The fast-growing children’s gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their children’s activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.
From Monday, Roblox will grant parents access to a dashboard on their own phone showing who their child is interacting with, how long they are spending on Roblox each day and to make sure they are accurately recording their age, so they are not able to play games with graphic violence.
It will also restrict users under nine to games rated “mild”, with access to “moderate” content allowed only with parental approval. Mild content might involve “unrealistic blood or unrealistic violence” whereas the blood would look realistic for moderate violence.
Preteens will also be blocked from chat functions outside of games as part of a worldwide tightening of the rules on the most visited online destination among British eight- to 12-year-olds after Google, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, and TikTok.
The moves comes after an investor last month alleged it had found child sexual abuse content, sex games, violent content and abusive speech on the site. In the UK, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, told parliament: “I expect that company to do better in protecting service users, particularly children.”
Roblox’s millions of brightly coloured user-generated gaming worlds are enjoyed by 90 million daily users worldwide, according to the $3bn (£2.4bn) annual revenue Silicon Valley company.
Children using Roblox can choose from 6m games and “experiences” devised by users, and play with friends and strangers who are able to message them in real time.
Already the company runs automated software that clamps down on texts that aim to lure children off the platform and vets the images, audio, video and the 3D models for content that reaches community standards.
The most popular games last week included the dressing-up game Dress to Impress and the angling game Fisch. But there are also games themed around depression, violence and some which are described as racism simulators.
Last month, Hindenburg Research, an investor, described Roblox as “an X-rated paedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech – all of which is open to young children”.
It revealed it took a short position in Roblox shares, while the gaming platform described the claims as “misleading” and said safety and civility was “foundational” to the company.
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On 16 October, the MP Mike Reader told parliament about a constituent who was a volunteer moderator and had “identified and banned over 14,000 accounts involved in child grooming, exploitation and sharing indecent images” as part of a group.
Kyle responded: “Companies releasing products into our society should see that as a privilege, not a right. I have high expectations, on behalf of this country, to ensure that safety is baked in from the start.”
Restrictions to prevent under-13s accessing new Roblox games that are awaiting maturity ratings will begin on 3 December. From Monday, under-13s will also be prevented from using games that use chalkboard writing as these attract “teens … drawing things that may be inappropriate for our youngest audience”, said the chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman.
Explaining the new parental controls, Roblox’s senior product manager, Dina Lamdany, said: “Parents will be able to view their child’s screen time over the last week, as well as set daily limits on that screen time. In addition, from that same dashboard, parents will be able to view their child’s friends. We hope that this will encourage parents to have conversations with their kids about who their child is spending time with on Roblox.”