[eps]

> nearly 50% of the users on our platform are over the age of 13 as of Q2 2021

Hahahaha... jeez... /wipes a tear

They are in for a surprise of their corporate lives.

We have several accounts with them for our kids and I had all of them set with the birthday set to some random year between 1960 and 1990. Because, as every parent knows, any sort of "kids" account comes with random restrictions, needing to create parent account and all sort of other bullshit that complicates everyone's life and prolongs the sign-up process.

They must be smoking crack if they think that a non-trivial amount of teens (leave alone adults) are playing Roblox games. Because 99.9% of these games is a complete and utter junk that makes your eyes bleed and gets traction because of the (way) younger kids that play them. That's it. That's the Roblox secret sauce. But, yeah, let's card them. Brilliant, brilliant move.

[Someone1234]

> sort of "kids" account comes with random restrictions, needing to create parent account and all sort of other bullshit that complicate everyone's life and prolong the sign-up process.

I set up one of these for Apple and Microsoft, and boy oh boy, has it been an absolute shit-show. There have been tons of bugs with both, it is a terrible user experience all around, and it has actually cost me more money in very real terms (e.g. IAPs needing to be re-purchased three times).

Unfortunately it seems like nobody at tech companies actually dog-foods kid/family accounts, and just does it as a butt covering exercise to avoid regulation. They do the bare minimum and then let it rot.

[donmcronald]

Yep. It's absolutely brutal. Ex: EA Play won't work with XBox Game Pass if it's on a child account.

All the kids I know just use fake info with fake birthdays. There's a huge risk of losing the account, but who even knows what to do. Obviously these companies don't want to invest in moderation, so I think they should focus on moderation tools and leave the parent/organizer account holders do the actual moderation.

Microsoft does the money handling on child accounts really well, but the family sharing is absolutely brutal. It's an insanely bad user experience.

[jjoonathan]

I long ago aged out of these limits, but I never stopped using my fake birthday. Everywhere I thought I could get away with it, I did.

Ad networks still figured out my real birthday :/

[monocularvision]

This is so absolutely spot on. I have my kids’ fake birthday memorized because I use it so often. As soon as you enter a birthday that actually would mean under 13, be prepared for _nothing to work_.

[Avicebron]

Yea..I've always assumed Roblox was at best majority 7-15. I haven't set up anyone's account, but isn't the "at least 13 or older" a generic checkbox that is sort of used as a default for everything from youtube to netflix?

[donmcronald]

Haha. Yeah. And if they start verifying identity and locking accounts that can't prove the identity info provided at signup, that's going to be a lot of locked accounts.

I think they're overestimating the importance of a gaming account.

[davedx]

Both our teenagers play Roblox