[Update] December 5, 2023
[Update] September 18, 2023
[Update] August 29, 2023
[Update] August 21, 2023
[Update] July 11, 2023
Hi Creators,
Today, we are excited to announce that we are expanding our Experience Guidelines to allow creators to start building experiences for people 17 and over. Only those who have verified that they’re at least 17 years old with a selfie and a photo of their government-issued ID will be able to create or access these experiences.
17 to 24 year-olds are the fastest-growing group on Roblox, and in 2022, people over 17 made up 38% of our daily active users. We’ve heard your feedback on wanting to be able to build experiences that feature more mature themes and storylines that appeal to older users. We’ll be highlighting these new experiences in our recommendations to people over 17. As a creator, you will have new opportunities for expression, engagement, and potential earnings.
In the coming weeks, eligible users will begin to see this new content. We will update this post once 17+ experiences are live.
Age verification using government ID and live selfie. Interface subject to change.
What do experiences for people 17 and up look like?
In September 2022, we launched Experience Guidelines with the Age Recommendations of All Ages, Ages 9+, and Ages 13+. We’re updating our Experience Questionnaire and Guidelines, Community Standards, and the 17+ Policy Standards to add Ages 17+ as a new Age Recommendation.
Mock image of 17+ experience with guidelines
Here is a summary of the updated Experience Guidelines:
| Age Recommendation | Description |
|---|---|
| All Ages | Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain occasional mild violence and/or light unrealistic blood. |
| Ages 9+ | Content is generally suitable for ages 9 and up. May contain repeated mild violence, heavy unrealistic blood, and/or mild crude humor. |
| Ages 13+ | Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain moderate violence, light realistic blood, moderate crude humor, and/or unplayable gambling content. |
| Ages 17+ | Content is only suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain strong violence, heavy realistic blood, moderate crude humor, romantic themes, unplayable gambling content and/or the presence of alcohol. |
What’s prohibited for any experience:
Our priority for rolling out 17+ experiences is safety and civility. Therefore, we’re taking an incremental approach to what types of content are allowed on our platform. Strong language will not be permitted at this launch but we are exploring ways to enable it in the right context for future iterations.
Just like before, your experiences should not depict any of the content below or any other content that would violate the Community Standards and the 17+ Policy Standards:
- Sexual content or nudity
- Depictions of drugs and tobacco
Creating an experience for people 17 and over
To build a 17+ experience, you must follow the following steps:
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Prior to adding 17+ content in an experience:
- Both the experience owner and the person who completes the Experience Guidelines questionnaire must verify that they are at least 17 if they have not already done so;
- Read through our Age Recommendations help page, Experiences Guidelines documentation, Community Standards, and the 17+ Policy Standards so you know what is permitted on our platform;
- Fill out and submit the Experience Questionnaire to generate an Age Recommendation of Ages 17+ for your experience, basing your answers accurately on the most mature or extreme content users could encounter;
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Ensure that all of your promotional materials including and not limited to descriptions, thumbnails, and videos are appropriate for all ages;
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Collaborate with other age-verified 17+ creators to create your experience;
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Make your experience public when ready!
Note: 17+ Experiences will be unavailable for users in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
Asset creation guidelines for 17+ experiences
Currently, we do not support 17+ assets on the platform. You will need to create 17+ experiences without using mature assets directly. If you upload a 17+ asset before we enable them on the platform, it will be subject to asset moderation.
To create 17+ experiences without the support of 17+ assets, you can combine assets, animations, and scenes suitable for under 17 users to depict 17+ content in your 17+ experiences. Here are some examples of how you can create 17+ experiences using under 17 assets:
- Today we allow the depiction of weapons. To depict stronger violence, creators can have avatars carrying realistic weapons and fighting with vivid animations and audio effects like gunshots and screams.
- Today, we allow realistic blood assets. To depict gore, creators can combine multiple realistic blood assets to create more intense scenes.
- Today, we allow red plastic cups. To depict alcohol consumption, creators can combine these assets within animations in a club scene.
Examples of assets that are currently prohibited include and are not limited to:
- Alcohol assets such as beer cans, a glass of wine, or alcohol bottles explicitly labeled as beer, wine, and/or alcohol.
- Graphic violence and depictions of severe bodily injury or real-world events.
Please refer to 17+ Policy Standards and Community Standards for what content is permitted or prohibited on the platform.
Updating our policy on simulated gambling
Our Community Standards prohibit gambling activities that include exchanging real money, Robux, or in-experience items of value. For a variety of reasons, including the complex global regulatory environment in which this policy falls, we reviewed our Community Standards and decided to adjust them to foster more age-appropriate interactions.
Specifically, simulated gambling will no longer be allowed on our platform. Any experience that has simulated gambling (i.e., playing with virtual chips, simulated betting) will no longer be allowed on our platform. By September 18th, 90 days from today, all experiences that include simulated gambling content will need to be updated to comply with our new guidelines or will be subject to moderation consequences.
Experiences will still be allowed to have unplayable gambling content (e.g., show a casino or people playing cards). Additionally, experiences that have games of luck or chance that are not casino or gambling based will still be allowed, such as bingo or arcade style games. Provided that they comply with our Community Standards, paid random item generators and lootboxes will still be permitted.
Get started
We’re excited to see any engaging experiences you can now create with these new guidelines. Check out these resources before you get started:
You can learn more about our vision for experiences for people 17 and over on our blog.
Known issues and upcoming fixes
As we are prioritizing enabling 17+ experience creation as soon as we can, there are a few known issues that we are actively working on resolving such as:
- In Studio, under the “Recent Games” view, the 17+ icon doesn’t show for 17+ experiences, but is visible in other views.
- In Studio, in the “Group Games” view, the archive button still shows up for under 17 users for 17+ experiences but this is just a UI bug and those users are not able to archive.
- If an existing experience is converted to 17+, we will remove all members from a Team create session, in the future we’re working on only removing members who aren’t 17+ and age-verified.
- At this time, only the owner of a 17+ experience can playtest it through the Play button on its public details page.
- All other verified 17+ collaborators can continue to playtest in Studio.
Let us know if you are experiencing other issues and we will work hard to resolve them.
Thank you.
FAQ
Click here to view the FAQ
How do I verify my age?
- Here are detailed instructions for how Age ID verification works.
Where can I see the updated Experience Guidelines?
- You can view the Experience Guidelines at this link.
Why aren’t you launching 17+ assets at the same time?
- We want to give you the freedom to make 17+ experiences as soon as possible, but it will take some time for us to properly launch 17+ assets on the platform. In the meantime, you will be allowed to make 17+ experiences by combining assets to make contextually more mature experiences.
If I don’t fill out the Experience Guidelines questionnaire, what age recommendation will I receive?
- Experiences that haven’t completed the Experience Guidelines questionnaire are treated as 13+ experiences. These experiences may not include 17+ content.
What does this mean for advertisers and ad publishers?
- There are no changes to our Ad Standards including our Prohibited Advertising Content on Roblox.
- Only people over 13 will see ads.
- We are taking an incremental approach with advertising and 17+ experiences.
- This means that at launch:
- Advertisers: Creators will not be able to advertise their 17+ experiences using Immersive Ads, User Ads or Sponsored Experiences.
- Publishers: 17+ experiences will not be able to publish Immersive Ads units within their experiences. This is consistent with our approach of rolling out Immersive Ads with an initial set of experiences that are likely to be appropriate for a broad range of advertisers on Roblox.
- Our long-term plan is to eventually allow 17+ experiences to advertise on Roblox and reach 17+ audiences in a way that is safe and respects user privacy.
Update 8:20PM PT
See this reply for answers to many of the questions asked on the day of the announcement.
