Roblox to use content ratings to help limit access to explicit content

Half of Roblox's audience of more than 30 million daily users are kids under 13, but the platform has struggled at times to contain sexually explicit content, The Verge, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported on Saturday.

San Francisco: Virtual gaming platform Roblox is reportedly developing content ratings for games and easier-to-use parental controls.

Half of Roblox’s audience of more than 30 million daily users are kids under 13, but the platform has struggled at times to contain sexually explicit content, The Verge, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported on Saturday.

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Age-inappropriate games sometimes surface up on kids’ “recommended for you” lists, according to the report.

The platform’s current system restricts kids to specific games, but under the new system, parents would have more information about what kids might find in a given game; until you play a game, it’s not always clear that it might have explicit or inappropriate content in it.

The company’s chief privacy officer Remy Malan did not indicate when the new ratings system would be available but said Roblox has a team of more than 2,300 people monitoring games for safety, and uses a mix of human moderators and AI.

Roblox, which launched in 2006, has been a runaway hit during the pandemic, giving socially distanced kids a social space to gather online.

The company reported revenue of $588.7 million during the first nine months of 2020, a 68 per cent increase over the same period in 2019.

Roblox went public via a direct listing in March and said in its prospectus that its users spent an average of 2.6 hours daily on the platform over the past year.