Roblox removes unrated games over child safety concerns
Developers can restore their games by filling out a maturity questionnaire in the Creator Hub.
If you’ve ever scrolled through Roblox looking for something new to play, you know how easy it is to stumble into the unexpected. That chaotic mix of polished hits, funny experiments, and sometimes questionable creations is part of Roblox’s charm, and its problem.
To tackle those concerns, Roblox announced in late August that it would partner with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to standardise age ratings across its library. Fortnite already uses the same system, requiring creators to tag their custom maps with IARC ratings, which shows how this framework is steadily becoming an industry standard for platforms with large youth audiences.
That announcement quickly turned into action. On September 30, Roblox began removing all "unrated experiences", effectively shutting down the grey-area titles that players over 13 could previously access by simply confirming their age.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
Of course, that raises the question of what happens to all those games. Well, Roblox didn’t delete them outright, which softens the blow. Instead, developers can bring them back by filling out a "Maturity and Compliance" questionnaire in the Creator Hub that generates a maturity label. For active creators, this is a small hurdle. The bigger problem is with older projects whose developers have long since left the platform.
For developers, the shift is more of a pause than a full stop. Games have not been deleted, and creators can restore them by completing a short "Maturity and Compliance" questionnaire in the Creator Hub. The process generates the necessary rating and puts the game back in circulation.
To keep those classics from disappearing, Roblox has promised to step in. Any game with at least 1,000 lifetime visits will be rated by Roblox staff if the original developer is no longer around. The company admits that this is a slow process, but the idea is to protect community favourites from vanishing forever.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
Players, meanwhile, are already feeling the effect. The catalog looks slimmer, and some familiar favourites are missing until they get updated. At the same time, younger users are less likely to stumble into unregulated games that might have slipped through the cracks.
That trade-off between safety and freedom is exactly what Roblox is wrestling with here, and it is betting that most people will prefer a safer environment, even if it means fewer games on the menu.
Looking ahead, the impact will reach beyond the games that just went dark. Developers now know compliance is not optional, because a game without a rating will be non-existent to the public. Roblox, for its part, strengthens its case that it is serious about child safety at a time when regulators and parents are demanding it. The real challenge will be finding a way to enforce stricter standards without dampening the creativity that has made Roblox such a cultural phenomenon.
