Roblox has announced a series of significant policy updates to address concerns about child safety on its platform. This update comes after multiple lawsuits alleged that the company has not done enough to protect its underage users. In the new rules, which will roll out in the coming months, Roblox noted that it “will restrict” all unrated experiences to developers and those working directly with them. Previously, users ages 13 and up could access these games. Moreover, the company is limiting "social hangout" experiences that feature private spaces like bedrooms or bathrooms to ID-verified users who are 17 or older. Roblox said that it will also restrict games that primarily take place in private or adult-only spaces, like bars or clubs, to verified users 17 and up. Apart from this, the company is launching an automated tool to detect and take down experiences that violate the new rules. In a statement, Roblox said it is actively working to block exploitative behaviour and improve its moderation.
What Roblox said about its new user-created games policies
In a blog post, Roblox said: “We’re making several important updates and clarifications to our tools and policies to help promote safety and civility on Roblox:
We’re clarifying our policy that prohibits romantic and sexual content to also explicitly prohibit content, settings, or behaviour that implies sexual activity.
We’re also announcing that, in the coming months, we will restrict all unrated experiences (previously restricted to users 13 or older) to the developer and the people actively working on the experience. To make these experiences broadly available, developers must complete our Maturity & Compliance Questionnaire to receive a content maturity label so users and parents can easily identify which content is appropriate for them and their children.
We’re rolling out new technology to detect violative scenes. The goal of this tool is to detect violative user behaviour in otherwise policy-compliant experiences. For example, experiences that have a drawing feature may be compliant, but this technology can detect violative creations made by users in that experience, like drawings showing inappropriate content. If this feature detects a server with a high volume of violative user behaviour, the system will automatically take that server down. Our team will then work with the developer to see if adjustments can be made to prevent that behaviour in the future.
These changes are in addition to our Community Standards and overall Terms of Use, which set clear expectations for appropriate behaviour on Roblox and define Restricted Content. This update is intended to complement the safeguards and innovations we are continually releasing, including early detection, age estimation, and parental controls. We’re releasing the news about this policy change earlier than we had planned because we know constant progress in this area is as important to our community as it is to us.
To go further, we’re making some updates to which experiences are restricted to ID-verified users 17 and older. We’ve seen that Social Hangouts—experiences where the primary purpose is to chat with other users as the user or their avatar—can sometimes contain inappropriate user behaviour when they include certain settings. Although these settings are not against our current policies, we’ve observed higher rates of inappropriate user behaviour in them, so we’re further restricting some of them from our younger users. We continue to moderate this type of behaviour in all experiences, but moderation is reactive, and younger users could still be exposed to activity that could be construed as inappropriate.
As a result, we’re updating our policy to restrict social hangout experiences depicting private spaces (such as bedrooms and bathrooms) to users who are ID-verified and 17 or older. Additionally, experiences that primarily take place in these private spaces, and in settings intended for adults (such as bars and clubs), will also be restricted to only ID-verified users 17 or older. Developers looking to create an experience for users 17 or older must also verify that they are 17 or older.
We’ve been thoughtful about this policy's design and intent. Many experiences, such as dollhouses or simulations, include individual beds or bathroom assets, but the larger gameplay scenario and the overall design of the experience may not inspire the kind of violative user behaviour that we’ve seen in social hangouts or experiences primarily set in these private spaces. We’ve designed the policy to carefully balance user safety and community creativity. We are working on many updates to our policies, detection, and reporting tools. As we mentioned in today’s podcast, we’re also developing a community advisory council. We’ll have more to share on these improvements in the coming weeks.”
What Roblox said about its new user-created games policies
In a blog post, Roblox said: “We’re making several important updates and clarifications to our tools and policies to help promote safety and civility on Roblox:
We’re clarifying our policy that prohibits romantic and sexual content to also explicitly prohibit content, settings, or behaviour that implies sexual activity.
We’re also announcing that, in the coming months, we will restrict all unrated experiences (previously restricted to users 13 or older) to the developer and the people actively working on the experience. To make these experiences broadly available, developers must complete our Maturity & Compliance Questionnaire to receive a content maturity label so users and parents can easily identify which content is appropriate for them and their children.
We’re rolling out new technology to detect violative scenes. The goal of this tool is to detect violative user behaviour in otherwise policy-compliant experiences. For example, experiences that have a drawing feature may be compliant, but this technology can detect violative creations made by users in that experience, like drawings showing inappropriate content. If this feature detects a server with a high volume of violative user behaviour, the system will automatically take that server down. Our team will then work with the developer to see if adjustments can be made to prevent that behaviour in the future.
These changes are in addition to our Community Standards and overall Terms of Use, which set clear expectations for appropriate behaviour on Roblox and define Restricted Content. This update is intended to complement the safeguards and innovations we are continually releasing, including early detection, age estimation, and parental controls. We’re releasing the news about this policy change earlier than we had planned because we know constant progress in this area is as important to our community as it is to us.
To go further, we’re making some updates to which experiences are restricted to ID-verified users 17 and older. We’ve seen that Social Hangouts—experiences where the primary purpose is to chat with other users as the user or their avatar—can sometimes contain inappropriate user behaviour when they include certain settings. Although these settings are not against our current policies, we’ve observed higher rates of inappropriate user behaviour in them, so we’re further restricting some of them from our younger users. We continue to moderate this type of behaviour in all experiences, but moderation is reactive, and younger users could still be exposed to activity that could be construed as inappropriate.
As a result, we’re updating our policy to restrict social hangout experiences depicting private spaces (such as bedrooms and bathrooms) to users who are ID-verified and 17 or older. Additionally, experiences that primarily take place in these private spaces, and in settings intended for adults (such as bars and clubs), will also be restricted to only ID-verified users 17 or older. Developers looking to create an experience for users 17 or older must also verify that they are 17 or older.
We’ve been thoughtful about this policy's design and intent. Many experiences, such as dollhouses or simulations, include individual beds or bathroom assets, but the larger gameplay scenario and the overall design of the experience may not inspire the kind of violative user behaviour that we’ve seen in social hangouts or experiences primarily set in these private spaces. We’ve designed the policy to carefully balance user safety and community creativity. We are working on many updates to our policies, detection, and reporting tools. As we mentioned in today’s podcast, we’re also developing a community advisory council. We’ll have more to share on these improvements in the coming weeks.”
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