Australia’s online safety regulator has given Roblox three months to strengthen protections for children after testing found adults could still contact young Australian users through the platform. The changes will also be independently reviewed, marking a major new step in the country’s push for safer online gaming spaces.
The eSafety Commissioner has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Roblox, meaning the company’s promises are legally binding. If Roblox fails to follow through, eSafety can ask the Federal Court to order the company to comply and seek further orders.
The regulator’s testing found that adult users could send connection requests to young Australian children without getting permission from a parent or carer. It also found that children and adults could interact through Roblox forums outside of games without parental consent.
eSafety also said that child accounts exposed more information than they should. Other Roblox users could view a child’s connections, account name, number of connections, avatar image, and some profile information, such as interests. According to the regulator, young users could not choose to limit who saw that information.
These features may sound small on their own, but they can create more ways for strangers to find, contact, and build a connection with younger players. The issue is not limited to chat inside a Roblox game. It also involves connection requests, visible profiles, and forum interactions.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Roblox must take stronger steps to protect children from grooming, sexual exploitation, and abuse. The regulator estimates that around 1.7 million Australian children use Roblox, making it the country’s second-most popular game among children.
Changes Roblox must make
Roblox has committed to introducing new measures within three months. The biggest change will be stronger restrictions on adults contacting unknown children without parental consent.
The company must also make child accounts private by default. This should reduce the amount of profile and connection information that strangers can see about young Roblox players. Roblox will also need to improve its reporting tools and ensure users receive information about what happens after they make a complaint.
Perhaps the most important part of the undertaking is the independent audit. Roblox will have to bring in a third-party auditor to assess whether its safety measures actually work, including the platform’s age-estimation technology. eSafety says this is the first time it has required an external safety audit from a technology company under Australia’s Online Safety Act.
As eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant explained, Roblox should not be allowed to “mark their own homework.” Independent testing is meant to check whether promised safety tools work in practice, not just on paper.
Why Roblox was already under pressure
This action follows months of scrutiny from Australian regulators. In September 2025, Roblox made nine safety commitments to eSafety after concerns were raised about online grooming risks. Those commitments included stronger privacy settings for younger accounts, limits on adult-to-child contact, safer chat tools, and parental controls.
Roblox told eSafety that it had delivered on those commitments by the end of 2025. However, in February 2026, the regulator said it would directly test whether the protections were truly effective for Australian children.
The latest findings show why that testing mattered. Although Roblox had announced age checks for chat in Australia and said it was limiting communication between adults and minors, eSafety found that other features could still allow adults and children to connect without parental approval.
This does not mean Roblox is banned in Australia, and it does not mean all under-16 users are being removed from the platform. However, it does mean Roblox now faces legally enforceable requirements to improve how it handles children’s privacy, contact requests, complaints, and age-related safety systems.
Roblox said it had delivered on the commitments it made to eSafety over the past year and would continue working toward the shared goal of keeping Australian children safe online.
The company has recently promoted age-based accounts, parental tools, communication limits, and AI-supported moderation as parts of its wider safety strategy. But Australia’s regulator is now requiring proof that these protections work for children in real conditions, especially when adults try to make contact outside normal gameplay.
For Roblox players and parents, the practical outcome should be more private child accounts, fewer ways for unknown adults to reach younger users, clearer reporting tools, and safety measures that are checked by an outside expert rather than Roblox alone.
Roblox has three months to roll out the required measures. The audit and the possibility of Federal Court enforcement mean Australia’s eSafety regulator will be watching closely.
