Roblox agrees to greater protections for Aussie kids after grooming concerns

Popular gaming platform Roblox has agreed to a court-enforceable undertaking with Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, and in doing so has committed to a range of new measures designed to protect children from grooming and sexual exploitation within Roblox games.

eSafety accepted the undertaking after ongoing dialogue with Roblox and several high-profile claims by the regulator over the last 12 months. 

Essentially, they claim Roblox was not meeting its obligations under the Online Safety Act, including allegedly failing to have adequate measures in place to stop contact between adults and children under 16.

This comes despite Roblox implementing a raft of changes to their systems including age verification and limitations on who users can contact outside their own age group.

Testing carried out by eSafety earlier this year found gaps in Roblox’s safety systems that they believe continued to put children at risk.

That testing found adults could send connection requests to young Australian children without parental consent, and that children and adults could view and respond to each other’s posts on forums outside game environments, again without parental consent.

There are also concerns that anyone on Roblox could view children’s connections, as well as children’s profiles and biographies, including account names, avatar images and interests, with no way to restrict that visibility.

Under the new undertaking, Roblox has committed to preventing adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent, as well as making children’s accounts private by default, and engaging an independent third-party auditor to assess its safety measures, including its age-estimation technology.

That same age-estimation technology has been implemented by social media companies under the eSafety Commissioner’s Social Media Minimum Age regulations, the success of which has been drawn into question since it was implemented late last year.

Roblox will have three months to implement the changes. If the company breaches the undertaking, eSafety can apply to the Federal Court for an order forcing compliance.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Roblox is the second most popular game with children in Australia, with about 1.7 million Australian children on the platform.

She said the regulator had engaged with Roblox at senior levels over its concerns, and while the company had responded with improvements, third-party auditing would ensure Roblox “cannot mark their own homework”.

Grant said eSafety would not hesitate to take further enforcement action if the company failed to deliver on its commitments.

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A Roblox spokesperson said the undertaking followed constructive dialogue with eSafety and came after the recent rollout of new Roblox Kids and Select accounts for under-16s.

“We have delivered on the commitments we made to eSafety over the last 12 months and will continue to work towards our shared goal of keeping Australian children safe online,” the spokesperson said.

Roblox points to several safety changes it has made over the past year, including becoming the first major online gaming platform to require facial age checks for users of all ages to access chat, a move aimed at limiting communication between adults and minors.

The company also does not allow image or video sharing in chat, and does not encrypt chat, which it says allows it to monitor for inappropriate interactions.

Roblox also offers parental controls covering content ratings, communication settings, screen time and spending limits, with some features now extended to cover users up to age 15.