• Roblox has launched a set of new security features in the hopes of making it harder for young children to access violent content and chat options.
• These features are only being rolled out after nearly two decades of children as young as four having free reign of the game.
• Several studies and reports have shown that Roblox is popular for paedophiles to gain access to children.

Potentially the most played videogame in the world, Roblox, has added new child safety protocols to its apps which should have probably already been in place seeing as the game was launched in 2006 and has been identified by several reports and studies as a hotbed for predators of children, which make up a large portion of its 80 million daily users.

Per Bloomberg, users under the age of 13 will now need parental permission to access chat features on Roblox. Previously all users could chat with each other, no matter their ages.

Studies such as the Hindenburg report – which calls the game a “paedophile hellscape for kids” showed that predators sometimes use Roblox to gain access to children, usually without their parents even noticing.

Another belated security check now bars children under nine from playing games with moderate violence or crude humour. Roblox is a game where players make smaller games or levels which they can then play or invite other players to check out. Most of these games are made by the players themselves and not Roblox, the company.

There are thousands of these levels on Roblox, and many of them include 18+ content from adult players, which requires verification of ID to play. There are also levels with some violence and some suggestive content and up until now these were freely available to under nines.

Last month Roblox finally woke up to the fact that children under five should probably not be able to make accounts without their parents’ supervision

“Since children under five are still building the cognitive skills and coordination needed to fully enjoy Roblox, you will no longer see birthday options for children younger than five when setting up an account on Roblox. Existing users who previously made a mistake when selecting a birthday during account creation are encouraged to correct the birthday on their account from Settings,” the company explained in a blog post.

But as Kotaku points out, many of these restrictions are useless. A child can easily sign up and set their date of birth to 1980 and then easily access all content on Roblox, including rated content and text chats.

There are no checks whatsoever in the sign up process, no email or phone number required. No verification options.

If you are a parent or know someone whose children play Roblox, now is the time to do or say something. Make sure the parental controls are used. This includes all online games young children play today, like Fortnite and Minecraft. There are bad people counting on you to not care about the games your children play.