As part of our broader vision of reimagining the way people connect, communicate, and express themselves on Roblox, we’re excited to share our next step towards fostering rich relationships both in the real world and on our platform. We’ve seen that Roblox experiences can be even more enjoyable when you connect with people that you know. Last year, we introduced Contact Importer and Friend Recommendations and found that features like these helped new users find 10% more real life friends in their first week on Roblox.
Editing Names on Roblox
Today, we’re sharing two ways to customize names on Roblox. These features are completely optional for users. Our goal is to make it easier for friends to recognize one another on our platform. In addition to this, we’re also simplifying how users’ names are presented on Roblox by giving them two identifiers, a name and a username (unique to the user). What was previously referred to as “DisplayName” and “Alias” has been simplified and is now referred to as a “Name”.
We’ve recently released the ability for everyone to customize their friends’ names, making it easier to recognize them on Roblox. Any edits you make to your friends’ names are visible only to you. For example, if you are friends with your sister and edit her name to “Big Sis”, only you will see her named as “Big Sis” on Roblox.
Example of editing your friend’s name
We’re also allowing 17+ users* in the U.S. to edit their own public facing name with their real name to better represent themselves. We will continue to filter names that violate our Community Standards, like profanity, hate speech, and sexual content.
Example of editing your name
Going forward, we’re continuing to make improvements in how users can find each other on Roblox including supporting additional countries and languages.
Experiencing with Friends Increases User Engagement
When people can easily connect with their friends on Roblox, user engagement is higher as they feel more motivated to stay in an experience. We’ve seen users who customize their friends’ names spend significantly more time in experiences with those friends.
We are committed to providing people the ability to easily recognize their friends and represent themselves on Roblox. These are important steps in bringing people closer together, while continuing to uphold the privacy and safety of our community.
*We anticipate this feature to be available to additional audiences in the future.
FAQ
Click here to view the FAQ!
How will allowing people to customize their name impact experiences with custom characters?
- For experiences with custom characters, people will continue to see their friends’ names in experiences based on any customizations set by the developer.
Can someone impersonate another user by changing their name to be identical to that person? If so, what if this person behaves in an egregious way, breaking Community Standards, will other people, developers, and Roblox customer support know which user broke Community Standards?
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While people can change their name on Roblox, their unique username will not change. This allows other people, creators, and Roblox Customer Support the ability to uniquely identify everyone on the platform.
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We also have a Verified Badge program that helps users easily identify authentic accounts and give our notable community members and groups an extra mark of distinction.
What if a person changes their name, visible to all people, in a way that circumvents our naming filters but is considered a violation of our Community Standards?
- We are continuing to filter for words that violate our Community Standards like profanity and discriminatory content. If a person or developer believes a name has violated a our standards, we encourage them to report abuse. Our moderation team will review these abuse reports to determine if a Community Standard has been broken, they will take the necessary action to resolve the abuse report.
What are names referred to in developer documentation and APIs?
- We will still continue to refer to a users’ public facing name as their “display names” in developer documentation and APIs.
Are any of these changes required for users or developers?
- Customizing your name is an optional feature for people on Roblox. We will not force people to change their name on our platform. There may be rare instances where we have to manually reset a name that violates our Roblox Community Standards and Terms of Use. If this occurs, we typically reset the person’s name to their username.
How will Roblox protect users from sharing information that may lead to real world harassment or harm?
- Safety is foundational to everything we do. We’ve built a platform with industry-leading safety and civility features. We encourage people and developers to utilize our safety tools, like Report Abuse and block, if they experience themselves or observe any behavior that violates our Community Standards.