[Update] February 20, 2026
[Update] January 14, 2026
[Update] January 9, 2026
Hi Creators,
Our age-check requirement to chat is rolling out globally wherever chat is available. Starting today, users in the U.S. and select regions who have not already completed an age check will see in-app prompts asking them to complete one to continue chatting with others. Over the next week, this requirement will roll out to all regions where chat is available.
While launching these age checks is a priority for safety, we’ll continue to build features to minimize the impact on your experiences, especially more social games. We’re working on better ways to help you identify chat-eligible users, improve experience moderation, and support safe communication across different age groups.
We also know how important it is to protect the privacy of users – as a reminder, all Facial Age Estimation images and videos for all age checks are deleted immediately after our vendor, Persona, processes and completes the check.
Tens of millions of daily active users have already completed an age check, and we expect many more to follow. In Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, where age checks have been required to chat since early December, more than 50% of daily active users have completed the process*.
You can read more on our Newsroom.
*As of the seven days ended 12/31/2025.
How Age-based Chat Works
Age-based chat is designed to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. By default, users in each age group can chat with users in the groups directly above and below theirs (i.e., users 9-12 can chat with users in their own group, as well as those in the under 9 and 13-15 groups.)
Age-based chat makes it easy for users to communicate with others in similar age groups for age-appropriate conversations.
- Parental consent is required for users younger than 9 to access chat features.
- Trusted Connections: Age-checked users 13 and older can connect and chat more freely with people they know beyond their immediate age group.
- We’re also working on systems to make it easier for children to chat with their family members in different age groups.
How to Optimize Your Experience for Age-based Chat
With these new requirements, we wanted to share some tips on how you can ensure that your experience stays fun and engaging for your users, especially if chat is an important part of gameplay.
Route all text-based communication through TextChatService
All text-based player-to-player communication is required to go through TextChatService to comply with our Community Standards. We’ve heard your questions on non-text based communication and features to allow users to join and coordinate in-game activity and we’ll share updates here soon.
Use the new Text Chat Matchmaking Signal
Last month we launched the Text Chat signal and integrated it into the default matchmaking settings for every experience. If chat is essential to your gameplay, you can increase the weight of the Text Chat signal with Custom Matchmaking to group players who are able to talk to one another. Check out our Matchmaking Experiment Guide for setup instructions.
Upcoming Changes
As we mentioned last month, there will be similar age check requirements for other surfaces on Roblox where users can communicate or interact.
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In February, we will implement these changes to social media links: Social Media links on Experience Details Pages, Communities, and Profiles will only be available to 13+ age checked users.
- Social Media links on Experience Details Pages, Communities, and Profiles will only be available to 13+ age checked users.
- Access to social media links on user Profiles will align with age-based communication rules. Users can only view social links from people in their own age group and similar age groups.
- As announced in November, creators will no longer be able to share social media links in-experience. The PolicyServiceAPI.GetExternalLinkReference endpoint will be sunset and return an empty list to prevent breaking existing implementations. See the FAQ below for examples of what’s still allowed in-experience.
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In March, age checks will be required to collaborate with other creators through the Team Create feature in Studio. You can still collaborate across age groups via Trusted Connections or with parental permission for younger creators. We’ll share more details on this later this month.
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Over the next few months, we’ll enable creators and moderators to effectively moderate their experience’s chat, introduce new ways for them to identify any potential safety issues in their experience and report them to Roblox, and will open up more options for community feedback (bug reports, forums, polls) through Roblox Communities
For more on the technology and philosophy behind these changes, watch our latest “Tech Talks” podcast.
FAQs
Click here to view
Why did Roblox choose Persona as their partner, and how can we trust it will not discriminate?
- Persona’s technology has no material bias across age, sex, skin tone, or demographics based on separate evaluations by NIST and the ACCS. If the Facial Age Estimation gets the age wrong, users can verify with an ID or have a linked parent account adjust it.
How can I communicate with users in my experience?
- For communicating and broadcasting important information, you can still use TextChannel:DisplaySystemMessage to send system messages at key moments to users in your experience.
What will a user see if they walk up to another user they cannot chat with?
- Currently, the user’s chat will not appear. We’re investigating adding clear in-experience indicators that will tell you who you can chat with.
Sharing my socials inside a game helps me build my community and get bug reports in a timely manner. How do I do that now?
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Here are examples of how you can still reference your social media accounts and communities in-game
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“Check out our social media links on our game’s page” -
“Follow us on social media for merch. Links on our game’s page”
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“Join us in our Community Server. Links on our game’s page”
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Whereas, here is what’s not allowed to be displayed in-game, per our Community Standards
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“Follow for merch on X.com/abc”
This was allowed for viaAllowedExternalLinkReferencesof PolicyServiceAPI and will no longer be allowed from early 2026 -
“Join our Discord discord.gg/invitecode”
This was allowed only via theAllowedExternalLinkReferencesof PolicyServiceAPI and will no longer be allowed from early 2026 -
“Send bug reports to abc@xyz.com”
This has never been allowed.
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