Roblox is adding more protections to its platform for its youngest users, a move that comes about a month after short-selling firm Hindenburg Research accused the videogame company of favoring growth over child safety, The Wall Street Journal reported.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Roblox said new parental controls and gatekeeping features launching Monday were planned and in development long before Hindenburg released its report. The company has denied the firm’s allegations, which include that it inflate the user metrics it shares with investors.

The safeguards Roblox is adding include the ability for parents to create their own accounts that link to their children’s accounts, allowing them to set daily usage limits, block access to specific game genres, and more.

Games will also get ratings similar to movies that are based on the kind of content they contain so parents can more easily determine which ones they are comfortable letting their children play. In addition, users under 13 will no longer be allowed to text chat outside of games. They already can’t voice chat.

Roblox posted: “Major Updates to Our Safety Systems and Parental Controls”

Safety is and always has been foundational to everything we do at Roblox. We’ve spent nearly two decades building strong safety systems, but we are always evolving our systems as new technology becomes available. We regularly ship updates to our safety and policy systems. We’ve already shipped more than 30 improvements this year.

Today, we are sharing the latest updates to our safety controls, including significant improvements to parental controls, how users under age 13 can communicate on Roblox, new content labels, and built-in protections for younger users. We are excited to share these extensive updates today.

These changes were developed and implemented after multiple rounds of internal research, including interviews, usability studies, and international surveys with parents and kids, and consultation with experts from child safety and media literacy organizations. 

We are making these changes for our youngest user by: (1) making it easier and more intuitive for parents to manage their child’s settings, and (2) updating our built-in limits to provide certain protections, independent of parental controls. These changes have been supported by partners, including the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and the Family Online Safety Institute.

TechCrunch reported: Roblox will not let users under the age of 13 to message others outside of games and experiences on the platform, the company said on Friday. Roblox also announced a series of other built-in protections for young users, such as age-gating certain experiences, along with enhanced parental controls.

Shortly after the Bloomberg report was released, Roblox said it would introduce changes to keep children on its platform safe. Now, it’s officially rolling out protections and giving parents more insight and control into their child’s usage of the platform.

In my opinion, Roblox is doing the right thing by alerting parents that they can use safety tools to control their children’s use of the platform.

Roblox, the popular kids gaming platform, is looking to bolster revenue by giving wider swath of users the ability to create and sell more types of digital goods, CNBC reported.

The company said on Friday that subscribers to the Roblox app’s upper-tier premium plans, which gives users a monthly allowance of the Roblox digital currency, will be able to hawk their 3D goods to other users. Previously, Roblox gamers could only create and sell 2D goods like virtual clothing and were required to apply and win approval to be part of the company’s user-generated content (UGC) program in order to do the same with 3D assets.

“Now you have the marketplace open to everybody, and you will have the opportunity to have a lot of creation on the platform,” Manuel Bronstein, Roblox’s chief product officer, said in an interview with CNBC. “We know that with increased creation comes more engagement and more users.”

According to CNBC, by allowing Roblox users to create and sell 3D goods, the company could gain more paid subscribers who are willing to spend money for that feature. Although users, who must provide photo identification, will have to pay a fee of 750 Robux to upload 3D accessories and clothing to the marketplace, they will be able to submit their custom 3D bodies and heads for digital avatars for free. Users pay $105 for 30,000 Robux.

Roblox posted “RDC 2023: Where Roblox is going next” on its blog. There is a lot of stuff to sort through, but the most interesting part is about Economic Opportunities For Creators. From the blog post:

“At RDC, we shared with creators key enhancements that will improve their ability to earn on Roblox. First, we shared that we’ll soon launch a way for creators to offer subscriptions within their experiences and the freedom to choose which features or offerings to make available as a subscription model. For instance, a creator could offer a subscription for a digital “trunk club” where subscribers regularly receive curated outfits, or a members-only fan club.

As a step toward making it possible for anyone on Roblox to participate in our economy, later this month, we are inviting anyone that is ID-verified and has Premium to create 3D items for our Marketplace. We care about creating a Marketplace with content people love and where creativity is protected.

That’s why as we open up our Marketplace this year, we are implementing safeguards in addition to ID verification that bring more accountability to creators. We are also developing easier ways for creators to detect duplicates of their items and more easily report, manage, and track IP claims. These tools are in development now and we’ll share details as they become available.

We are also evolving our Marketplace so that by next year, there will be two predominant types of items: those that are fixed in quantity (Limiteds) and those that have a flexible quantity, both with costs per unit to publish. Grounded in real-world economics, these systems are intended help creators sustainably earn income. We launched Limiteds in April and through June 2023, we’ve seen strong traction, with 77 percent of Limiteds selling out and 80 percent of items reselling for more than the original price…”

Mashable reported that in a huge win for Roblox’s creator community, the platform will be opening up its Marketplace to all users. Until now, only select users and brands who had been approved as part of Roblox’s UGC Program could list and sell items. With this update, anyone anywhere can share their work and get paid for it.

Personally, I find it interesting that Roblox is actively seeking out creators by making it possible for them to sell their 3D content and earn some money. This sounds like a really good way to entice game developers to come to Roblox and make interesting things!

Roblox is a video game where people under the age of 18 can build things with friends. All of the content is user generated. Common Sense Media states that much of the content on Roblox is age-appropriate for teens and tweens. Unfortunately, some of the content is absolutely not appropriate, or safe, for kids.

According to The Wall Street Journal, some players are engaging in NSFW actions and language on Roblox. Parental Controls are available on Roblox, but it appears that a child could still end up in a game that includes player-generated sexual content.

Even when children say they’re under 13 when creating accounts, age-inappropriate games can show up on their “recommended for you” lists. Within the hard-to-find controls, parents can restrict the games kids can play in Roblox to those deemed appropriate by the company. But of the tens of millions of multiplayer games within Roblox, only around 1,000 are on that curated list.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Vice President of Safety and Trust for Roblox, (who is also its chief privacy officer), Remy Malan, said that Roblox is now working on ways to make parental controls easier to find and use.

“Roblox was designed for kids and teens, and we have a responsibility to make sure our players can learn, create, and play safely, Mr. Malan said.

According to Mr. Malan, the new Roblox content-rating system will provide a more nuanced look at what kids might encounter in a specific game, giving parents more control over what they feel is and isn’t OK for their kids. Mr. Malan stated that there is no way to really know what a particular game entails until you play it. There is no specific date for when the new content controls will roll out.

Personally, I think Roblox should delete the accounts of players who are adding NSFW content into what is intended to be a game for children, tweens, and teens. Doing so could greatly reduce the amount of NSFW content on Roblox and make it safer for kids to play the game.

In addition, Roblox should find a way to prevent banned players from making new accounts. The sign up screen does not ask for an email address, so it is unclear to me exactly how Roblox will be able to identify when a banned users tries to return.