These requirements make sense. They're additional verification steps in place for people trying to publish games for very young users.
They only make sense if you think it's OK for kids to send face scans to scary faceless corporations. And even if you do that, you can't share your game with friends unless they also take a face scan! (cause that's what "Trusted Friend" means - it doesn't mean trusted by you, it means trusted by them)
The step is a significant one, and Roblox has taken one other measure recently, restricting chat a lot for minors (https://x.com/Roblox_RTC/status/2043723470899437623) . I think this is a move to satisfy people concerned with child safety, not a cash grab. I think RB hq probably know they're making tradeoffs of keeping parents happy, while devs will be annoyed/fewer. But everyone can still make games and play them with trusted friends. Likely damages the network effect (Roblox's multiplayer aspect being one of its best parts), but oh well.
I for one will not let my child submit a face scan to Roblox in order to become a 'trusted friend', and so now they wont be able to play the games made by their friends.
age check via face scan or id for both parties is required, along with ~in-person pre-existing connections or parental permission.
I’d be curious if this change came out of their efforts, or whether this is was to deal with compliance issues.
16+ audiences have no requirement.
It is also that your game goes away when you stop paying. Which means, pay forever or you cant show it off anymore.
[1]:https://www.statista.com/statistics/1190869/roblox-games-use...
I think requirement 3 can make sense if we start painting everybody as potential criminal.
but requirement 2 never make sense to me. -- why need age check to publish to adult user?
As a side note, if someone is working on something similar, then now is the time to start talking about it! ;)
I dont know Lua and never touched it, Claude was able to vibe code in pieces a whole 3D Roblox experience, all while I was working in domains I did understand in another terminal window
Taking the Apple approach makes sense as too many ideas guys are flooding the platform with vending machine slop
Vibe coders are far more likely to be willing to pay to submit their games, because just like their $200/mo AI subscription, they see it as a necessary expense on their path to get rich quick. People who just want to make things for fun as a hobby are less likely to pay.
Roblox is already an experiences cesspool and should have dropped the “every kid should be an entrepreneur” thing a long time ago. Roblox Studio is still accessible for tinkering.
With influencers, the old barrier of entry was getting a good camera and learning about lighting. Now that cameras are essentially shipped with a device everyone has on them at all times anyways, we see how low the low-hanging fruit actually hangs, as evidenced by most instagram reels which are insufferable.
Here's my suggestion for an amendement:
"Roblox devs will need plus membership to publish to young users"
Yes it makes sense when you apply it to adults, but Roblox was made for kids to share and play with other kids. When you look at it from that angle it makes no sense.
My personal policy is I don't click links I consider clickbait. I mean things that are intentionally misleading and vogue. But I sometimes check HN comments - I never comment about the post itself (since I didn't read it), but I sometimes respond to other comments (like I do now).
Your policy will lead to missing articles that you might have found worthwhile someone did a poor job of submitting them.
One of the "requirements" you refer to is possessing an active subscription. The age-cutoff is 16, but Roblox has historically been based around kids making games for other kids, which isn't feasible if a subscription becomes required.
Upvoting gangs upvote the PR comment that downplays the article (the "actually, let me examine is why this is fine in very polished language" type comment)
So it's not like there a total imbalance of purely misleading headlines with no response to them