Roblox is making some major changes to the control it gives parents over their children’s accounts following damning reports that its platform is rife with child exploitation and abuse.
In an email sent to parents managing their children’s Roblox accounts, which IGN obtained and which was first reported by Bloombergthe company says it’s finally introducing Roblox accounts with parental permissions. Previously, Roblox parental controls allowed parents to set a PIN on their child’s account that would only be known to the parent. This unlocks the ability to change settings, such as the type of content your child can access and set spending limits.
Now PINs are a thing of the past. Instead, parents must create their own, separate Roblox accounts and link them to their child’s account. This gives parents the ability to update parental controls from their own device, as well as access to information about their child’s time spent on Roblox and in their friends list.
Additionally, users under the age of 13 will now need parental consent to utilize certain chat features, and users under the age of nine will need parental consent to utilize any Roblox services marked as having “Moderate” content maturity.
Here is the entire email:
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 a report published this week by the investment company Hindenburg Research, which accused the company of, among other things, being a paradise for guardians and pedophiles due to the lack of preliminary screening of modern accounts. She claimed to have found open trafficking of child pornography on the site, as well as violent and hateful speech and sexually explicit content in many of the games marketed to 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.”
Roblox’s response is a complete failure to address the two main allegations in our report, including:
1. Evidence that Roblox has been systematically lying for years about the number of people on its platform and their true level of engagement.
2. That the platform is… pic.twitter.com/Tj2KiANonI
— Hindenburg Research (@HindenburgRes) October 8, 2024
This is not the first time Roblox has been accused of creating an unsafe and exploitative environment for children. Already in 2018 the company faced criticism after a mother reported that her seven-year-old daughter’s character on Roblox suffered sexual violence from several other characters. 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 the 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 report by Bloomberg shows that this number 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.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Her posts can be found on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
This article was amended after publication to include further references to previous reports on this topic.