Roblox Corporation has announced changes to its child-safety policies that’ll impact the way pre-teen users can interact with its popular gaming platform. The move follows persitent accusations the company routinely fails to protect its predominantly young player base, and, more recently, a damning report calling Roblox an “X-rated paedophile hellscape” that exposes children to “grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech”.
Back in July, Bloomberg revealed Roblox had reported 13,316 instances of child exploitation last year, and that more than two dozen people had been arrested for abusing minors following contact in-game. That was followed by a report in August from short-selling firm Hindenberg Research that, as well as accusing Roblox of deliberately inflating player numbers to investors, shared numerous examples of Roblox’s apparent failure to keep children safe.
In both cases, Roblox hit back at the accusations, calling the Hindenberg Research report “simply misleading” and insisting the Bloomberg article contained “glaring mischaracterisations”. But despite Roblox’s constant protestations, the company has now announced numerous changes to its child-safety policies.
As reported by The Verge, Roblox sent out an email to parents this week announcing that children under the age of 13 will soon need parental permission to access “chat features” by default, while children under nine will additionally need permission to play experiences with a content maturity rating of “moderate”, which can include “moderate violence or crude humour”. Roblox says these restrictions will be automatically lifted as users reach certain age milestones, assuming parents and users haven’t already made changes manually.