[Test] Optimizing Social Context through Experience Chat Visibility

Updates Announcements
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Hi Creators,

We’re currently running a test in Experience Chat designed to show the chat activity in your experience while maintaining our safety and age-check standards.

Starting today, you may notice chat activity indicators appearing in the chat window. This appears when a user hasn’t completed an age check or when two or more players in different age groups are chatting in the same experience.

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We believe that showing chat activity, even without visible message content, helps Experience Chat remain active and engaging. Because our matchmaking system prioritizes placing users of similar age groups in the same server, players will primarily see standard text messages, with these activity indicators appearing only occasionally to provide context for the remaining activity.

In addition to this change, we are continuing to iterate on the optimal matchmaking signals to maximize communication within experiences over time, and as age check rates increase across all geographies. We will provide ongoing updates on this front as we go, including updated guidance for custom matchmaking and experimentation based on your specific needs.

As this is the first version of the feature, we will refine it based on test results and your feedback. You can also read more about our matchmaking optimizations and cross-age chat solutions that are part of our roadmap of updates following the launch of required age checks for chat on our recent DevForum update.

What this means for your experience:

These indicators provide social context by signaling that the chat is active, even if a user hasn’t yet completed an age check, which we believe will also encourage more users to check their age.

  • For non-age-checked users: It serves as a visual invitation to complete a quick age check to unlock chat with other age-checked users in their and similar age groups.
  • For age-checked users: It provides community energy and context, showing that players are chatting in an experience even when text is hidden by age group.

We will continue to monitor the impact of these chat activity indicators on social engagement as the test progresses and keep you posted. We welcome your feedback.

FAQs

Will these chat activity indicators impact game performance?

  • No. In their current form, these indicators are lightweight UI components optimized to be less resource-intensive than rendering full text strings. We will continue to prioritize performance as we refine these assets.

Can I disable or customize the chat activity indicators?

  • At this time, during this experimental phase, we are testing a standard UI to gather consistent data. We will share updates on customization as the experiments progress.

How does this affect my moderation tools?

  • This is a visual layer for players only. It does not change how chat is logged or how your existing moderation tools function.
47 Likes
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This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

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The next step is to show the message instead of censoring it.

Great job using psychology (FOMO) to get people to give their personal information away! Sarcasm.

You are no better than a slop mobile game.

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Sooo… FOMO? What a great idea, this will surely fix the fact the entire community is furious with us. I don’t see how this is “optimizing” anything besides cluttering the chat and instilling FOMO in the people who respectfully refuse to give up their info to Persona. What a joke.

I wouldn’t have guessed this would be the end of Roblox as we know it but whatever because you guys are being dense as per usual. Maybe try listening to us more next time.

228 Likes
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There’s still no clear way to tell if the person you’re trying to talk to is even in your age group. Right now the only way to know is the finicky /w [username] check and seeing if it returns a “this user cannot chat” message. Because of that, many users try to talk to others in the server only to later realize they’ve been talking to a brick wall. I think surfacing age-group chat compatibility should be prioritized over activity indicators…

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again
yall are trying to fix a collapsing dam with tape

this is an improvement; however, it does NOT make up for the amount of damage this has caused to the community

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I’d rather just not know that there are people even talking that I cannot socialize with than be tortured with the fact that I’m missing out on social interactions because of a useless update. This will only serve to drive users away from playing social games.

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Your belief is wrong. Put yourself in a conference room and you have to score a multi-billion dollar deal with a company BUT you have earplugs in and can’t lip read.

How are you going to seal the deal? Short answer; You won’t. Mind as well leave me deaf and blind to other users not in my age groups.

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Does this show for bubble chats? Some experiences have the chat window disabled for local communication only.

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Ok so this is an improvement but. You are ignoring the fact moderation is currently impossible without chatlogs, I have been forced by you guys to make the chatlogs in my moderators hands age group based, and I would really rather not have had to.

And while this gives the slightest bit of a hint chat is active it doesn’t help with the fact I can’t use chatlogs to moderate my games.

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why not show who sent the message? Not seing the message is secure enough

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What’s the point of this? You still cannot see their chat. It’s like you’re jingling keys in front of us.

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So it doesn’t show the message? What’s the point of this? This update is useless.

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this is the stupidest garbage I have seen all year. First you ruin chat, now you are just teasing us with the fact that we cannot do anything about it.

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So we’re turning a barren wasteland into a…field of locks and dots?

Yeah, that’ll show them!

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They’re just giving us middle fingers atp.

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No it doesn’t… it doesn’t give the community any context. What are you on about?

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it’s essentially using FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) to convince more users to undergo their age check. This not only doesn’t assess or solve the issues they have with using AI recognition, but they’re using this as a soft act of enforcement.

“Look at all these users who gave their identification to us, you can’t chat with them, or anyone because you haven’t.”

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“hey kids you want this? you want basic human rights? c’mere, kid… gimme your face! submit to the panipticon!”

- Roblox

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PLEASE PLEASE WE NEED YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION, MAKE UNCLE DAVID HAPPY, LOOK AT ALL THESE OTHER PEOPLE THAT CAN CHAT!

31 Likes