[Lavery]

Probably parents realizing their children were making in-app purchases beyond what they (the parents) were aware of, and charging them back as unauthorized use. The cc processors pass that on to the merchant, and will drop them if there are too many. Likely Roblox just reached some critical mass where they couldn't sustain it any more.

[chipotle_coyote]

When I read about the age verification system for Roblox, it immediately made me think of a post on the official Patreon blog from just a few days ago, talking about how they're going to have to start asking for identity verification for "adult/18+ creators" due to new standards from Mastercard. And, yes, this clearly isn't exactly the same thing, but the similarity in requirement combined with the timing make it at least fractionally more suspicious to me that this is driven by payment processor requirements -- or at the very least, whatever concerns are driving those requirements.

It's also worth pointing out that unlike Patreon's requirement for adult material creators, Roblox's verification is optional, which most of the discussion here on HN seems to be eliding.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/21/22684672/roblox-age-verif...

> For now, only one feature requires age verification: Roblox's new voice chat feature. During its initial beta, it will only be available to players who verify they are at least 13 years old. But the implication seems to be that other features -- perhaps specific Roblox games or community tools -- could be age-gated as the company works to protect its relatively young user base.