As a Roblox Developer it is currently too hard to tailor our experiences and settings around User Age Groups. Enabling the usage of GetUnder13 and adding an option to check if a user is above or below 18, in local or server scripts would significantly benefit developers. We could set things such as blood effects off for our >13 and really push our experiences for the 18+ audience. This would enable developers to do such things as; Rated R / PG13 movie sponsor ship deals within their games, only for the 18+ audience.
Now to enable this option to actually be used, there’d have to be an agreement / setting, similar to HttpEnable. Where the developer can’t legally store or use the age outside of a server-server basis (not even in DataStores) due to liability I believe this could work.
Wouldn’t you just want a way to i.e. check whether gore/blood should be shown to a particular user, rather than wanting to know their age range and then having to figure out how to deduce it from there? Putting the solution closer to the problem.
That is a very specific approach that also not every developer would follow, seems almost out of place. My exact suggestion opens it up for more for the individual developer’s use-case. Now, It’d be useful for me personally to turn off the gore-type aspects for the younger audience, but I need to see if the user is over or under 18, regarding brand deals and licensing.
For my own case, your suggestion wouldn’t be the solution to the problem, rather another step to making it more complicated. As I believe the developer can develop each aspect of the entire game respectively towards each age group if they choose to do so.
Don’t forget that children can (and will!!!) lie about their age to see that stuff. For example, YouTube’s statistics for under 18 are notoriously unreliable because of how many kids lie to see age restricted videos.
GetUnder18 would be a bad idea because 18+ content is not allowed on Roblox anyways. What 18+ content are you going to put in your game without getting banned? Many kids would lie about their age to exploit this.
18+ “Adult themed” content isn’t allowed on Roblox, so anything within ToS is allowed but can be seen as 18+ content if it was a AAA game. There’s plenty of games currently on Roblox that would be under the 18+ content. You should be able to research different rating examples, and what the requirements are typically.
Now for me to legally do this stuff in my own case, I’d need access to this.
Now the age option is no different than a rating on a game, you the developer are responsible for making the content for the age(s)/rating. A parent can buy their child an 18+ game, no different than someone lying about their age when making an account. Nor is Roblox responsible for the user deciding their own age, it’s the parent’s job to know what their child is doing. The parents are really the only ones with any control over what the child plays, nobody else has really any way to know.
There was a Hotline Miami clone with full uncensored blood and gore, but is no longer playable because of filtering. It never got moderated, so Roblox is not strict at all when it comes to this rule as long as you don’t go overboard by adding suggestive imagery.
Which is not a reason not to rely on the user’s choice. It’s the parents’/supervisors’ job to ensure that the child doesn’t have access to inappropriate media and not Roblox’s or creator’s issue if they don’t give truthful information.
The media will say whatever it wants. There were enormous amounts of lawsuits against Rockstar, but they won all of them just simply because the child got hold of a game above their age limit.
Just the same, Roblox does not want nor need more negative publicity. Keep in mind that most parents don’t look past the headlines or the initial articles. This kind of change would be more harmful than helpful!
