Roblox To Require Facial Age Checks For Chat, Like Discord—Months After CEO Told Parents To Keep Kids Off The Platform

Roblox is finally doing the thing people have been yelling about for years: real age checks. It is not perfect, and it is not going to flip on overnight, but the company is moving toward face-based verification for chat and other comms. For a platform that is arguably the biggest virtual playground on the planet, that is a big shift.

What is actually changing

• Roblox is rolling out face-based age verification for players who want to use communication features like chat.
• The company is also adding age-based chat that tries to keep conversations between adults and under-18 users apart.
• The rollout starts today with a voluntary step called 'Facial Age Estimation' and will expand from there.

Where this is coming from

The update landed via an online post from chief safety officer Matt Kaufman and product VP Rajiv Bhatia. Their pitch: Roblox will be the first major online gaming or communication platform to require facial age checks to access chat, and they believe this will become the new standard. Bold claim, even if the timing is complicated.

About that 'first' claim

Discord has already been doing a similar face-based age check in the UK. And yes, people have already shown ways to spoof that system — including using clips from Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2 to fool it. So the idea is not new, and the cat-and-mouse part definitely is not new.

How the verification works (in plain English)

Roblox will ask you to do a quick face scan so the system can estimate if you are over or under a certain age threshold. If you pass, you get access to chat and other comms. If not, you do not. The company says the images or video used for the check are deleted immediately after they are processed, which is doing the right privacy dance, at least on paper.

The goal: make kids safer on Roblox

Kaufman and Bhatia frame this as a way to deliver age-appropriate experiences and better interactions for everyone. The age-based chat piece is supposed to cut down on adult-to-minor conversations. That is the design, anyway.

Context you should not forget

Roblox has had a long, messy history with child safety. It has been a storyline for years, and it even hit the BBC in March. One moment that stuck: CEO Dave Baszucki told worried parents they might not want to let their kids on Roblox at all — which did not exactly inspire confidence at the time.

"Do not let your kids be on Roblox" — CEO Dave Baszucki, acknowledging it sounds counter-intuitive

The vibe check

This is a meaningful swing, and it is overdue. The tech itself is imperfect, and we have already seen versions of it get tricked elsewhere, so expect a lot of iteration. But moving from vibes-based moderation to a real gate for chat is significant. If Roblox sticks the landing, it could make the platform better for everyone, not just kids — and if they do not, we will be right back here talking about the next workaround video making the rounds.