Roblox has introduced a policy removing games with "reward-driven media feeds" from Roblox Kids and Select, the tiers surfaced to its youngest users. Games that do not comply "will be removed from Kids and Select unless the game mechanic is redesigned", the company said on its creator hub, adding that it is actively reviewing titles for compliance.
The policy is narrow on purpose. It only bites when a game combines all three of the following, which means a game can carry a video feed, or reward players for watching something, without triggering it:
- It shows players a media feed — short-form video, image feeds, or social-media-style stories.
- It features or mimics autoplay, a continuous replay loop, infinite scroll, or autoscroll.
- It includes rewards that require, or imply the requirement of, ongoing viewing of that content.
What Roblox is actually describing
Stripped of the policy language, this targets a specific mechanic: a game that puts a TikTok-shaped feed inside itself and pays the player in currency or progress for not stopping. The reward converts idle watching into something that feels like play, which is what makes it effective on children and what makes it hard for a parent to recognise as advertising-adjacent design.
Rewarded Video Ads are explicitly unaffected, and the stated reason is instructive: a user "must actively initiate the ad", and rate limits cap how many can be watched. Roblox's dividing line is not whether a child watches video for a reward — it is whether the watching has an end the child chooses.
The context Roblox has not linked itself
The policy follows reports that the pet-collecting game Steal an Egg was taken offline over a mechanic that had players watching continuous content on a virtual treadmill to earn rewards. GamesIndustry.biz asked Roblox whether the policy was written in response to that game; no answer has been reported, so the connection is chronological rather than confirmed.
The wider timing is harder to separate. Last week the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism opened an investigation into Roblox, saying the platform "appears to prioritise revenue and engagement metrics" over child safety. A policy restricting engagement mechanics aimed at children, published days later, will be read against that investigation whether or not the two are connected.
Games that are redesigned get re-reviewed, and Roblox says the other qualification criteria stay in place, with the Engaged Player metric not resetting — which lowers the cost of compliance for developers who fix the mechanic rather than abandon the game.
Enforcement is the part that will decide whether any of this matters. Roblox hosts millions of experiences, the three conditions require looking at how a game behaves rather than what it declares, and a developer who wants the mechanic back only has to make the reward look less explicitly tied to continued viewing. The policy is well drafted; the review capacity behind it is what Roblox has not described.
