Online gaming giant Roblox has just announced it will start checking users' ages from early December in an attempt to stop children and teenagers talking with adults.

As Roblox rolls out new age assurance features to prevent teens and kids from chatting with adults they do not know, it says Australia’s upcoming under-16s social media ban should not apply to its services.

Gaming giant Roblox Corp says it will roll out compulsory facial recognition or ID checks from next month for players wanting to access its chat features.

Roblox is going viral after banning seemingly every username with the numbers ’69’ in them, leaving players frustrated.

A Guardian Australia investigation this week documented a reporter posing as an eight-year-old girl on Roblox who was “given a sexualised avatar, cyberbullied, aggressively killed, sexually assaulted and shat on, all with parental control settings in place”.

The system is available to Australian Roblox users on a voluntary basis from tonight, but it will become mandatory from the first week of December when the federal government's so

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant warned last month that Roblox had become a popular target for pedophiles seeking to groom children. Predators often use “Robux”, the in-game currency, as a “trade”, or a way to bribe minors into sending explicit images.