Today we are announcing that we are limiting access to the Wall feature - the space within Roblox Groups where all community discussions can be posted - to logged in users aged 13 and above. As we mentioned at RDC, Roblox Groups is becoming Communities to reflect the expanding toolset we’re building for creators to connect with their audiences. Our goal is to make Roblox Communities a central place where creators and community members can connect and interact safely.
Current and upcoming Community features
We are developing the following Communities features and tools to be available to users of all ages with safety built in from the start:
Announcements, which launched earlier this year, are a way for creators to share information broadly with their communities in a Roblox Group.
Events, which also launched earlier this year, allows community owners the ability to embed events directly on their Groups page, making it easier to feature your events and provide a direct link to the event.
Forums, announced at RDC and on track to launch in Q1 of next year, will eventually replace Walls as the new dedicated space for community members of all ages to discuss, share feedback, report issues, and interact more meaningfully within Communities.
Why are we making these changes?
Limiting access to the Wall feature to users aged 13 and over is part of Roblox’s commitment to making the platform one of the safest online environments for everyone, particularly our youngest users. We believe Roblox Communities is for everyone - for users of all ages wherever they are in the world, powered by all the investments we are making on the platform.
Connecting with others is core to the Roblox experience and we want to facilitate that in the safest way possible. In the coming months, we will be announcing more changes to the Roblox platform beyond Communities that will ensure all our users can communicate and interact safely on Roblox.
Can we please have a ‘Ban User from Group’ feature, exiling a user is useless and they can join back. These malicious people who spam copypastas, scam links, can just make an alt or rejoin. The only ways to prevent this is to disable group wall (which prevents actual users giving feedback} or a verification system that can be difficult to handle. Atleast you’re taking the right steps with the newer group management updates, but this feature is long wanted.
At the same time, I genuinely think the Wall feature should be removed. Looking at the walls of various groups, there are unanswered questions regarding games, absolutely meaningless statements, or posts that have no value. The wall feature also poses an additional moderation risk at almost no gain. We have seen continued instances of groups in which predators are trying to target children, and their accounts are most certainly above the age of 13.
Our goal is to make Roblox Communities a central place where creators and community members can connect and interact safely.
I’m sorry to say that the wall feature is not only outdated but also unused. A large percentage of groups use either guided or Discord, taking moderation into their own hands because they cannot rely on Roblox moderation to handle group wall message posts.
I love the commitment of trying to better the platform, but this feature needs to go.
I don’t really understand why it is locked to 13+ now though? How can we also gather feedback from users under 13 for our experiences, catalog items, etc? Will there be some sort of tool to allow them to send us feedback as well in the future? Perhaps allow them to send messages in a special made for them, where users above 13+ can’t send messages and perhaps “scam” these people or spam them or something??
I understand privacy is important, but I don’t think disabling these users’ ability to send us reports is a good idea.
Apparently communities are going to be available to all users, but that’s not out yet. Classic Roblox move to be removing/restricting features without providing alternatives
For most part I agree that this change has good intentions and makes the most sense.
But are there any plans to get rid of the captcha test required every single time you want to post something on a group wall? Even as the owner of a group, I cannot post on my group wall without completing multiple verification puzzles. It’s very annoying and I understand wanting to prevent spam, but heavily verified users should not have to go through this all the time.
Cool cool, but how do you expect me to get feedback from users and tell them anything about their feedback? No one under 13 (which is about half of all active Roblox users) can now give any feedback unless it’s via some one way system between this change and whenever communities comes out.
We’re talking a possible half a year gap, that’s not great
Honestly don’t know how this improves group walls as its something many users use of different age ranges, and the fact that its already something that’s not used enough.
This makes it harder for those under 13 who are interested in for example the group i help with a development community to share their games or find help etc.
While I do agree that we need to keep those younger users safe, different groups have staff teams and or Moderators in place, and for me personally our group I take care of any user abusing it as soon as I see it.
Overall various things that contribute to development I find is getting harder for those under 13 to use or have access to, to be successful.
As well as game feed back etc because a vast majority of players are under 13, and i know that there also are a lot of kids around 9 to 12 that are “mature” enough to give feed back on games. (Its a guess just judging on people I see on a day to day basis while working in the public)
I appreciate the effort though to keep people safe, but like another user shared there “games” that need to be addressed like that bathroom simulator… I saw that recommended once and was suspicious of it so I went on it so id know if I had to report it, and yeah id say it was inappropriate in things it had… needless to say I did report it but obviously it’s still around.
That said I’m glad groups are getting some much needed updates and attention.
So I’ll go out on a limb here and actually agree with Roblox, for once, on an update.
No, Under 13s should not be posting stuff on the internet including a gaming platform.
That said, its rather interesting Roblox went forward with this update before sorting out what @bluebxrrybot brought up in the first reply. Edit: Hey, wait a minute. Where’d it go?
The Wall feature is outdated. I don’t think it improves groups in any way, we won’t be able to receive proper feedback and such with these changes. I’m waiting to see how would Forums do in future.
