What a horrifying change.
Yeah, sure, give more control to the parents, don’t let children interact with real issues by themselves, children don’t have agency anyways!
Great idea! /s
I really don’t like what’s happening to the Internet. Corporations already had too much power and now they’re choosing what children learn about.
Why would you want kids under 13 to access sensitive topics?
I thought parents were the ones responsible for their kids safety? Why is it a bad thing now?
what you are describing is called “parental consent” and it is not “removing content from the platform”
most users do not lie about there age upon account creation because they are too young to know what happens when you do
if somebody creates an alt account, thats an issue. but they dont even have to lie about their age? this content descriptor only applies to people who dont opt out and a child can easily just create an alt (with the same age) and opt out manually since there are no protections on the new account
tldr: its up to the parent to make sure their kid isnt doing anything bad, roblox is just trying to help with that
I have developed at least one decently popular game where I can be certain that a majority of its userbase wasn’t 13+ or 17+ users like the analytics state so this is definitely not true. A lot of users online lie about their age because they know platforms limit underage accounts in various ways.
And this is a major problem. There’s zero reason for this to not be an explicit opt-in like pretty much any other parental control I can think of.
There is definitely reason, you just aren’t willing to accept it.
sensitive topics can be extremely influential on a child when growing up, and if a parent is not aware of this they will not be able to opt in. having it opt out manually makes sure this doesn’t happen and keeps the child safe (well, safer at least) from sensitive content their parent doesn’t want them viewing
If a parent isn’t actively involved in what their children are doing online and properly exploring all the parental control options the platforms or games they allow their children to use have then they shouldn’t have ever allowed their child internet access to begin with.
It shouldn’t be up to Roblox to arbitrarily decide that whatever they deem to be a “sensitive topic” should not be shown by default.
this is a very flawed way of thinking. it doesn’t matter if the parent doesn’t care about their child and/or what they do online, they will still have internet access and that is a problem. in that case it is up to roblox to try and do what they can to keep the child safe, or at least safer than they wouldve been without any protections whatsoever.
so lets say my game has some lore on a major character in the game and how the character had major depression and attempted suicide multiple times, would that banish my game to the 17+ category?
also when it comes to “Strong Emotional Response”, would having intense moments in a game (such as a character death or just something crazy that make players feel emotions like they would in a movie), would that be flagged as apart of your “Strong Emotional Response”?
this is a very weird update that goes against many roblox policies and limits many accounts of free speech and expression. bye bye to games with goals of trying to push for change, as now they will fall under “Polarized Viewpoints” 
please read the full post before speaking your thoughts
this descriptor does NOT affect the maturity label, if your content depicts multiple suicide attempts and depression it would instead be banished to 17+ (or more likely, 13+) for violence/self harm topics.
strong emotional response means something that brings out violent or overreactive behavior that escalates further than is needed. a sad moment inside a game does not fall under this
The responsibility should lie on the parents to do this, not Roblox. I’m tired of all these people thinking it should be perfectly fine to degrade online platforms in order to pander to irresponsible parents.
There’s nothing “safer” about enabling this parental control by default because whether or not these “sensitive topics” actually are harmful or hinder their development is a purely subjective thing and shouldn’t be forced.
it is not purely subjective. anybody with basic education should know that children can easily be influenced.
also, while most of the responsibility falls on the parents, roblox still needs to put preventative measures in place in case the parent does NOT take responsibility. this is common sense, please use it in the future.
if you are making up points just to have something to argue against, i recommend trying to actually understand this decision instead of trying to fight every single thing roblox does. it’s a lot healthier mentally and you will be much happier
I already understand enough to know that enabling this by default is a horrible decision in its current state. They have yet to give any clear criteria at all as to what makes them consider something a “sensitive topic”, giving them free rain to arbitrarily decide that whatever they don’t like counts under this.
To add on top of that, they adamantly are insisting that it’s impossible for them to provide developers a clear, concrete list of topics that are considered sensitive, making it impossible for any developers who want their games to adhere to these limits to do so when it is very much possible for them to provide such a list.
they give a nice list of things that would apply in the post. any other topics would be on a case by case basis and roblox would simply notify you if your experience does have a sensitive topic
thx for clearing these things up for me. this whole post wasnt really well worded for me and i was left with many questions and misinterpretations.
this whole update is still VERY concerning as i feel like it will get out of control really fast, especially when we have company’s like Collective Shout censoring many things just because they dont them.
yeah, i agree with the concerns when theres companies such as, as you mentioned, Collective Shout
however i wont automatically assume this is malicious on robloxs part until they actually start moderating experiences because of “sensitive topics” that aren’t actually sensitive
You completely missed my point. The fact that we neither have a full list of everything that is currently considered “sensitive” and that would be actively updated whenever new things are added and that we don’t even know the criteria they use to determine if a subject is sensitive means that developers cannot even predict or assess if something not on that list (which might be a core feature of their game!) might count as one.
This means developers looking to make a game within these limitations could easily spend potentially weeks or months developing their game only to find out that all that work has gone to waste because it is now blocked out from a large majority of the playerbase.
That small list they gave and without any form of criteria for determining if something is “sensitive” or not is simply not good enough for anyone looking to seriously develop on this platform and is especially not good enough to enable this by default.
i would like to add on my concerns for how i feel like this can get VERY out of control VERY fast. if you’ve been on the internet for even just a little bit, you may know of companies like Collective Shout which actively censor and push for prohibiting content that THEY (not others, just them) dont like. this company is actively attacking free speech, and has been a major issue. on top of that, we’ve had multiple countries just outright banning social media, and/or heavily restricting it by forcing people to use ID. roblox was on of the first major platforms that i knew and used to incorporate this garbage ID verification system, and seeing how this dystopian system has now spread to nearly every platform known to man is very worrying. i dont want to show my passport to every platform that i use, its an invasion of my privacy. you can see where im going with this, this can easily be manipulated by companies like Collective Shout and used to actively censor games just like they did on platforms like Steam and Itchio. by having systems like this, you are actively opening yourself up to very difficult situations like what Steam had to go through, and i wouldn’t want that to happen to roblox simply because a shady company like Collective Shout doesnt like certain things like roblox is hosting.
At this point we might as well close this post because clearly this is a sensitive issue on itself 
this is extra concerning especially because of recent changes to law in several countries meant to erode free speech (some even admitted to that like the UK did)
this is a VERY alarming change