After years of controversy surrounding children and their safety on Roblox – a virtual gaming platform that might just stand as the biggest in the world now – developers are finally adding a solid age verification system of sorts, although it's not without its flaws.
News of the age checks coming to Roblox arrives in the form of an online update from chief safety officer Matt Kaufman and product vice president Rajiv Bhatia. In short, the platform will begin rolling out face-based age verification – think the system that Discord currently has in place in the United Kingdom, the very same that users were bypassing with clips from Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2 – as a new requirement.
This requirement will apply to all players hoping to access communication features (the chat function, for instance) – and it's not the only system arriving to make Roblox a safer space for minor users. Devs are also implementing age-based chat in hopes of limiting any discussions between adults and others under 18. These changes are set to come to the platform slowly, starting today with a voluntary "Facial Age Estimation" process.
Kaufman and Bhatia describe Roblox as "the first online gaming or communication platform to require facial age checks to access chat, establishing what we believe will become a new industry standard" in their announcement – although it's important to note that, at least in the UK, Discord has done pretty much exactly this already. For anyone worried about potential security risks, devs assure "images and video are deleted immediately after processing."
They conclude that, "This initiative is designed to provide even more age-appropriate experiences for all users, which we believe will improve interactions for users of all ages on Roblox" – a statement that hopefully rings true, especially as minor players' place on the platform has been quite the point of contention in the past, and that's honestly a bit of an understatement at this point. Heck, it made it to the BBC in March.
Parents concerned about inappropriate content were told by CEO Dave Baszucki to simply not "let your kids be on Roblox," then – even if it "sounds a little counter-intuitive."
"My first message would be, if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox," he said at the time. "That sounds a little counterintuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decision. I would say at the same time, there are literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people having amazing experiences on our platform."
Now, it sounds like devs have an actual plan in place… fingers crossed it works.
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