Updating Experience Guideline Policies to Keep Our Younger Users Safe

[Update] December 3, 2024


Hi Creators,

As we grow and learn, we continually enhance our safety measures to keep users of all ages safe on our platform — and we need your help to achieve this.

As part of this, we want to let you know about three changes:

  1. We will be restricting access to Social Hangouts and Free-form User Creation experiences to users ages 13+. Enforcement will begin on November 18th.

  2. By default, users under the age of 13 will not be able to play, search, and discover unrated experiences. This will ensure that parents and users have more clarity into the types of content available on Roblox and will help them make more informed choices about what they want to play. Enforcement will begin on December 3rd.

  3. We will require all information (including thumbnail, title, and description) displayed on the Experience Detail page to be either All Ages or 9+. We will begin enforcing this in 2025.

What we’re changing

Users under the age of 13 will not be able to play, search, and discover unrated experiences.

Parents and young users need accurate information about the experiences they are playing. Moving forward, all creators must complete a questionnaire for each experience they want available for users under 13. This means that all unrated experiences will be filtered out of search and any public or recommended sorts for users under 13. Additionally, creators must ensure that all information (such as thumbnail, title, and description) on their experience details page for each experience is appropriate for all users, by meeting either the All Ages or 9+ age recommendations. We will begin enforcement of these requirements next year.

Creators must fill out the experience questionnaire by December 3, 2024. Go to Creator Hub > Creations > Select an experience > Audience > Questionnaire:

After this date, experiences that are unrated will become unplayable, unsearchable, and undiscoverable by users under the age of 13. However, users under 13 will still be able to access the experience detail page via direct link.

To better align with industry standards to promote usability and safety, in the future we envision the questionnaire becoming more closely integrated into the publishing process.

Restricting social hangouts and free-form user creation to users 13+

We are also updating our policies to address user behavior that can potentially pose a risk to our youngest users. Starting November 18, experiences with certain types of interactive features, specifically social hangouts and free-form 2D user creation, will only be playable to users over the age of 13. Creators will always be able to play their own experience or any experience they have edit access to.

Social Hangouts

Hangout experiences are things like vibe games, clubs, socializing and supportive spaces where the primary theme or purpose of the experience is to communicate (e.g. in text or voice chat) with other users as yourself. This does not include role-playing or real-life simulation experiences where users adopt a different role or are provided with items to role-play with.

Free-form User Creation

Free-form user creation applies to features within experiences that allow users to draw or write in 2D and replicate those creations to other users without the completed creation going through Roblox moderation (e.g., writing or drawing on a chalkboard, whiteboard, or with spray paint). This does not include in-experience user creations assembled with 3D assets that have individually gone through Roblox moderation (e.g. building a house with blocks, creating an outfit, creating short-form videos of in-experience content).

We recognize the deadline is soon, but we greatly appreciate your cooperation in helping us ensure Roblox is a safe and civil place for users of all ages to come together. If you have further questions or concerns, please share below.

FAQs

What is the difference between genres and content descriptors?

  • Both are visible on an experience’s detail page, but serve different purposes. The genre taxonomy is focused primarily on communicating the core gameplay of an experience to better match creators to their audience. Content descriptors are used to generate content maturity labels (via the Experience Questionnaire), which provide parents and users insights on the content and behavior within an experience to help them choose the experiences that are the most appropriate for them.

    We ask that any time you are describing your experience, that you do so accurately. Your Roblox-assigned genre should not influence how you answer the content maturity questionnaire. If you disagree with your genre, the ability to select your own genre is launching this month.

How do I know if my experience is roleplay or a social hangout?

  • We understand your confusion and will be updating our policy language in the Experience Questionnaire to make this clearer.

    If your experience meets both criteria below, then it is a social hangout for the purposes of this policy:

    1. The primary theme or activity is to chat with, or otherwise interact with, other users (strangers or friends) with voice or text
    2. Players interact with others as themselves or as their avatar

    Please answer the questionnaire accurately, regardless of your genre.

If my experience genre is ‘Social’ and subgenre is ‘Hangout’, does that mean I’m impacted by the content moderation guidelines here?

  • Based on our initial learnings from rolling out the new genre taxonomy, we’re combining all of the subgenres under Social because they are currently too small to warrant their own subgenres. Therefore, there will no longer be a “Hangout” subgenre. This should also help avoid confusion with the Social Hangout content descriptor. As any genre grows, we’ll reevaluate and reintroduce subgenres to aid with discoverability.

    The ability to choose or update your genre is launching this month and we ask that you pick your genre based on the core gameplay users can expect from the experience.

    If your genre is Social, it does not automatically imply any content maturity labels. We rely on you filling out the content maturity questionnaire accurately to assign a content maturity label.

Will roleplay/life simulation experiences also be restricted to users ages 13+?

  • No, experiences where players adopt various roles (e.g., teacher, police officer, race car driver) or are provided with items to role-play with will not be restricted.

Will all free-form user creation experiences also be restricted to users ages 13+?

  • In-experience user creations assembled with 3D assets that have individually gone through Roblox moderation (e.g. building a house with blocks, creating an outfit, creating short-form videos of in-experience content) will not be restricted.

Will unrated experiences be moderated?

  • After December 3, unrated experiences will become unplayable, unsearchable, and undiscoverable by users under 13 but will continue to be reviewed for compliance with our Community Standards.
151 Likes

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

good update, hopefully this will encourage devs to rate their game properly

45 Likes

I don’t know if this will be better or worse

It’s good to no longer have inappropriate hangout games in the discovery for people under 13 but at the same time they are suppose to get moderated i feel like

I also realized that games such as “PLS DONATE” will also be restricted from getting visits from players under 13 which will definitely affect their playercount

24 Likes

UGC will be restricted to 13+, Roblox have you lost your mind?

11 Likes

Kinda sad, but with the amount of… issues in some of these games, I totally understand this.

30 Likes

this is 100% rational, have you seen the stuff in those games??

25 Likes

This will literally ruin games, they should just release an AI tool that moderates the asset and returns if it’s allowed or not.

8 Likes

hi so i thought that this affected me at first because my game lets you build worlds with 3d blocks but i just realized that this only applies to 2d! silly me!

old post (yap)

this is bad, really bad.

my game wubby is a world-building game (in which everyone can create their own worlds) whose player base mostly consists of a younger audience. this will probably negatively affect my player base. the moderators in my game take down inappropriate material in a matter of minutes if not seconds due to the moderation system’s efficiency that i was able to build.

this will affect not only me, but also similar world-building games which are entirely ugc base whose player base is relatively young, like blockate

also, i love how roblox thought that my UGC-centered game (in the questionnaire rules it says explicitly not to take in mind anything UGC) was a game depicting violence

thank you

18 Likes

Are we saying that roleplay games are less dangerous than social hangout games? If so, this is so-so-so-so incredibly tone-deaf and naive to the problem that this is trying to solve. It gives me the impression that enacting this same change on roleplaying games is more threatening to Roblox’s income, hence why it was left out of this subset.

EDIT: This is without me mentioning how life-threatening this is to my game, especially when we take player safety and civility so seriously. We’ve attended talks at RDC, spoken to members of the relevant teams in-person specifically to discuss the issues games like ours naturally come with and figure out how we can do better (as I know we always can) and made it a key part of our community staff team’s mission.

25 Likes

that will use up more energy then a small city

9 Likes

Uh, UGC will be available for everyone no matter what. This does not apply to anything in the marketplace or avatar creators

3 Likes

This is what I mean, most games will be negatively impacted with this update. ROBLOX cannot be trusted, It’s every day there’s an issue

4 Likes

it isn’t roblox fault you lack moderation in your game. If a roblox employee joined it and the first thing they see was inappropriate ugc then that is an issue with your playerbase + rules

5 Likes

most reasonable thing roblox has done all month

5 Likes

While it’s going to be annoying adding ratings to every game I want everyone to play, I suppose it is necessary. Great job on releasing a reasonable update within the last month, ROBLOX

4 Likes

Free-form User Creation experiences – Doesn’t that apply to user generated content?

4 Likes

it’s not. the questionnaire explicitly tells you not to take ugc in mind.

7 Likes

Tom, if you’ve gone into any of the “hangout games” that @completelyhazel is referring to, there’s a 90% chance you’ll find some things we’d call “heinous ####” - or something worse. While your argument exists that good-intentioned creators (including myself!) could be negatively impacted, the positives of this situation far outweigh the negatives.

If Roblox released to us a tool that can tell us “is this content allowed or not” without fear for moderative consequences, everyone would use that tool to find ways to bypass moderation, which violates Roblox TOS on a massive scale. I understand where you’re coming from but you have to think about the fallout that could come from this.

11 Likes

that is referring to avatar items, not creator implemented ugc

1 Like