From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.
Roblox compared its new system to school cohorts such as elementary, middle school and high school. It will be introduced first in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where children will be blocked from privately chatting with adults they do not know in real life from next month, and in the rest of the world in early January.
Users will be placed into the following groups: under nine, nine to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, or 21 and over. Children will be able to chat only with others in their age group and similar ones. For example, a child with an estimated age of 12 will be able to chat only with under-16s. Images and video used for the checks would not be stored, Roblox said.
Word games? Multiplayer competitive games?
It’s not just a roleplaying game.
Despite being pretty important to the gameplay, should the developers of other games primarily played by underaged people be forced to ban chat? Like other bigger multiplayer games like Fortnite, Among Us, Valorant, CSGO, etc.
Ahh I see your confusion. First of all we are dealing with a specific game used in a specific way.
If culturally pedophiles would do scrabble tournaments for kids then people would react and say we should stop scrabble tournaments because pedophiles have captured them.
This is not saying adults can’t play Scrabble, just that scrabble tournaments run by pedophiles aren’t cool.
Roblox is being used as a similar tool.
Good news is there are lots games like Roblox with better graphics and gameplay that are not infested with pedophiles trying to groom kids.
So you are not being deprived of anything, unless of course you are a pedo that wants to groom kids on Roblox.
I can see where you’re coming from. But calling Roblox a “specific game” isn’t entirely accurate because it’s got millions of separate ones.
Sure, the majority of Roblox players are kids. But iirc about half are adults. It’s not literally 99% kids with the remaining 1% being pedophiles like you suggest.
Removing the chat function entirely isn’t the solution; pedos would just move somewhere else. Maybe all online chat should be restricted to those 18 and older?
Yeah, I totally get Roblox is a huge platform with a lot to offer other than pedos trying to RP with kids.
Personally, after watching my kids play it and seeing a lot of weird stuff like pregnancy, implied sex, possible rape, etc. I felt that without constant supervision it was not safe for them.
I think a dialogue tree for RP when kids are involved would be safer without totally breaking all RP servers.
I like the idea of of restricting all communication to 18+. It is pretty extreme, but I think considering how bad it has gotten it wouldn’t be completely unwarranted.