In-game text chat is any message created within your game that originated from one user and is delivered to one or more other users, including:
- Chat bubbles over an avatar's head
- Direct messages between users
- Chat window communication between users
- Team-specific messages
For sending and delivery, these types of communications must each go through a TextChannel instance. This ensures messages respect privacy settings, are visible to moderators, and are properly text-filtered.
Certain text is not considered chat:
Text on menus created by developers (for example, "Press any button to continue.")
Status updates from the game (for example, "Two minutes remaining!")
Announcements from admin commands
A user renaming their pet dog
Moderation audit logs or messages
Any user-generated text unrelated to a conversation
Comments on posts in a game
If the comments support a reply feature, these replies would be considered a conversation and thus subject to this policy.
For communication shared by users that can be seen by other users, even if it doesn't need to go through TextChatService, you must ensure it goes through a text filter.
Requirements
All games that offer in-game text chat for users must integrate TextChatService, per the Misusing Roblox Systems Community Standard. For information on migrating from the legacy chat system, see the Roblox Developer Forum and Migrate from legacy chat.
All games that offer editable text that can be used and seen between users must add rate limits of at least 1 minute, such as communication through signs or bulletin boards. Other intentionally built communications or chat systems must otherwise adhere and call to TextChatService. See rate‑limited text inputs for an example on how to set up rate limiting for text input fields.
All incoming text that originates from another user must first use Text filtering before your game displays it.
If users repeatedly send messages that violate community standards, Roblox warns and then temporarily prevents them from sending messages. To learn more, see Text Chat Nudge FAQ.
Communication between users must respect user privacy settings.
- TextChannel:SendAsync() handles basic privacy and parental settings automatically.
- TextChannel:SetDirectChatRequester() must be used to mark TextChannels created for direct chat.
In-game communication should be reportable for abuse. TextChannels handle this automatically.
Respect privacy settings
Users can have different levels of access to communication features based on their privacy and content maturity settings or parental controls. Some users might have additional restrictions or constraints depending on which app store they used to install Roblox or their local laws.
The following methods respect these requirements. Use them within your game to determine how to handle messaging requests: