Capitulating to outside pressure, after a barrage of media reports citing unsafe conditions for minors, Roblox is implementing new safeguards. Parents can now access parental controls from their own devices in addition to their child’s device and monitor their child’s screen time. New content labels and improvements to how users under age 13 can communicate on Roblox are additional protections that are now baked into the platform. “We’ve spent nearly two decades building strong safety systems, but we are always evolving our systems as new technology becomes available,” explained the Roblox.

Roblox introduced the new safety updates in a newsroom post. They come a week after Roblox announced it had banned kids from “hangout spaces.”

These moves occur as “Roblox came under fire in different media reports,” including an explosive Bloomberg story, writes VentureBeat, adding that “safety is a very big topic for every game company these days” but is a particular challenge for Roblox because it “has 90 million daily active users across 190 countries” with “six million games on the platform,” which focuses on user-generated content and virtual world-building.

Roblox says the changes address safety of the platform’s youngest users by: (1) making it easier and more intuitive for parents to manage their child’s settings, and (2) updating built-in protections that exist independent of parental controls.

Roblox had already offered parental controls, including spend limits, but made them accessible only through the child’s account. “Today the company is launching remote management, which allows parents and caregivers to adjust controls and review their child’s activity even if they aren’t physically together,” VentureBeat reports.

Users under 13 will have more restrictive communications settings by default, unless parents chose to override them. “Users under 13 will no longer be allowed to text chat outside of games,” having previously been banned from voice chat, writes The Wall Street Journal. And “platform chat,” a form of direct message will be turned off.

Roblox partners with family-friendly brands including Disney, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. Discovery and Mattel, among other brands, according to Variety.

This summer, the platforom “was blocked in Turkey for allegedly having content that exploits children,” explains WSJ, noting that the child safety push has impacted social brands including Meta Platforms, which in September “began automatically making youth accounts on Instagram private.”