(April 2): Roblox Corp announced new tools to help parents control how their children interact with strangers on its video-game platform, the company’s latest effort to address concerns about safety.

Starting Wednesday, parents will be able to limit who their child can interact with, the company said in a statement. Parents will also be able to view which games their children play the most and restrict them from playing ones they don’t think are appropriate.

“In developing parental controls, we prioritise transparency and ease of use to make it as simple as possible for parents to implement them,” chief safety Officer Matt Kaufman said in the statement. “It’s also important to note that, regardless of whether parents use these controls, we consider the safety of our youngest users paramount to the Roblox experience.”

Roblox published 40 safety updates in 2024, the company said in its press release. One major change announced in November prevents children under 13 from accessing “social hangouts”, like virtual clubs or discussion forums.

A Bloomberg Businessweek investigation published in July detailed the difficulties the kid-centric company has had with child predation. Since 2018, US police have arrested more than two dozen people accused of abusing or abducting victims they met or groomed on Roblox.

Current and former Roblox employees speaking with Businessweek said monitoring the company’s nearly 90 million daily users is a difficult task. Roughly 40% of its users were under 13 in 2024.

Uploaded by Arion Yeow