I play L4D2, TF2, DooM Eternal, etc, and I’m 16. I’m fine, I’m not traumatized from gore, and I’m not trying to kill everyone around me (hell, I get destroyed by IRL death, so I’m obviously not violent.) It’s ok for younger players to play violent games, unless they already have issues, it’s not gonna ruin them (for the gory stuff, they might get scared, but that’s what warnings are for). It’s not good to overly shelter kids.
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Hi Creators,
Thank you all for the comments and questions! To answer efficiently I’m going to respond to the questions that were asked about the most:
Q: How will Roblox help make sure only people who are 17 or older get access to 17+ experiences?
A: To get access users must age verify which requires a government ID showing they are 17+ and a matching selfie which are strong safeguards.
Q: Why use ID for age verification? Isn’t that stricter than other platforms?
A: We want Roblox to be safe and civil for all ages which means being careful to ensure users are only accessing what is appropriate for them. In the future we may offer other means to age verify which meet our high safety standards and lower friction.
Q: Will experiences which exist today need to be reclassified as 17+?
A: Existing experiences should not need to be reclassified because what is allowed in 17+ experiences goes beyond what we previously allowed. If a creator chooses to add 17+ content to their experience then yes its Guideline will need to be adjusted.
Q: When will my 17+ experience be able to include other elements, e.g. profanity, alcohol, etc?
A: We want to allow more freedom in both content and communications within 17+ experiences - what we are launching now is the starting point. We will keep you posted as we are able to move towards allowing other themes/elements.
Q: What is the incentive for creators to build 17+ experiences given the smaller audience?
A: As mentioned in the original post, we believe there is a large opportunity for creators building content exclusively for 17+ users. We expect some creators to start building just to realize their visions but others will be motivated by 17+ experiences being prominently displayed to 17+ users which will help their experiences gain an audience and thus more traction than if they were for all ages. Expect details on this in the coming weeks.
Q: Why are 17+ experiences not yet available in certain countries?
A: We always strive to comply with local laws and regulations and sometimes there are cases where a feature cannot yet be offered to users in that country.
There were also a number of policy questions - we will be reviewing these with our policy team and updating policy examples as needed to make sure things are clear.
I know that doesn’t cover every question but hopefully it gives you more context about 17+ experiences. We’ll make another announcement once players are able to access 17+ experiences and will provide additional information there.
Looking forward to seeing what you all build with 17+ experiences!
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But your drivers license is public record? Sure its not as easy to find, but theres nothing sensitive about it. Its literally there as a form of identification for government and corporations alike. Its no different from showing it to your waitress next time you want a drink when you’re out to eat.
The vast majority of information on you’re license can be easily found online through simple google searches.
On top of all this, users who violate the TOS, and more importantly break the law, will be easier to report to the appropriate authorities.
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This is a disappointing response, to say the least.
You aren’t going to bring in older players from outside, as most (reasonably) don’t trust Roblox with that level of personal information. You are just shooting yourself in the foot.
You have a parental controls system to do just that.
This is good. No concerns here, as long as this promise is kept.
Seems alright.
“As mentioned in the original post, we believe there is a large opportunity for creators building content exclusively for 17+ users.”
Yeah, no. You aren’t providing a large opportunity, when so little of the Roblox playerbase is ACTUALLY 17+ (the statistics are rather useless, as most people make their accounts 18+, even when they’re actually 12.)
“We expect some creators to start building just to realize their visions”
If devs plan to do that, they most likely will be using better engines than Roblox, say UE5 and Unity, as they provide a lot of freedom for the devs to make what they want.
“but others will be motivated by 17+ experiences being prominently displayed to 17+ users which will help their experiences gain an audience and thus more traction than if they were for all ages. Expect details on this in the coming weeks.”
Gain what audience? ID verification made that audience miniscule.
This is feeling like the “indoor dynamic environment maps” situation, where no matter how hard devs asked for it to change, we were ignored, and given responses that made little-no sense. This isn’t acceptable. You NEED to listen to us, the developers are what make a UGC platform succeed. And if developers aren’t happy, the platform WILL fail. Stop deflecting criticism, and work with the developers, who are frustrated, but want the platform to succeed.
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I want to do more things rather then simply saying the s word, or using red cups, or using phantom forces blood I want a background NPC to smoke with a cigarette and to make beer cans, or wine glasses or a fully functioning bar
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Will the ID verification requirement be permanent? I don’t really like the idea of having to send my ID to play a game. Because if anything this is just going to limit the players for the 17+ games as it cant just be me who wouldn’t want to send personal info to a private company in order to play a game when alternatives like GTA exist which don’t need that.
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Can we please get stats on how many 17+ verified users there are? It seems unfair to develop games for a small audience when we have no idea how many users we can target.
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The only way this is gonna get changed is if a bunch of people protest on twitter, isn’t it. Lately, it has been feeling like that’s the only way to get Roblox to do anything lately, and it’s frustrating. We’re tired of being ignored, Roblox. Speak to us directly, for once. We want Roblox to succeed, and it’s getting frustrating that we repeatedly get ignored, or generalized responses. Please, we want you to succeed, but you won’t let us help you. I’m desperate for Roblox staff to be direct with us, and I imagine a good few developers are too. Listen to us, we’re losing hope.
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I personally won’t be using this feature since my team and I mainly build games for younger audiences.
However, I think a definition of these terms in the original post could be beneficial such as what language is and isn’t allowed in these games.
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This is good to hear. While it’s hard to believe games aimed directly at 17+ audiences will gain very much traction, since the vast majority of the playerbase isn’t ID verified and I don’t see that ever changing too much, hearing that the topics we’ll be allowed to explore will be expanded on is nice.
I fully understand and agree with the ID requirement. This is ultimately a game platform designed to be safe for everyone, and I know for a fact that I used to lie all the time when prompted with age verification that only required you put in your birthday when I was a kid. It’d be unreasonable to introduce 17+ games with no actual verification when a huge portion of the game’s playerbase is under 10 years old. As easy as it is to put all the blame on the parents and move on, the world isn’t really that simple and I think it’s good that you guys are taking preventative measures on your end to keep children from playing games unsuitable for them.
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Ok, so Roblox is just acknowledging posts that agree with them, and ignoring posts that don’t. Great. That’s a very sustainable way to run your platform. @Seranok please, just respond to the criticism, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
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It doesn’t seem to me that arguing that your ID is already out there for people to see if they want it bad enough is a strong and compelling argument for ID verification. It reads like it’s saying “yeah, it’s bad, but you’re not making it worse” rather than something along the lines of “It’s actually not as bad as you think, because of reason{, reason}.” Maybe that’s what you intended, but regardless it’s not very encouraging. I also suspect (though I haven’t studied the subject) that to get someone’s driver’s licence it both depends on the country and may involve some hoops to jump through.
In any case, speaking for myself and probably a good chunk of others on the anti-ID-verification side, I am primarily opposed to it for two reasons. First, for privacy reasons (as a principle, regardless of the ease of finding the information). Second, I feel that it’s going too far towards normalizing the concept of digital ID, to the point where other platforms might start using it as well if they see Roblox users just accepting it without putting up a fight.
It’s not quite the same, since in the case of the waitress it’s less likely to be stored for a long period of time.
Is a user who does something illegal going to verify their ID? Is this worth sacrificing everyone’s privacy for?
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It doesn’t matter if it’s a public record, I think I speak for many people here when I say I don’t want my Roblox account (or any account of mine for that matter) to be linked to my real identity in any way, shape, or form.
Its no different from showing it to your waitress next time you want a drink when you’re out to eat.
My waitress won’t remember my information indefinitely and potentially use it against me…
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This may be true, though I am doubtful since Roblox is the only platform taking these extreme measures.
I’ll just reiterate what I said in my post. If a child willfully ignores the warnings and plays the game anyway, that’s the child’s fault. Roblox is not responsible.
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Good idea but bad execution. Roblox is not a bar or strip club, I shouldn’t have to show my ID just to get access to some games, that is absurd. Imagine if any other platform required ID to access features even if it’s a platform that only offers 18+ content, or a platform like YouTube or Steam, I can only imagine it pushing away a huge majority of users from accessing those features.
I will not ever give a website a picture of my ID and a selfie, even if it’s thru a third party, just to access some content
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You will never become a real game megacompany, you will never become steam or epic games or unity or unreal or blizzard or activision, stop this whole meta approach or go broke, go meta go broke and no actual adult matures wants to play roblox espcially due to this huge influence on predatory developers, terrible game security, bad decisions like this, stop appealing to non existent adults or meta companies who don’t care about the game. You are just shooting yourself in the foot, losing players and everything.
Yeah, good luck on making games on a platform where underage users (including me) are constantly harassed, dry humped (from an old exploit that ROBLOX REFUSES to fix because erm client animations should replicate!!), exploiters flying around like its normal, literal sexual harassment from chat and actions, nsfw shirts that roblox refuses to ban because they bring them revenue, focus on safety of your target audience and moderation on actually banning nsfw content and if you don’t, the bigger metaverse companies won’t like that roblox.
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If a five year old fakes their Roblox account’s birthday to play 17+ games “experiences,” then it could be the end of their account for them. In which, I think that should not happen. I suggest adding an verification system (phone or ID) exclusively for 17+ experiences to prevent 5-16 year olds (minor) from playing them. Honestly, 17+ games will pretty much be almost equivalent to M rated games. Because of this, “good” luck.
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That’s on them!!!Not Roblox fault, literally every other game company puts a warning and if they dare put an ID verification their userbase will go mad.
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It’s safe to say most parents don’t think Roblox has 17+ content, therefore they don’t think twice before handing out their IDs when their kids ask for it.
I can’t see this happening. What kind of parent would give a child their ID without knowing any information such as why they need it? I don’t think any parent is that dumb.
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