Roblox is excluded from Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s, but it’s very much part of the wider global conversation about children’s digital lives, potential harms and regulation.
Its latest announcement is an effort to get out in front of those debates. In June, Roblox will be rolling out two new ‘age-based accounts’ for children: ‘Roblox Kids’ for 5-8 year-olds and ‘Roblox Select’ for 9-15 year-olds.
“This update will bring age-checks, account-level defaults, content ratings, ongoing moderation, and expanded parental controls together into a unified framework for younger users,” claimed Roblox.
This will sit alongside Roblox’s systems for age-rating games on its service – and yes, the company is flipping back to using ‘games’ rather than ‘experiences’ as its preferred word – as well as its moderation technologies.
This isn’t just about soothing regulators’ and parents’ concerns. If more countries bring in social-media bans for under-16s, and if Roblox remains outside those bans, its growth in both users and engagement could get a big boost. And it already has 144 million daily users.
Talking of those gamers, Roblox is also launching a new subscription tier at the end of April. ‘Roblox Plus’ will cost $4.99 a month and offer discounts on in-game items and avatars, as well as private servers and other perks.
Roblox will cover the costs of those discounts when paying creators of games, and it’s also offering them an incentive: if players sign up to Roblox Plus from within one of their games they’ll get a bonus payable in the platform’s Robux currency.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com ’
