Roblox announced new accounts designed to provide kids and younger teens age-appropriate chat and content.
The same age check technology that Roblox launched in January for chat will be utilized for these new age-adaptive accounts. The company is doing so as child safety conversations have risen in awareness. Roblox has also been sued by various parties for not protecting children enough from predators.
The company said it is introducing Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts, which leverage age check technology to align users under 16 with age-appropriate content and communication.
“We’re going to introduce new account types with content restrictions baked into” different kinds of content, said Matthew Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox, in a press briefing. “What we’re announcing on Monday is Roblox Kids accounts and Roblox Select accounts. These accounts will use the same age check technology that we’ve already used for communication, and we will also introduce, at the same time, new requirements on what content standards must be met in order to have content or games appear in either the Roblox Kids account or the Roblox Select account.”
The global age check technology will assign users under 9 to Roblox Kids, and users aged 9 to 15 to Roblox Select accounts.
These accounts will only have access to games that have passed a multistep review process including a content review, developer verification, and platform usage patterns.
The Roblox Kids and Roblox Select catalogs will include most of the games already played by users in those age groups.
Age verification
Roblox spokespeople noted that Roblox has become the largest user-generated content platform in the world. They noted that they introduced age checks for communication on Roblox late last year and launched it globally in January.
“We are the largest online platform in the world that requires age checks through a face to age estimation or ID verification,” said Matthew Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox, in a press briefing. “It requires these age checks before users can have access to communication. We believe that this increases safety on the platform and increases stability by keeping users of like ages together when they’re communicating.”
He said that since the launch at the beginning of this year, over 50% of the 144 million daily active users have completed the age check process.
There are two million users who are creating content for learning STEM skills on the platform.
And Kaufman said, “We’re thinking about how do we balance that freedom of creativity and the joy that comes with building really anything. How do we balance that with making sure that the content that’s accessible to our youngest users and young teens is age appropriate.”
The issue around kids chat
In the coming months, the company will take the work that it did around age checks for communication, and it’s going to marry that with content.
Chat has become controversial in part because predators can use it to groom young people and deceive them into meeting privately, especially on other platforms without strict kids controls. But Roblox is putting control of chat in the hands of parents.
“We do think at those ages it’s appropriate for kids to be chatting with kids their same age that have gone through age check in our filtered environment, and we think that our safety systems are just much more robust than others,” said Jacobs. “We know that if you know if they’re chatting on other platforms, none of those things will apply. And so we want to build a system that where they can safely chat with their friends and play with their friends. Chatting is part of gameplay. In a lot of these games, they have to coordinate on teams in order to be able to play together. So we want to allow that kind of pro social communication within our safety systems.”
New Accounts
Since the introduction of facial age checks as a requirement to access chat earlier this year, over 50% of our global daily active users have completed an age check with either Facial Age Estimation or ID verification, with more age-checking daily. Roblox now plans to extend these age-checks to games.
Based on a user’s age-check or the age set by a verified linked parent, Roblox will automatically assign users to one of the following accounts:
- Roblox Kids (ages 5–8*): Designed for our youngest users, these accounts will have games that are rated for children under 9 years old (Minimal or Mild ratings) and will only include games that have passed our screening criteria. Roblox Kids accounts will have a different background color, so parents can see at a glance that their child is in the right place. Chat will remain off by default for children younger than 9.
- Roblox Select (ages 9–15*): Recognizing that children in this age range are developmentally ready for a broader range of games, Select accounts will have access to games rated up to Moderate and – like Roblox Kids – will only include games that have passed our screening criteria. In most regions, chat will be on by default, allowing users to chat with Trusted Friends and users in a similar age group.
- Roblox (ages 16 and up*): At 16, users will graduate to a standard Roblox account, where they’ll gain access to the full features and library of games except Restricted Content, which is designed for users 18 and older. For these accounts, our existing safety filters and protections still apply.
After a brief transition period, any user who hasn’t completed an age check will only be able to play a selection of age-appropriate games rated Minimal or Mild for younger audiences, and chat will be off.
*The exact ages, games, and features associated with these accounts will vary by region. Ages are based on age checks; parents can correct a child’s age if necessary.
Screening Process
All games will undergo a three-step review before being seen by kids or younger teens.
- Step 1: Developer Verification. Before their games can be considered for Roblox Kids or Roblox Select accounts, developers must meet foundational eligibility requirements. These requirements confirm that developers are in good standing and have established a secure presence on the platform. Developers must:
- Complete a ID verification or (if under 16) maintain a connection to a linked parent account
- Add a two-step verification to their account
- Have an active Roblox Plus subscription, which shows a long-term commitment to the platform – we just announced Plus this morning, take a look at our Newsroom for more details including pricing.
- Step 2: Real-Time Evaluation. Users 16 or older, who now represent a significant portion of our community, play new games first. Understanding how they play in real conditions and what kinds of user reports they file helps us evaluate games before they’re seen by younger users. We also leverage automated signals from our real-time multimodal moderation system, which evaluates an entire scene to assess whether it breaks our rules. Together, these signals provide a higher degree of certainty that games for kids and younger teens is appropriate.
- Step 3: Games Eligibility Check. Finally, games must meet specific gameplay criteria to be accessible to younger users, including having the appropriate content maturity label for the account. Certain experiences, such as those featuring sensitive issues, social hangouts, or free-form drawing, will be excluded from Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts by default.
Parental Controls
The company is also expanding parental controls and allowing parents to block specific games and manage direct chat in experiences until their child turns 16. Roblox is also adding a way to approve specific games for children under 16. For example, if a younger sibling wants to play a game that isn’t available in their Roblox Kids account with their older brother or sister, a parent will be able to grant permission to access it.
This will be rolling out globally by the beginning of June. The Roblox Safety Center is a resource of information including what features players have access to based on age such as chat.
“There are strict eligibility requirements for the creators and games must have been proven out with our older users before that they can enter enter the Roblox kids account,” Kaufman said. “We also limit the games based on their maturity levels. We require that games must be either the minimal or mild ratings, which really means minimal or mild violence and crude humor.”
The age rating standards are also going to shift to IARC (International Age Rating Coalition) standards in the future. In the U.S., that includes the Entertainment Safety Ratings Board. In other parts of the world, that includes PEGI and other ratings agencies.
For kids accounts, chat is off by default. And parents can add chat if they approve and authorize specific parents or children that their child can play with.
To help parents manage the content their children can access, Roblox is enabling them to allow or block specific games.
Kaufman said that the kids account is also distinct visually, so when parents are looking over the shoulders of their kids to see what they are doing, it’s much easier to know which version of Roblox their kids have access to.
The details
Kaufman said Roblox Select is designed for those ages nine to 15, and they are developmentally ready for a broader set of content. In addition to the minimal and mild content, they will also be able to play moderate content and then chat and communicate, based on actual age. Parental controls will be extended to users all the way up through age 16. So it doesn’t just stop at 13 anymore.
For 16 and older, users can access full Roblox accounts. They can access the entire catalog on Roblox and they can have access to all ratings, up to restricted, which are for those who age check to 18 or older. Chat is on by default in these accounts. Parents can still get access to some parental controls like screen time and spending info, but parents don’t have full control over the 16 and over accounts.
“We give that to users so that they can exercise their own limits if they choose,” Kaufman said.
If a user decides not to go through the age check process and it is not required, then users will be limited to accessing only the content which is in Roblox Kids, and they won’t be able to chat.
“We’re committed to protecting our users and, of course, and balancing privacy and age understanding at the same time. Now, knowing how old users are has a lot of benefits for the entire Roblox community,” Kaufman said. “We can deliver a safer and more civil experiences to our users, and when we group users of like ages together, when they’re communicating with each other, we know that that creates a more civil experience. We also know that age checks are simply categorically more accurate than just asking somebody how old they are.”
To balance privacy, Roblox will verify age through the age check system and then immediately delete the images and video associated with those checks once the processing is complete, Kaufman said.
Roblox gets lots of questions on the accuracy of the age check system.
“And what we can say is that while no system is ever perfect for users under 18 years old, we see a mean average error of about plus or minus 1.4 years,” said Kaufman. “If we get it wrong, if the age check process gets it wrong, then we offer users multiple ways to correct that.”
One way is to provide a photo ID where the age is on it. If they are under 18, they can go through a verified parental consent process, and the parent can set the age. And then if somebody messes something up, like a kid accidentally giving their phone to their parent to go through the age check process for them, they can always reset the process and go through it again.
As for verifying that someone on theother side of the camera is real — and it’s not a picture of somebody else — Roblox has tech to determine if the person is real by asking them to move their head back and forth.
The verification of content for kids
Eliza Jacobs, vice president of safety product policy at Roblox, said in the press briefing that her team determines community standards for what is and isn’t allowed on Roblox. In order to get products into Roblox Kids or Roblox Select, developers will go through a three-step process. The first is about the developer. The second is about the gameplay of the game itself, and the third is about the ratings of the game and its content.
For developer verification, Roblox requires a forma ID vertification. If the person is under 16, they need to connect their account to their parents’ account, in which case, their parent will have ID verified or credit card verified. They will also have to set up two-factor authentication on their account and they need an active Roblox Plus subscription. The point of this is to have developers demonstrate a “reputational” commitment to Roblox. If content is aimed at 16 and up, then the subscription isn’t required.
As for the game, the community standards group will review what kind of content various age groups will play, how they interact within the game and what kind of user reports they file. The game assets are reviewed by Roblox’s moderators as they are submitted with the game.
“We look at everything before it goes live on Roblox, but once all those pieces are put together and real people are playing them in real time, new things emerge, and we’re able to get a lot more signal about the potential problems with those games once there are real players in them,” Jacobs said. “We will use our real time multimodal moderation system. We’ll collect signals from that system.”
Moderation teams will look at what’s going on in those games to make sure it is safe for the youngest users. The team will verify the content is being played and approved by real players.
Finally, for the content eligibility criteria, Roblox checks again after the developer passes verification and the extended review. Then the company has to make sure the maturity label or the rating of the game is appropriate for kids or the Select accounts.
The ratings fall under the minimal, mild, moderate and restricted ratings, which will be converted via a partnership with IARC international age rating coalition like the ESRB.
Parents can block games they don’t think are appropriate for their children in the kids and Select accounts. And Roblox will also provide the ability for parents to see which games their kids are playing. Roblox is also introducing an option for parents to approve specific games for children under 16 that might not be in the kids or Select catalog.
“We want to see what the whole community is doing to get the best signal about whether we think the way they’re engaging with it indicates that it continues to be appropriate for our younger users,” Jacobs said.
Reaction to the Meta social media lawsuit
Asked about the landmark ruling against Meta over whether its social media practices are bad for users and can cause mental health problems, Kaufman said he couldn’t speak to legal action against other companies.
“What we can say is that on Roblox, we are committed to working with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC).
“We’re committed to working with them on making sure that we’re following the same global standards that everybody else is following, and that we are offering tools for our developers to be able to adhere to those standards as well,” Kaufman said.
Jacobs sadded, “Roblox is a gaming platform. We’re not a social media platform. We don’t have infinite scroll. We’re not about just endless engagement. We’re about people playing with each other and engaging and having fun and creating a really dynamic platform, and I think it’s very different from social media.”