Roblox: all the news about the popular social and gaming platform

Roblox is making a subtle but notable change. After swapping the word “game” for “experience” all over its website and mobile apps in 2021 while the Epic Games v. Apple trial was taking place, Roblox is getting more comfortable with using the term “games” once again.

“Over time, we’ve learned that ‘experiences’ isn’t an intuitive term for many parents, older players, and game developers,” Roblox spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt tells The Verge. “‘Games’ is clearer and better reflects what Roblox is and where we’re going.”

Roblox is about to make a big change to how you can access games on its platform: If you want to play any game that’s intended for users nine or older, you will have to complete an age verification process. The shift is happening as part of a rollout of new Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts, which have different levels of protections for kids of different age groups.

Roblox has come under intense scrutiny over alleged child safety issues on the platform, and the company is the subject of multiple state lawsuits. The platform has introduced many features to attempt to make the platform a safer place for kids, including locking down sexual content, improving parental controls, and requiring age checks to access chat. More than 50 percent of the platform’s 144 million global daily active users have completed an age check, according to Roblox.

Roblox is using AI to alter the content of chat messages on its platform in real time using a new feature rolling out today. Real-time chat rephrasing goes beyond the current filtering for banned language, which replaces certain words and phrases with “#” symbols. Now, Roblox says those words and phrases can be “translated into more respectful language that remains closer to the user’s original intent.”

For instance, if a user posts “Hurry TF up!” in chat, Roblox’s AI will alter the message to say “Hurry up!” instead. Whenever this happens, Roblox says “everyone in the chat is notified that the text has been rephrased to keep things civil.” Minecraft similarly filters out profanity in certain in-game chats, but its filter only replaces banned words with symbols or blocks messages containing them, rather than rewording messages.

After rolling out age verification last year, Roblox is aiming to grow the number of players over 18 on its platform. As noted in its 2025 year-end earnings report, 45 percent of Roblox’s daily active users have completed an age check as of January 31st. Of those who have verified their age, 27 percent are adults. Roblox also reported that this age category is spending more money on its platform than users under 18.

Roblox is planning to try to pull in more adult players by expanding certain “high-fidelity” genres on its platform, as the earnings report notes: “We are prioritizing some of the largest and highest-monetizing genres in the gaming market—e.g. Shooters, RPGs, and Sports & Racing.” Roblox is also putting more emphasis on performance and graphics quality as part of its push to attract older audiences.

Less than a week after Google showed off Project Genie, a tool powered by an AI world model that lets users generate interactive 3D experiences from prompts, Roblox is sharing some early ideas about how it wants to use AI world models and prompts to let creators generate experiences and change them in real time — something it calls “real-time dreaming.”

Tech companies, including Google, Meta, and xAI, have been increasingly interested as of late in the idea that AI can help users make interactive experiences — even though creators of many kinds are pushing back against AI tools, a growing number of video game developers think generative AI is bad for the gaming industry, and some developers are choosing not to use AI development tools at all. Some companies that make AI tools, including Google, have also been subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Roblox is rolling out its previously announced requirement for all users to go through an age estimation process to be able to use the platform’s chat features. The policy was announced in November 2025 and was rolled out to Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands in December, but now users will be prompted to complete an age check to be able to chat in “all regions where chat is available,” Roblox says.

The company’s facial scan age check process uses technology from Persona, which is also used by Reddit. If a user wants to appeal the result of their age check, they can also verify their age via ID verification, and a parent can also use parental controls to update the age of their child.

Roblox will soon require that users go through an age estimation process if they want to be able to chat with other people on the platform. The requirement will be in effect for all users starting in early January.

Roblox has come under significant scrutiny over child safety on the platform, with multiple states filing lawsuits this year against the company. The plan to require age estimation for chats is just one of several safety-related announcements the company has made in recent months.

Texas AG Ken Paxton is accusing Roblox of “putting pixel pedophiles and profits over the safety of Texas children,” alleging in a lawsuit filed this week that it is “flagrantly ignoring state and federal online safety laws while deceiving parents about the dangers of its platform.”

The lawsuit accuses Roblox of deceptive trade practices for misleading parents and users about its safety features, and for creating a common nuisance by harboring a space “that has become a habitual destination for child predators engaging in grooming and child sexual exploitation.”

Roblox is going to start showing ESRB ratings alongside experiences to help users in the US better understand if an experience is appropriate for a user of a certain age. The new ratings will appear thanks to Roblox’s new partnership with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC), which was announced today.

As part of the partnership, players in other countries will see age ratings from the ratings agency for their region. Right now, Roblox uses its own “content maturity labels” to indicate maturity level of experiences, but these will be replaced with ratings from the agencies in the future.

Roblox is updating its policies prohibiting romantic or sexual content to also forbid “content, settings, or behavior that implies sexual activity,” according to a Friday post from chief safety officer Matt Kaufman (emphasis Kaufman’s).

The changes follow recent lawsuits against the company, including one from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill that alleges the platform creates an environment where “child predators thrive.” It claims Roblox has “directly facilitated the widespread sexual exploitation of minors and inflicted severe, lasting harm upon the children of Louisiana.”

The state of Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against Roblox, alleging that the company has “permitted and perpetuated an online environment in which child predators thrive, directly contributing to the widespread victimization of minor children in Louisiana.”

Roblox sees more than 111.8 million daily active users, and it’s hugely popular with children, with users under 13 comprising nearly 40 percent of players last quarter. However, the platform has come under significant scrutiny over reported failures to protect children on the platform, with Bloomberg publishing a major report last year about predators on Roblox and the investment firm Hindenburg Research alleging that its research revealed “an X-rated pedophile hellscape.” In recent months, Roblox has taken steps to bolster its child safety features, including introducing parent accounts that can manage their child’s account and the ability for parents to block people on their child’s friend list.

Roblox is introducing a way to let trusted friends chat more freely among themselves, but it will require that they use a new age estimation tool to verify that they’re over 13.

The platform is renaming Friends to Connections, and people can only use unfiltered text chat and the Party social feature with a more exclusive group of “Trusted Connections.” With Trusted Connections, “inappropriate language like ‘butt-head’ and personally identifiable information are not filtered,” spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt tells The Verge.

Roblox is launching a new licensing platform that will make it easier for companies to offer their intellectual property (IP) to creators so they can build approved experiences. The platform includes a license manager that “equips rights holders with new self-serve IP management tools” and a licenses catalog that creators can browse and use to apply for “licensed use of IP,” according to a newsroom post from Roblox CPO Manuel Bronstein.

The platform is initially launching with four partners: Lionsgate, Netflix, Sega, and Kodansha. Seven IPs will be available for “licensed use‬ by eligible creators,” including Squid Game, Stranger Things, Twilight, Saw, and Like a Dragon. “Two more will follow in the coming weeks, with‬ additional IPs being added later this year,” according to Bronstein.

Roblox is introducing a new Creator Rewards program that’s designed to further encourage creators to bring players onto the social games platform on a regular basis. The program, which has two ways for creators to earn rewards, will roll out beginning July 24th.

One component of Creator Rewards is the Daily Engagement Reward, which gives Roblox creators 5 Robux for an “active spender” on the platform who spends at least 10 minutes in their experience in one day. 5 Robux isn’t a lot on its own — depending on where you buy Robux, that can translate to about five cents — but if an experience brings back thousands or millions of people every day, that could add up quickly. Roblox may also change the payout in the future, it says in a blog post.