Roblox age verification will soon be a thing for all users. The change has been coming for some time, and fans and parents have had concerns. The intent behind the shift has now been clarified.
In a recent blog post, Roblox stated that the spatial voice feature will only be accessible to those who have verified accounts, and are over the age of 13. 13 is generally the age minimum to use many social media site and platforms, although kids violate this all the time. Many parents also don’t spend enough time paying attention to what their kids do online, so this is a big pill to swallow.
Some users will have the ability to verify their age in their account settings now by visiting the main site, but the feature is currently in beta. The feature is being tested at the moment, and will be rolled out to a wider userbase quite soon. With around half of all Roblox users under the age of 13, this is a huge change.
Some users have concerns about the change. Namely, that the requirement to access all the content on the platform will reduce the availability of games to their core users, kids. It seems that there may be additional requirements for developers to tighten access as well, although those are not publicly available, if they exist. There are also concerns over the security of such a system, as having personally identifiable info for millions of players is a pretty big issue in terms of privacy. Hopefully, the company isn’t dumb enough to keep personal info on file long-term.
The process will use the Roblox app, so you need a cell phone with a camera as well. To verify an account as adult-owned, users must submit a photo of their driver’s license, passport, or ID card. The app will then verify the photo and submit it to the moderation team. Along with the ID scan, you need to take a selfy to show that you’re the person in the ID photo.
This process is designed to restrict underage users from accessing certain content. The assumption seems to be that anyone under 18 won’t put the time into trying to fool the photo scans with fake photos or AI post-processing. There are potential ways around this process, but Roblox hardly seems like a decent use of that effort.
