Roblox Relaxes 'Highly Engaged Players' Definition, With Lower Thresholds Coming by August

Roblox has relaxed the definition of a “highly engaged player,” the controversial metric that decides which new games can be published to Roblox Kids and Select accounts. The change took effect on July 6 and is expected to be fully rolled out across the platform by the end of this week, as first reported by Bloxy News.

Roblox estimates the looser definition will increase the number of new games entering the Kids and Select catalog by roughly 33 percent every day. And the relief is not stopping there: the company says it is working to lower the eligibility threshold itself by early August, though it has not yet shared what the new bar will be.

Under the current system, a new experience must record 500 unique plays from highly engaged, age-checked users within a 60-day window before it completes evaluation and becomes visible to Kids accounts (ages 5–8) and Select accounts (ages 9–15). Established games can also remain accessible to under-16s by keeping at least 100 active users over 60 days.

To count as “highly engaged,” a player has to meet requirements on account tenure, playtime in the experience, and platform spend — the last of which means making a minimum purchase anywhere on Roblox within the previous 60 days. Notably, the money does not have to be spent in the creator’s own game.

That spend requirement is exactly why the metric has been so contentious. Creators have argued that tying under-16 visibility to how much players spend stacks discovery in favor of heavily monetized experiences, and makes it far harder for small, new, or deliberately non-monetized games to get off the ground. Threads on the Roblox Developer Forum asking the company to soften or scrap the requirement have run hundreds of replies deep.

The relaxed definition lands alongside two other levers Roblox has introduced for creators who do not want to wait. An Expedited Review option lets eligible creators pay a refundable 100,000 Robux per game to skip the highly-engaged-player threshold entirely, with a decision inside 48 hours — the fee is returned after 90 days if the game hits organic engagement milestones. There is also a new beta “Engagement Objective” in Ads Manager that specifically targets play sessions that count toward the threshold.

Kids and Select accounts launched globally on June 17 as part of Roblox’s broader age-based safety overhaul. Publishing to those audiences still requires an age-checked account in good standing, plus either a refundable 1,000 Robux publishing fee per game or two consecutive months of a Plus or Premium membership. The next milestone to watch is August, when Roblox says the threshold itself comes down.