Unstoppable live service game Roblox is launching on the PS5 as a native app today, amid increased scrutiny over its approach to child safety.
For those bemused by this news, the game has been available as a PS4 app since 2023, after Sony lifted longstanding restrictions on the game which originally prevented its release.
But this new client will take full advantage of the PS5’s contemporary hardware, boasting 30% faster loading times, smoother frame rates, and enhanced visuals.
It’ll also feature support for the DualSense, although it will be down to individual creators to take advantage of its various features.
For those who don’t know, Roblox is effectively a platform made up of millions of different experiences.
Players can pick what they want to interact with, with all of the games free-to-play. However, you can purchase virtual currency in many of these experiences to unlock additional features or speed-up your progress.
Last year, one of the platform’s most popular games, Grow Your Garden, peaked at over 11.1 million concurrent players. If you think about a lot of the reporting around Steam concurrents, where games peaking at 200k are considered an enormous success, this should help put things into perspective.
Roblox boasts 144 million daily active users across all platforms and revenue in the region of ~$5 billion per annum. To put that into perspective, that makes it bigger than PSN and Steam combined in terms of overall reach.
But there’s been increasing scrutiny around how Roblox keeps its predominantly young playerbase safe.
There have been various reports of predators using the platform to groom children, and a new facial recognition-style parental control tool has been criticised for erroneously estimating the correct age of kids.
Roblox says the system is designed to group players into the appropriate categories, limiting functionality depending on their age group. While it says this format is safer than asking players to manually enter their age, it has admitted to errors and inaccuracies.
As a result, if you are planning to download Roblox on PS5 for your kids, we’d highly recommend you monitor what they’re doing and who they’re playing with at all times.