"Safety is never an endpoint." Roblox's James Kay on age verification and commitment to player safety

Published: July 15, 2026

As a platform with a traditionally younger audience than other videogames, Roblox player safety and security are extremely important. The studio has done a lot of work on improving those aspects of the game in recent years, and we spoke to James Kay, Senior Director of International Communications for Roblox, about what's been done, the impact of the UK social media ban, and how player safety will continue to be a priority in the future. 

"A lot of what we've been doing is very, very safety-focused," Kay told me. "I would sort of chart this back almost to November 2024 when we introduced new parental controls on the platform, and we've really kind of been on a roll, adding lots of major enhancements and updates to the way we operate safety."

Of course, Roblox has to ensure children are safe when they play, but also maintain a platform is still a viable one for players of all ages. "I think if you were to ask the average person on the street, they've heard of Roblox. How would they describe it? They would describe it as a kids' game," Kay says. "We obviously are not a singular game. We're a platform for games. We have a community worldwide of creators that [create the games], and we're not exclusively for kids. And actually, I think what we've seen in recent years is our age demographic broadening, and an older user base being on the platform. Around a third [of our playerbase] are under 13, just over a third are 13 to 17, and then just under a third are 18 or older."

With a unique playerbase, age demographic-wise, "your approach to safety has to evolve," Kay says. "A lot of that thinking has gone into some of the changes we've announced recently. There's also, what is the safety technology capable of? And I think there's been this running question around age verification: how do you age-verify users at scale accurately?" This has been the big addition to Roblox's safety systems. The game first introduced facial age estimation for a limited set of features back in July 2025, and Kay says the team always had it in mind to expand it for other features.

"And so you've seen us be on that journey over the last year, where then in November last year we introduced those facial age checks as a mandatory requirement in order to access any of our chat features. Once we know your age, we then place you within a certain age bracket, so you can only chat with people within your age bracket or the age bracket kind of adjacent to you, which we think creates not just a safer experience, obviously, for our players, but actually a better experience. You know, kids generally want to be playing and chatting with other kids, and adults generally want to be playing and chatting with other adults. So, actually, putting people by that age group is not just a safety feature. It's actually creating a better experience for our player base."

Kay is aware that Roblox can't simply implement the changes and sit back; it's got to react to attempts to bypass safety measures, and continue to improve them. "People will always try to circumvent tech for various reasons. I would argue actually, it's funny because I think it's often ingrained, especially in teenagers."

"You get access to more and think it's better to be older. I actually think in the case of Roblox, you know, if you're a 12-year-old and somehow you're on a kind of 18-plus account, it's actually a way worse experience because you can't chat with any of your friends now. We're not just kind of hanging our hat just on the age checks piece. So, in terms of getting the age right, it is accurate within about 1.4 years on average."

Kay also agrees that there needs to be some input and responsibility from young players' parents. "So that's a great question. It's a question I get asked in the school playground," he says when I asked what advice he has for parents. "The first thing is definitely create a sort of parent account that you link your kids' accounts to. Make sure you set the parental controls. You know, obviously we do have defaults in place for different ages, but every child is different. And as a parent, you know your child better than anyone, and those cover a whole range of things like what games they can play, who they can chat to, how much they can spend, all of that. So yeah, definitely engage with those. I think the other big thing is playing with your kid. There's a lot of great games that I think the parents will actually really enjoy, and that's something we're kind of trying to encourage all the time: co-play between parents and kids."

Of course, how parents manage their kids' time on Roblox will go hand-in-hand with the impending social media ban for under-16s in the UK. Enjoying Roblox to its max is often aided by social media. Players get codes for in-game freebies from the likes of X, YouTube, and Discord, or use TikTok to find the next big thing. To a degree, discovery and engagement may be harder. Kay doesn't believe access to codes and the like will change too much, though. "If I've learned one thing from my tenure at Roblox, it's to never underestimate the ingenuity of creators. I don't know exactly what they'll do, but I've got no doubt they will find a solution. They're a very, very inspiring bunch. I'm sure they will figure out ways to make sure that they're serving their community in the way that their playerbase needs," he said.

"If I've learned one thing from my tenure at Roblox, it's to never underestimate the ingenuity of creators.

James Kay, Senior Director of Communications at Roblox

He also confirmed that Roblox will continue to implement what's necessary, keeping a close eye on what's required from the social media ban. He explained: "I think it's important that there's the distinction between gaming and social media, because the type of social interaction that can happen on the game [Roblox] is very different from what you see from social media. I mean, look, there's obviously a lot of details still to come in terms of what the requirements will be, and we'll wait to see what is published. I think, from our perspective, our philosophy has always been to go above and beyond what the regulation says is necessary. And I think you've seen that with the approach we've taken to age checks. Yeah, we've rolled this out globally. We've rolled out everywhere. It's not necessarily mandated in all these spaces, but we've done it because we think it's the right thing to do from a player safety perspective, and I think the approach that we have taken is certainly very distinct from other large platforms and social media platforms."

Age checks, verification, and what Roblox has already done to improve safety on the platform doesn't end here, though. "I think safety is never an endpoint, right?" Kay said. "So there's constantly going to be things we're doing to enhance it and improve. I couldn't speculate on what the next things will be. I think each month we're announcing something new."

It'll be interesting to see how Roblox continues to adapt with the times when it comes to player safety and security. Whatever happens, it's good to know that it's at the forefront of the creators' minds, and that they're determined to keep improving the platform.