Roblox Blames Age-Verification Rollout for Lowered Growth. Stock Tumbles 22% (qz.com) 37
Age verification became mandatory for chat access on Roblox in January — and Friday morning Quartz reported it's apparently impacted the company's financials:
Roblox cut its full-year 2026 bookings forecast by roughly $900 million at the midpoint on Thursday, blaming stronger-than-expected headwinds from its mandatory age-verification rollout on an audience that skews heavily toward children and teenagers. Full-year 2026 bookings are now projected at $7.33 billion to $7.60 billion, a range that sits roughly $900 million below the prior guidance of $8.28 billion to $8.55 billion; analysts had expected $8.38 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. Roblox stock fell almost 22% in premarket trading....
Daily active users rose 35% year over year to 132 million, while hours engaged climbed 43% to 31 billion hours... Daily Active Users and hours engaged fell below forecasts of 143.8 million and 33.68 billion, respectively, according to Yahoo Finance... Users who have not completed age checks have faced restricted communication features, and the process has weighed on the platform's ability to bring in new users. Russia's blocking of the platform, which took effect in December 2025, added further drag on user growth, according to Yahoo Finance. As of the end of the first quarter, 51% of global daily active users had completed age verification, with 65% of U.S. users having done so, Roblox said....
The safety push has come with legal costs. Roblox accrued $57 million in the first quarter for settlements and settlement proposals with certain states over youth-related consumer protection and digital safety matters, with payments structured over multiple years, the company said.
Roblox acknowledged in a letter to shareholders that "our aggressive push to enhance safety lowers our expectations for topline growth in 2026." But they argued that it also "makes our platform fundamentally better and amplifies the long-term growth potential of Roblox through more effective content targeting, tailored communication experiences, and improved community sentiment."
Daily active users rose 35% year over year to 132 million, while hours engaged climbed 43% to 31 billion hours... Daily Active Users and hours engaged fell below forecasts of 143.8 million and 33.68 billion, respectively, according to Yahoo Finance... Users who have not completed age checks have faced restricted communication features, and the process has weighed on the platform's ability to bring in new users. Russia's blocking of the platform, which took effect in December 2025, added further drag on user growth, according to Yahoo Finance. As of the end of the first quarter, 51% of global daily active users had completed age verification, with 65% of U.S. users having done so, Roblox said....
The safety push has come with legal costs. Roblox accrued $57 million in the first quarter for settlements and settlement proposals with certain states over youth-related consumer protection and digital safety matters, with payments structured over multiple years, the company said.
Roblox acknowledged in a letter to shareholders that "our aggressive push to enhance safety lowers our expectations for topline growth in 2026." But they argued that it also "makes our platform fundamentally better and amplifies the long-term growth potential of Roblox through more effective content targeting, tailored communication experiences, and improved community sentiment."
The Molestation Station closed... (Score:3, Funny)
Boo hoo hoo.
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Predators still can pretend they're children (as they always do) and it's business as usual.
Now they're even "certified children" (tm)
It's about ending anonymity on the internet so your government and/or boeing can shot you for saying shit they dislike.
Oh the horror! (Score:5, Insightful)
A scam outfit won't be able to pray on teh childrenz.
The consequences will never be the same!!!
Now do the same to tiktok and the zuck outfit.
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Wrong window, dear, I'm not your mother.
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Yes, we all know Iran went to shit after we fucked them up.
That doesn't explain why you are mad about kids getting married in Iran but don't care about it happening in the USA, where the laws in most states permit it.
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Sounds like the deep south.
Still a child labor mine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Still a child labor mine (Score:4, Insightful)
Your metaphor would make a lot more sense if kids were designing Lego sets that Lego then sold and vastly under compensated the creators of those sets (while doing a piss poor job of keeping those kids from being contacted directly by adults)
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Your metaphor would make a lot more sense if kids were designing Lego sets that Lego then sold and vastly under compensated the creators of those sets (while doing a piss poor job of keeping those kids from being contacted directly by adults)
Your retort would make a lot less sense if you realized children don’t file for patents any more than they do LLCs.
Tell me again how minor that argument really is. Adults have been “stealing” ideas from children since the dawn of time.
And you’ve done nothing to address the false claim of child “labor” being exploited. Again, I didn’t consider myself “at work” when building with Lego. Nor would I have cared at 8 years old if Lego “stole” my
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Are there Cambodian sweathouses cracking whips on children with laptops and Roblox Studio for 18 hours per day that aren't being reported on?
Or are you trying to equate free content creation platforms with child labor?
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Plantation owners blame the end of slavery for a downturn in projected profits
Re: In other news (Score:4, Insightful)
The South is still poor 160 years later. Never recovered.
Re: In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Have they tried pulling themselves up by their bootstraps?
Darkness, hates the light. (Score:5, Insightful)
Age verification forces the maker of a children’s game to reconcile and face their real problem of child grooming head on, and their stock market excuse is to blame the law?
Let me not feel bad one bit because investors were forced to realize exactly where those profits were coming from.
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You're right, games should be kept away from children. Let's just prevent them from doing anything from now on.
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You're right, games should be kept away from children. Let's just prevent them from doing anything from now on.
Before the game, sexual predators were kept away from innocent children by locked doors. Deadbolts. Armed fathers. Wisdom.
Dare to describe that risk today, with a “game” enabling predators to stand right outside an open internet window.
Most parents, don’t have a fucking clue. Not one.
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Stock Market Insanity (Score:4, Funny)
Daily active users rose 35% year over year to 132 million, while hours engaged climbed 43% to 31 billion hours
You only grew by just over one third last year!? Failure! Sell sell sell!
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Yeah, that does seem a bit ridiculous. "Well, you grew a lot, but didn't grow as much as we expected, so you're going to be punished for our miscalculation."
Seems like obvious common sense.
You thought they would make X dollars. But now they're only going to make 1/2 X
You wouldn't think the old valuation was too high?
Why even have an expectation if you're not going to change your strategy when it's wrong?
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What are you on about?
The only people that lost money were the ones who had the wrong expectations about the future of the company.
It's the system working as intended.
People who expected the company to do X bid up the price to reflect X being done/true.
People who didn't think/expect that didn't buy it. Or sold it once they realized their expectations were wrong.
Now, a lot of the people who lost money were the ones with the bad expectation
Only people who lost money were the ones with the incorrect expectation. As intended.
but it hurts the company in ways that seem unjust to me
How was the company hurt? They didn't perform to what was e
Weird (Score:3)
Every other topic on this website: fuck this cop shit we don't need age verification
This website on Roblox: jail
I wonder why we always lose rights.
Missing the point (Score:2)
Sure, age-verification might impede underage use of their product, but there are a lot of adults that understand the age-verification movement to be an invasion of their privacy. Whether or not this is true, "perception is reality".
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there are a lot of adults that understand the age-verification movement to be an invasion of their privacy. Whether or not this is true, "perception is reality".
And it is true, because one after another every entity which institutes age verification announces eventually that it will have to be done via identity verification.
Not the only story. (Score:1)
All the bad press and lawsuits related to age verification and predators trolling through their servers is bad enough, but remember that Roblox is effectively a simple devkit for indy games. With Valve announcing the release of s&box, they're facing even more direct competition going forward.