Roblox Blocks Under 13s From DMing Others Outside Games Amid Scrutiny Over Child Protection

Roblox has announced significant changes designed to protect children who play on the platform amid increased scrutiny and concern from parents.

As part of the changes due in the coming months, users under the age of 13 will no longer be able to directly message others on Roblox outside of games or experiences (also known as platform chat).

Roblox will also introduce a built-in setting that limits users under the age of 13 to public broadcast messages only within a game or experience. By default, users younger than 13 will not be able to directly message others. Parents can change this setting in Parental Controls.

From today, users under the age of nine will only be able to access games or experiences with content labeled Minimal or Mild, with parental consent required to access Moderate content.

Roblox's changes come on the heels both of a damning Bloomberg report this summer about the prevalence of child predators on the platform and, more recently, a report from investment firm Hindenburg Research that accused the company of, among other things, being a haven for groomers and pedophiles due to a lack of up-front screening of new accounts.

It claimed to have found open trading of child pornography on the site as well as violent and hateful speech and sexually explicit content in numerous games marketed to kids on the platform. Roblox responded, saying that "safety and civility" have been "foundational" to Roblox since its inception. However, Hindenburg followed up by pointing out that it had not addressed allegations of Roblox being a "pedophile hellscape."

“We’ve spent nearly two decades building strong safety systems, but we know there’s always more to be done,” Matt Kaufman, Chief Safety Officer at Roblox, said in a note to the press issued today.

“Last quarter saw a record average for daily active users on Roblox - over 88 million - and as our platform has grown in scale, we have always recognised that our approach to safety must evolve with it. Today’s launch represents the next stage in that evolution. It is the culmination of many months of product development and consultation with online safety experts, and follows the rollout of more than 30 new safety feature enhancements this year alone, as we continue on our mission to build a safe and civil space for play, learning and creativity for millions around the world.”

Also from today, accounts with parent privileges will be able to view their child’s screen time over the past week, set daily screen time limits, and view their child’s friends list. In addition, accounts with parent privileges will be able to access existing Roblox tools that allow parents to set spend restrictions, limit or enable certain chat functionality, and determine the type of content their child has access to.

In the coming months, Roblox will also introduce new restrictions to prevent users under the age of 13 from searching, discovering or playing experiences that have yet to be assigned a Content Label. Restricted content will remain blocked until a user is at least 17 years old and has verified their age by uploading a selfie and a photo of a valid government-issued ID.

Last week, Roblox announced that it will age-gate certain experiences for users under the age of 13, based on the type of user behaviors sometimes found in those experiences. These new restrictions apply to experiences that are primarily designed for socializing with users outside of their friends list and experiences that allow free-form writing or drawing, such as on a chalkboard or a whiteboard.

Back in 2018, Roblox faced criticism after a mother reported her seven-year-old daughter's Roblox character was violently sexually assaulted by several other characters. Around the same time, a six-year-old girl was reportedly invited into a "sex room" in the game. In 2021, reports were highlighted of users recreating real-world mass shootings in the game, and People Make Games published a report alleging that Roblox's business model exploited child labor.

In 2022, a San Francisco lawsuit accused Roblox of enabling the financial and sexual exploitation of a 10-year-old girl. In 2023, it was sued both for allegedly facilitating "an illegal gambling ecosystem" and more generally for having lax child safety protocols that allegedly led to financial loss and children's exposure to adult content.

Earlier this year, the platform announced it reported over 13,000 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, resulting in the arrest of 24 predators who allegedly groomed and abused children on Roblox. This number is up 3,000 from 2022.

A Bloomberg report suggested that there remained a number of other abusers on the platform who had managed to evade capture. At the time, Roblox referred to itself as "one of the safest online environments for our users, particularly the youngest users."

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.