Roblox is banning kids from ‘social hangout’ spaces

Roblox is going to block kids from accessing certain types of experiences following reports alleging that the platform has enabled child abuse.

One new measure will stop kids under 13 from accessing experiences with “certain types of interactive features,” Roblox says in a post on its developer forum. Those include “social hangouts,” where the primary purpose is to communicate with others over text or voice chat, and “free-form 2D user creation” experiences, where players can do things like draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard. This change goes into effect beginning November 18th.

Another change stops kids under 13 from playing, searching for, or being able to discover unrated experiences. This change goes into effect after December 3rd. If a creator wants to let a player under 13 access their game, they will have to complete a questionnaire and make sure that all of the information regarding their experience meets Roblox’s requirements for its current All Ages or 9 plus ratings. Roblox says it will start enforcing those requirements “next year.”

There have been multiple recent stories about Roblox’ allegedly poor protections for children, including a Bloomberg article titled “Roblox’s Pedophile Problem.” In October, the company announced changes for pre-teen users and a new type of account to let parents manage their kids on Roblox.

“We’re constantly strengthening our safety systems and policies — we shipped over 30 improvements this year and we have more to come,” spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt says in a statement to The Verge. “As a company that’s transparent with our community of developers, we needed to share key information about the upcoming changes prior to launch. The DevForum has all the information on the upcoming changes that we’re sharing at this time. It’s important to know that at Roblox, we’re constantly innovating Safety and we’ll never STOP.” (Emphasis Chaitin-Lefcourt’s.)

Update, November 6th: Added statement from Roblox.