Roblox announced in their recent keynote speech that they wanted to branch out into helping form “real life relationships”.
This alone, isn’t necessarily cause for concern. Roblox is one of the most popular online games out there today. But Roblox CEO David Baszucki showed a slide explaining that users as young as 17 would be eligible for “17+” experiences.
These aren’t just avatars. Roblox plans on making connections with real people via this dating service, a video chat app hooked into Roblox, and even the ability to use AI to make an avatar that’s more like your real self. It’s one thing when it’s fictional characters, but these are real minors behind the screen.
This isn’t true in all of the world, but in the United States the age of consent is 18, as it is in many other locations. It’s worth mentioning that Roblox is based in San Mateo, California. Hopefully there is more nuance to the company’s actual plans.
You can check out the plans Roblox has for the future in their keynote address below.
Roblox enables users to create their own online experiences and many “Devs” create games within games on the Roblox platform. Conversely, this openness has led to previous issues in the past such as when a user made a “game” which was just a theater to show Kim Kardashian’s sex tape.
Roblox is available now for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (via backwards compatibility), Android, iOS, PC, and soon on PlayStation and Quest VR.