Roblox Blames Age-Verification Rollout for Lowered Growth. Stock Tumbles 22%

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."

The Molestation Station closed...

[Rendus]

Boo hoo hoo.

Oh the horror!

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

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.

Re:

[Iamthecheese]

It's about privacy, you twit.

Re:

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Wrong window, dear, I'm not your mother.

Still a child labor mine

[locater16]

If one ever wants to know just how old and out of touch national and supranational governments are just remember that Roblox has been profiting from child labor for years and years now and still gets away with it.

Re:

[geekmux]

If one ever wants to know just how old and out of touch national and supranational governments are just remember that Roblox has been profiting from child labor for years and years now and still gets away with it.

Care to explain how children’s creations in a digital Lego world, amounts to some kind of measurable impact regarding labor? Did we also assume children were being “exploited” for their “labor” when millions of them were building with Lego bricks back in the days before the joystick entered the home? When children stopped playing with toys, did we blame the children for layoffs at toy factories? Are children being forced to play Roblox? How far is this stretch?

When measurin

Re: Still a child labor mine

[SirSlud]

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)

In other news

[radoni]

Plantation owners blame the end of slavery for a downturn in projected profits

Re: In other news

[reanjr]

The South is still poor 160 years later. Never recovered.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Have they tried pulling themselves up by their bootstraps?

Darkness, hates the light.

[geekmux]

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.

Re:

[zephvark]

You're right, games should be kept away from children. Let's just prevent them from doing anything from now on.

Re:

[Goddamnferret]

"The Investors" would be just fine preying on children if it helped the bottom line. "The investors" are just as filthy as anyone else. They just get to play this whole "I'm not supposed to know the evil every company in my portfolio is doing all the time!" game. They'd be more than happy to invest in one that was going to do well.

Stock Market Insanity

[Dragonslicer]

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!

Re:

[sabbede]

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."

Re:

[Admiral Krunch]

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?

Re:

[sabbede]

Whose strategy is wrong? A lot of people just lost a ton of money, not because the company didn't perform well, it absolutely did, but because people outside the company expected something else to happen. Now, a lot of the people who lost money were the ones with the bad expectation, but it hurts the company in ways that seem unjust to me.