Roblox Makes Big Changes to Parental Controls After 'Pedophile Hellscape' Report
Roblox is implementing some major changes to the control it gives parents over their children’s accounts following damning reports that its platform was rife with child exploitation and abuse.
In an email sent to parents who manage children accounts on Roblox, which IGN has obtained, the company details that it’s finally introducing Roblox accounts with parental privileges. Prior to this, Roblox parental controls allowed parents to essentially set a PIN on a child’s account that only the parent would know. This unlocks the ability to change settings like what type of content the child can access and set spending limits.
Now, PINs are going away. Instead, parents must create their own separate Roblox accounts and link them to the child account. This gives parents the ability to update parental controls from their own device, as well as access information about the child’s time spent in Roblox and friend list.
Additionally, users under the age of 13 will now require a parent’s permission to use certain chat features, and users under the age of nine will require parental permission to engage with any Roblox experiences labeled as having “Moderate” content maturity ratings.
Here’s the email in full:
Dear parent,
We’ve been working on a series of important changes that we’ll be making to your child’s account, [NAME], next month.
About Roblox accounts with parent privileges
Next month, we’re changing the way parents manage their child’s experience on Roblox by introducing Roblox accounts with parent privileges. After linking your account to your child’s, parents can view and update parental controls for their child all from their own device. Parents also get access to insights about their child’s Roblox usage, such as their daily screen time and on-platform friends.
Given these changes, starting next month, parents will no longer be able to set a parent PIN, use Account Restrictions, or receive account-related notifications to their parental email. Instead, you will need to use an account with parent privileges. Existing verified parental emails on child accounts will continue to be used for account recovery. Any settings previously set using a parent PIN will not change, but you will need an account with parent privileges to make updates going forward.
As always, if users are interested in an added layer of security on their account, you can set up 2-factor authentication.
Updated content maturity settings
As we shared with the community in July, to help provide parents and users more clarity into the types of content available on Roblox, we’ll soon begin labeling experiences based on the type of content users can expect in an experience, rather than by age. Experience Guidelines will be renamed Content Labels, and you’ll be able to set limits on the type of content accessible to your child through the content maturity setting in parental controls.
New default settings for users under the age of 13
As part of Roblox’s commitment to safety, we are also updating certain default settings for our youngest users. Starting next month, users under the age of 13 will need parent permission to access certain chat features. Users under the age of 9 will also need parent permission to access experiences with content maturity “Moderate,” which may contain things like moderate violence or moderate crude humor.
Your child’s settings will be updated when they reach certain ages, if you and your child haven’t previously made changes to them. You and your child will be notified of these updates in advance.
We will share more information on these setting updates when the changes go into effect next month.
Next steps
To continue receiving notifications about your child’s account related to spending or other important activity, you’ll need to set up a Roblox account with parent privileges and link to your child’s account. When these changes take effect, your child will receive a notification inviting them to add a linked parent account, and we’ll send you an email with instructions.
Since day one, Roblox has been committed to building safety features and tools into the design of our products. We will always continue to explore different ways to update our parental controls to make them even more useful for parents.
Roblox
Roblox’s changes come on the heels of a report from investment firm Hindenburg Research that accused the company of, among other things, being a haven for groomers and pedophiles due to a lack of up-front screening of new accounts. It claimed to have found open trading of child pornography on the site as well as violent and hateful speech and sexually explicit content in numerous games marketed to kids on the platform. Roblox responded, saying that “safety and civility” have been “foundational” to Roblox since its inception. However, Hindenburg followed up by pointing out that it had not addressed allegations of Roblox being a “pedophile hellscape.”
Roblox’s response is an abject failure to address the two core allegations in our report, including:
1. Evidence that Roblox has been systematically lying for years about the number of people on its platform and their genuine level of engagement.
2. That the platform is a… pic.twitter.com/Tj2KiANOnI
— Hindenburg Research (@HindenburgRes) October 8, 2024
And this is far from the first time Roblox has been accused of fostering an unsafe and exploitative environment for children. Back in 2018, the company faced criticism after a mother reported her seven-year-old daughter’s Roblox character was violently sexually assaulted by several other characters. Around the same time, a six-year-old girl was reportedly invited into a “sex room” in the game. In 2021, reports were highlighted of users recreating real-world mass shootings in the game, and People Make Games published a report alleging that Roblox’s business model exploits child labor. In 2022, a San Francisco lawsuit accused Roblox of enabling the financial and sexual exploitation of a 10-year-old girl. In 2023, it was sued both for allegedly facilitating “an illegal gambling ecosystem” and more generally for having lax child safety protocols that allegedly led to financial loss and children’s exposure to adult content.
Earlier this year, the platform announced it reported over 13,000 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, resulting in the arrest of 24 predators who allegedly groomed and abused children on Roblox. This number is up 3,000 from 2022. A Bloomberg report suggested that there remained a number of other abusers on the platform who had managed to evade capture. At the time, Roblox referred to itself as “one of the safest online environments for our users, particularly the youngest users.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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