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The game will also restrict under-13s from being able to play, search or discover games with unrated experiences.
Following a recent update to their child safety policy, popular video game Roblox has announced new measures to improve guardrails protecting children on the platform.
In an announcement yesterday (6 November), the game platform, which allows users to program and play their own games as well as other users’ games, will restrict those under 13 from accessing social hangouts such as in-game clubs and ‘free-form user creation experiences – features in games that allow users to write or draw, without the completed creation going through Roblox moderation.
The game will also restrict under-13 users from being able to play, search or discover games with unrated experiences.
In the announcement, Roblox gave game developers or creators on the platform until 3 December to rate their game experience, after which time, unrated experiences will become unplayable, unsearchable and undiscoverable by those under 13. Roblox said that it will integrate experience-rating more closely with the publishing process in the future.
Just two weeks ago, in a bid to update its child safety policies following years of backlash, Roblox reformed game labelling whereby instead of labelling content by age appropriateness, the games will now be labelled based on what users can experience. Roblox mandated that children under nine would require parental permission to access games labelled “moderate”, which may contain moderate violence or crude humour.
The game also announced a new type of account that lets parents monitor their child’s activity on the platform, including their online ‘friends’ and daily screen time.
The game, popular among pre-teens, has about 80m daily active users and has been accused of platforming child-abusers for years. Since 2018, US police have arrested at least 24 people accused of abducting or abusing victims they’d met or groomed on the platform, according to Bloomberg.
A recent CyberSafeKids’ trends analysis, which surveyed more than 7,000 children aged 8-14 in Ireland showed that Roblox was the “most popular” online environment to have an account for 40pc of children. Nearly a quarter of the children surveyed said they viewed something on Roblox that made them feel bothered or upset.
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