[Update] January 232026
[Update] January 142026
Hey Creators,
We’d like to share an update on our global age check to chat rollout. We’ve also heard your questions on what constitutes chat; our chat guidelines outline our current policy on what is and isn’t considered chatand we’ll keep you updated on any changes here.
We know that changes to foundational systems like chat can be a significant adjustment for social games and communities. We wanted to share more on our upcoming roadmap that your feedback has been instrumental in shapingand we’ll come back with more details here within the next two weeks.
| Community Need |
Our Solution |
| Ensure enough users can communicate |
[Today] The new Text Chat matchmaking signal increases the likelihood that players who are able to chat with each other are matched together. We’re actively iterating on this signalmaking it more effective at matching users who can chat. We recommend starting experiments to boost this signal further in Custom Matchmaking for your experience when the global rollout of age check requirements are complete post January 14th. As users continue to complete age checks the ideal TextChat signal weight could change for your experience.
[February] We will launch two new API endpoints - TextChatService:GetChatGroupsAsync() and VoiceChatService:GetVoiceGroupsAsync() - to help creators group users by age in their Experience. These APIs will work across all active servers in an Experience.
For a given set of in-experience Player instances the APIs return obfuscated communication groups those players belong to. Each call returns an array of arrays of string group IDswhere sharing a group ID indicates that two players can communicate with each other. Users who cannot communicate due to restrictions or age check requirements will not have any group ID returned. Creators will be required to agree to appropriate usage terms before accessing the API. These APIs are useful for matchmaking and teleportation use-cases.
[Details coming in late January] We’ll enable global chat across every active server of an Experience between users of similar age groups.
|
| Chat with friends and family across age groups in Experience chat. |
[February] We’ll enable users to chat with Trusted Connections within Experience chat across age groups.
[March] Today Trusted Connections is only available to 13+ users and we’re exploring ways to enable Trusted Connections for younger users with parental oversight,.
|
| Add Trusted Connections easily. |
[Today] Age-checked users can add new Trusted Connections using Contact Importer or QR code scan. Age-checked users 13 and over can also mutually opt-in to upgrade to Trusted Connections from Party Chat or Profile.
[January] We’re making it easier to upgrade existing Connections in different age groups to Trusted Connections via QR scan.
[March] We’re adding invite links as a new option to upgrade existing Connections in different age groups to Trusted Connectionswith more new options to follow.
|
| Creators want to maintain civility in their community across all age groups. |
[Details coming in late January] We’ll give you tools to moderate chat in your experience to ensure your experiences are safe and civil. We are working on standardizing ways to enable real timeview-only options for chat so you can find and kick out rule-breaking players.
|
| Coordinate gameplay safely across different age groups using broadcast options. |
[Today] Creators are already able to create custom messaging & communication ‘wheels” by utilizing system messages in TextChatService.
[Details coming in late January] We’re exploring simplified tooling integrated into TextChatService for creators to build and customize tools for pre-set messages with consistent UX for users. This will include a pre-defined list of messages based on chat themes within their experiences to ensure messages are as relevant as possible.
|
| Understand age checks and communication metrics in your experiences. |
[March] We will update age demographic reporting in Creator Analytics to reflect age checked age groupingsreplacing current self-reported age data. You will be able to view metric breakdowns by specific age checked age bucketsas well as a distinct segment for users who have not yet age checkedallowing for higher-confidence optimization.
[Details coming in late January] We want to enable creators to view core Chat and Voice engagement metrics in Creator Analytics. For exampleyou’ll be able to review the number of users who have sent a message in chattotal number of messages sentand number of users who have talked/listened in Voice.
|
| Obtain direct feedback from users to effectively iterate and improve experiences. |
[Today] You can prompt players with the PlayerFeedback API to provide feedback on your experienceand the Feedback Dashboard gives you a full overview of what your users are saying.
[Details coming in late January] We’ll give you tools to moderate chat in your experience to ensure your experiences are safe and civil. We are working on standardizing ways to enable real timeview-only options for chat so you can gather feedback and understand what’s happening in your experience.
[April] Community Forums will have dedicated tools for feedbackbug reportingand player polls. We’re also building a ‘Player Help Desk’ that will allow you to prompt users for feedback in-experience.
|
| Broadcast one-way messages for server announcements or personalized news. |
[Today] Supported todaycreators can use system messages or build custom UI to broadcast messages to any of their users.
|
| Provide clear resolution paths for the instances where age estimation requires further verification. |
[Today] For users under 18linked parents can correct the age of users who are put into the incorrect age group. 13+ users can also use government-issued photo IDs to correct and verify the age on their accounts.
Roblox may periodically re-check users’ age if fraud is suspected or take appropriate action if there we see signs of potential age misrepresentation. As part of our ongoing investment in safetywe will also be developing and improving detection for such behavior.
We are aware of instances where parents age check on behalf of their children leading to kids being aged to 21+. We are working on solutions to address this and we’ll share more here soon.
[Late January] If you age check as over 18 and need to amend your age we will provide a pathway to re-check.
|
While we aim to launch these features within the projected windowsour priority is ensuring every solution is stable and ready for your workflows. Should any timelines shift to accommodate further testing or feedbackwe will provide immediate updates here and through our Creator Roadmap.
119 Likes
This is exciting if I’m understanding it correctly. I’ve always wanted this for my gamebut current ToS and Guidelines do not allow it. I think with timea lot of these changes will help bring back community interaction and engagement to what it was before. I do wish a lot of this would have been released alongside the age changes though.
54 Likes
i think this means “please don’t separate everybody into age groups”
please listen to the feedback the community has given you. at the very leastrework the system if there is no other option.
423 Likes
Why are we still pushing this change? Nobody wants this godawful change and it is only harming your core userbase instead of providing any safety. Roblox is inherently a social platform and these recent changes have pushed us into to a future of no privacy and censorship rather than communication and.. playing fun games.
Almost nobody is talking to each other anymore (123 or just join a game and notice how dead chat is) and you are not stopping any predatorsnot to mention the many oversights. This entire system needs a major rework and we need to start getting answers because the current excuses of communication we’re getting feels like a spit in the face. Not to mention all of the engineering hours going to waste implementing this system and all of the updates because it’s going poorly as everybody expected. Do better.
801 Likes
Over two thousand replies over one simple change with critism from playersdevelopersand parents alike.
If you don’t want to fork over your face or biometric data to a random company who got sued (and lost) over privacy concernsyou lose a core part of Roblox and many features in Studio.
AND BECAUSE OF AGE CHECK BEING INACCURATE (which is common)..
..Kids will be put in danger.
Mea minor who used my OWN face got put into the 18-20 age bracket. I can only talk to people 16+. I can talk to adults with a more relaxed chat filter. I have seen <10 year olds be put in the 18-20 age bracket without even using their parents/guardian’s face. Kids that aren’t even in HIGH SCHOOL can talk to adults with a more relaxed chat filter. And unless a kid <15 somehow has an ID (most of them don’t)you are unable to do anything about it (for right now..)
Alsowhy are most of these changes not on release? Most of these ARE gooddon’t get me wrongbut there is enough time for a creep to buy an account while allows them to harm a child off-platform before these take effect or are asked to recheck. I have yet to see anyone in charge of moderation/safety at Roblox (like Matt Kaufmann) address most of these loopholes as-well.
There are better ways to protect childrenbut this update is not one of them.
481 Likes
abidbmt
(abid)
7
Me (and many other people) strongly urge you to revert these changes before it kills Roblox just like it killed Luobu when similar actions were taken
295 Likes
All we wanted was more moderation. Not this dystopian future.
398 Likes
I don’t get why you keep ignoring the clear outcry from developers and quite a big portion of the community. WE DON’T WANT THIS!
269 Likes
MiniLarry
(MiniLarry)
10
How about you revert the age group changes? Better yethow about you revert the entire update? People can’t report bad actors because of the age groups!
253 Likes
I feel like all of what was mentioned here should have been implemented before the lockdown itself. 
64 Likes
This API looks really interestingbut to be a downer (again) since there still has been no acknowledgement of my article - the “obfuscated” communication groups can and will be de-obsucated if desiredmost likely for analytics.
I assume this is why you need to agree to appropriate usage guidelinesbut we already do this to use the platform in general. A section of text that says “don’t do this” with a decent chance of no enforcement won’t be effective. Remember how there were certain games showing paid random items (sometimes without showing the oddswhich is not allowed globally) to players in regions where that was illegal? The reward? More money! Maybe being part of official Roblox events. Probably an RDC invite as welland maybe a verified badge. Not even a slap on the wrist for violating the terms we agreed to in order to be on the platform. There is profit to be made with this change for analytics or age-based advertising for those withobligatory Star Trek referencethe “lobes for business”. The big games will do thisand since this isn’t player-facing (unlike paid random items)they will not get caughtand even if they dothey will make so much money for the platformthat they will not even see a slap on the wrist. They might even sell this data for advertising purposes. Roblox won’t know. Discussions about that will be on Discord.
NormallyI wouldn’t recommend doing this due to potential enforcementbut if what happened with TheOfficialTeddywho got Roblox Verifiedan RDC invitewas going to be part of “The Hatch”and still took serious drama to get any actionthere is no way background de-obfuscating of age groups will get enforcement.
…besides thatI’m glad to see this is being looked atalthough March is quite a way away. Right nowparents can’t see what their kids ages between 9-12 are saying unless they are physically there (ex: you can’t check in with the kids in-game when they are at their relative’s house). I really hope this actually ships instead of remaining a “promise”.
87 Likes
As long as this isn’t forced on or enabled by default this is a great feature to have on this platform. But a lot of messages may be out of context.
I feel like people are starting not to bother chatting anymore because they will know they wont get a response back.
Also just wanted to add this:
Here’s my problem with personas privacy policy:
- They don’t explain whether data is also deleted from their third parties
- How do we know their third parties are just as secure?
125 Likes
The overall damage the age check update will cause will significantly outweigh the benefits.
It isn’t too late to go back and revert it.
155 Likes
polalagi
(polalagi)
15
there is no reason to continue with this change. you’ve seen over and over again that people do not like this changenot only because it ruins the platformbut also that it does not workand in fact it only makes it easier for predators to find kidsas if they verify as kidsthey will be put into servers full of kids.
like I said in my latest reply on the global age checks postwhat once was a platform to socialize and find friendsis now a platform where the most you can do is play games without being able to chator see anyone’s chat at all.
in my opinion the best option is to revert this update ENTIRELYand properly co-operate with schlep and ban predators off the platform. or another choice is to just add an even stricter filteras it would still be better than this mess.
nowI know this reply has so far been mostly negativebut I think it’s still very good that you are willing to implement trusted connections for 13+ usersalong with more features relating to this update.
140 Likes
JC_Fred
(JC_Fred)
16
Awesome! So it seems like there will still be somewhat of a way to chat with other age groups after all! Hearing that we can create / use pre-set messages are awesomeit really reminds me of the old Safe Chat feature that Guests used.
20 Likes
This looks like a really good update for over 18 usersbut stillthey could also bypass that again as well and not get the age check.
13 Likes
Honestly it just simply isn’t enough. You can’t expect 100% of players to be okay with scanning their face or providing their ID just to chatand you can’t expect all parents to be okay with that either.
This entire update feels extremely alienating to Roblox players and the developer community. I understand that it comes from a place of good intention but this is all just too damaging and there has to be another solution to the problem you’re trying to solve.
102 Likes
There is still no explanation whether admin/moderation commands like :pm (player):alert (player):messagepm (player)etc is allowed across age groups?
14 Likes
This is just some of the stuff public on Ebay. Most of it is probably happening over discord.
139 Likes
