Is Roblox getting voice chat? Potential release date and fans' concerns explained

Beloved by kids and grownups alike, Roblox has become a staple of the gaming scene since its launch in 2006. A free-to-play title which allows people to create their own games and share them with other people, Roblox is already staggeringly successful. In 2020, the game's developers told The Verge that Roblox has 120 million active monthly players, including "more than half" of Americans under the age of 16.

And now we know that, in a future update, it will become possible for those millions of users to communicate using their voices via Roblox. It's a big change, and you can keep on reading to learn more about it.

What will voice chat mean for Roblox?

At a recent Roblox Investor Day presentation, Roblox's Vice President of Engineering, Adam Miller, said this: "Text chat is the core of Roblox communication today. In the future, we expect to open up communication through safe voice chat." Only time will tell exactly how voice chat is implemented into the game, but even just the idea of it is significant. As Miller mentioned, most of the communication on Roblox at the moment is done via text, and so this will a game-changing addition. Literally.

When is the Roblox voice chat release date?

The team behind Roblox have not yet confirmed an official release date for Roblox voice chat. All they've said is that they expect this update to happen at some point in the future. We'd wager that it's months away, as opposed to weeks, but that is just guesswork on our part. It's not unusual for game updates to drop out of the blue, though, so your guess is as good as ours.

What are the safety concerns about Roblox voice chat?

Elsewhere in the Roblox Investor Day presentation, the game's developers mentioned that 56% of Roblox's daily users are under the age of 13. And so, it's easy to see why some people are questioning whether Roblox voice chat will be safe. Lots of parents allow their kids to play on Roblox, and, understandably, they'll want to be sure that their children are protected from any adult language and abusive content.

Right now, we don't know how voice chat in Roblox will work. However, we can note that Roblox's Adam Miller promised, in the aforementioned presentation, that this will be a "safe voice chat." The game's developers have already noted that safety is a key concern here.

"Safety is paramount," Miller stated at a slightly earlier point in the presentation. "We filter all text communications to block inappropriate content, including profanity and personal information. The goal is to enable safe and positive communication. Communicating with friends is key to our social experience. When users communicate, they engage more, play together more, and even make more purchases."

Given that the Roblox team is already taking such action to ensure that the game's text chat is safe, we're hopeful they'll try and find ways to make voice chat similarly safe. As more information about Roblox voice chat becomes available, we'll be sure to let you know.

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