culmination of many months of product development and consultation with internet safety experts, and follows the launch of over 30 new security feature enhancements this year alone, as we continue our mission to build safe and civil spaces for millions of people to play, learn and be creative all over the world.”
Also starting today, accounts with parent privileges will be able to check how much time a child has been using the device over the past week, set daily limits on device usage time, and view the child’s friends list. Additionally, accounts with parent permissions will have access to existing Roblox tools that allow parents to set spending limits, limit or enable certain chat features, and determine the type of content their child can access.
In the coming months, Roblox will also introduce novel restrictions to prevent users under 13 from searching, discovering or playing content that does not already have a content label assigned to it. Restricted content will remain blocked until you are 17 years of age and have verified your age by uploading a selfie and a photo of a valid government-issued ID.
Last week, Roblox announced that it would be age-restricting certain user experiences to under 13 based on the type of user behavior that can sometimes be seen in those experiences. These novel restrictions apply to sites that are primarily intended for socializing with users outside of their friends list, and sites that allow people to write or draw freely, such as on a chalkboard or blackboard.
Already in 2018 Roblox has faced criticism after a mother reported that her seven-year-old daughter’s character on Roblox suffered a brutal sexual assault by several other characters, which the company attributed to a “one-time exploit that was quickly fixed.” Around the same time, a six-year-old girl appeared reportedly invited to the game’s “sex room”.. 2021 featured user reports by recreating real-world mass shootings in the gameand People make games published the report alleging that Roblox’s business model exploits child labor.
In 2022 a lawsuit in San Francisco blamed Roblox enabling financial and sexual exploitation of a 10-year-old girl. In 2023 he was sued for both supposedly facilitating “illegal gambling ecosystem” and more generally for having lax child safety protocols that allegedly led to financial losses and children’s exposure to adult content.
Earlier this year announced the platform in 2023, reported over 13,000 cases of child abuse to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, leading to the arrest of 24 attackers who allegedly groomed and abused children on Roblox. This number increased by 3,000 compared to 2022. A Roblox spokesperson responded: “While even one potential case of child abuse is too many, our reports represent only a fraction of the overall NCMEC numbers for 2023. The 2023 NCMEC CyberTipline received over 36.2 million reports, with the vast majority relating to cases of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to a lesser extent 0.04 percent of this report’s total.”
The Bloomberg report suggested she remained many other perpetrators on the platform who managed to evade capture. At the time, Roblox described itself as “one of the safest online environments for our users, especially our youngest users.”
Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK news editor at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
