Roblox, the popular gaming platform that has faced increased scrutiny over child safety concerns, announced Tuesday that it will require users to verify their age if they want to chat with other players.
To do so, people provide ID or take a selfie through the Roblox app to prove they are as young or older as they say they are. The authentication feature estimates a person’s age, allowing the company to limit conversations between children and adults.
Roblox, which is used by more than 151 million people every day, says it is the first online gaming or communication platform to meet this requirement. The move comes as the San Mateo-based company faces a series of lawsuits alleging Roblox isn’t doing enough to protect children from pedophiles and sexual content.
Roblox says that after users verify their age, they will only be able to chat with other users in their age group unless they confirm that they know the other player. For users under the age of 9, chat functionality is turned off by default unless a parent approves the use of these tools after age verification.
“This initiative is aimed at providing a more age-appropriate experience for all users, and we believe it will improve interactions for users of all ages on Roblox,” company executives said in a statement about the new requirements.
Online gaming is a popular way for children and teens to socialize. On Roblox, users create or play virtual spaces and chat with other users. Some of the platform’s popular games include exploring virtual towns, planting digital crops, and caring for virtual pets.
However, players also use avatars and usernames to express themselves online, making it difficult to determine a player’s age.
Several lawsuits against Roblox allege that predators pose as children to persuade minors to submit sexually explicit images of themselves on the platform.
Age verification is an ongoing issue on various online platforms as concerns about child safety increase. But tech companies like Meta, Google and Apple are at odds over whether app stores and the platforms themselves should verify users’ ages.
Like other platforms, you enter your date of birth when you sign up for Roblox, but it’s easy to lie about your age. However, asking people to submit a government ID or facial image raises privacy concerns and adds barriers to using certain online features.
Roblox said it is working with Persona, a San Francisco-based identity verification company that processes images and videos of people’s faces. The scan data will be deleted immediately. The gaming platform said age verification is optional, but users will not be able to access the chat feature unless they do so.
The company will begin enforcing this requirement in certain countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, in the first week of December. Then, in early January, this requirement will expand to other parts of the world where Roblox’s chat feature is available.
