Human Evaluator

Apple's EU app store changes, Roblox safety, Pokémon Go's regional strategy and AI in Nordic studios | Week in Views. The Pocketgamer.biz team pick their highlights from the headlines this week and deliver the stories behind the stories August 21, 2026 The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can't let go of... So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we've created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week. Apple has faced a triple threat over the past week. In the EU, it's proposed new terms that it claims "resolve" its dispute with the European Union. The changes, which reduce fees and "complexity" - the latter which Apple itself created in trying to get around the Digital Markets Act, are set to go into effect on October 1st. That complexity, by the way, means there is now one set of terms for publishers, rather than two. But is Apple's "disagreement" with the European Commission really resolved as it says? There's been no comment from the EU thus far, despite the tech giant's claims it has worked in close collaboration with the EC. I sense the story is not over. Epic also isn't happy about the proposal. The Apple vs. Epic Games case rumbles on in the US looking for closure. Apple has proposed a deal like in the EU - a 15% commission for off-store purchases. Epic, once again, was not happy. "Apple's filing is in, and Apple admitted that under the Ninth Circuit's definition of 'necessary costs' they would charge 0% for purchases made via linkouts to the web," said Epic Games in a post. Finally, Apple is planning changes to App Tracking Transparency for most EU countries. As we noted in our article, Germany's Federal Cartel Office found that Apple's ATT framework gave Apple's own apps more favourable consent prompts than those shown to third-party developers, potentially breaching competition rules. Indeed, the prevailing theory has been that, in the name of privacy, Apple has been able to scale its own ads business ever since ATT's introduction. Mobile Dev Memo's Eric Seufert believes changes will nudge opt-in rates upward by a "non-trivial amount". However, the impact will be "precedential rather than immediately economic". The linkout element of this triple-threat looks like it's very slowly coming to a close - and not in Apple's favour, unless the EU truly has agreed to Apple's new terms. ATT looks like a new battlefield for the coming years. Roblox is facing yet another investigation over child safety, this time from the US Senate. The senators are raising serious concerns over grooming and other alleged sexual abuse that is linked to the platform. They even go as far as to say it appears that Roblox prioritises revenue and engagement over these safety concerns. While I can appreciate that Roblox has expanded at an enormous rate, it is aimed at a young audience and therefore has to ensure it is built to keep them safe. If that means growth slows while the teams work on safety, then so be it. I also understand Roblox has already tried to implement new measures such as age-based accounts and expanded parental controls, but questions remain about whether they are actually working. Just this week, Australia's internet regulator found that adults could still contact children on Roblox despite the safety measures currently in place. In that case, regulators have given Roblox three months to address the issues, so we'll see what comes of these latest investigations, but I truly hope serious change comes. From a worldwide cultural takeover in 2016, to navigating lockdown restrictions, to an evolution from 151 Pokémon to more than any other game in the franchise, Pokémon Go has had one impactful decade. After the geolocation giant celebrated its 10th anniversary this July, I had the chance to speak with head of EMEA marketing Jack Wilcock about planning events and campaigns, celebrating the milestone with a free edition of Go Fest and the impacts of regionally exclusive content. We discussed Summer Quest, region-exclusive Pokémon species like the UK-only Stonjourner (inspired by Stonehenge) and a partnership with the National Trust to get people out exploring the country's wild side. As something of a Pokémon fanatic, this interview was a big one for me. I was still in school when Go released, and at the time I couldn't have imagined I'd be conducting an interview about it 10 years later. At the same time, I'd like to think I put the fanboying to one side and focused on useful insights - learning about Go's long planning cycles, how the team chooses locations for live events and more. A few weeks ago I did a deep dive into how Chinese game studios are actually using AI. This time, I turned my attention to the Nordics. I talked to five people across the region: studio founders, an AI-native studio co-founder, a games lawyer and a business development manager, about how they are using AI. Dodreams' Mikael Gummerus talked about the ways in which AI has been utilised extensively for data analysis, but has barely made a dent in art or Unity dev yet. Odd Latent's Tatu Petersen-Jessen talks about his AI-native studio and how roles within the company are "collapsing" into one-person teams doing art, design and code. There's also a great bit from Nordia Law's Tuomas Pelkonen on where the real risk sits now - Pelkonen warns that IP is no longer the main concern when it comes to liability, it's actually player backlash and "shadow AI" nobody signed off on. This will be a multi-part series so keep an eye out for part two, which is coming soon!

Roblox open-sources AI safety models. August 20, 2026 Roblox is sharing open-source safety models and a new benchmark dataset to help platforms strengthen online safety detection. Roblox is contributing three open-source safety models to the Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) Model Community: an updated PII Classifier, Roblox Sentinel and its latest voice safety classifier. The company is also releasing a new evaluation dataset that other platforms can use to benchmark their own safety classifiers. These models are already used on Roblox to detect attempts to share or solicit personal information, identify early signs of potential child endangerment and moderate voice chat in real time. The updated PII Classifier is designed to identify attempts to share or request personally identifiable information or move users to other platforms. Version 2.0 analyses surrounding conversation rather than isolated messages and is trained with synthetic examples covering complex bypass methods and rare multilingual cases. This has expanded its supported languages from 17 to 189, while its F1 score increased from 63.41 to 90.52. Alongside the classifier, Roblox is releasing a new benchmark dataset containing synthetic multi-user conversations designed to represent attempts to bypass PII filters. The dataset includes techniques such as phonetic bypasses, character substitutions, coded language and information distributed across multiple messages. It also includes benign conversations that resemble PII-sharing attempts, allowing developers to evaluate how accurately their classifiers distinguish risky interactions from normal conversations. Roblox Sentinel focuses on detecting early indicators of potential child endangerment before conversations become explicit. Its second version introduces six methods for combining model scores instead of two, making it easier to tune the system for different use cases. In one test, Sentinel evaluated 324 configurations in less than three minutes and improved ROC-AUC from 0.894 with the default configuration to 0.996 with the best configuration identified. Roblox says nearly 70% of the cases it detected during the 12 months ending 7 August 2026 were identified through Sentinel's early detection. The company has also released version 3 of its voice safety classifier, which supports 30 languages and eight violation categories. It delivers 61 per cent recall at a 1 per cent false-positive rate and includes built-in language detection. Although the model has increased from 94.6 million to 320 million parameters, model distillation keeps it suitable for real-time detection. Roblox says the classifier has been downloaded more than 72,000 times since it was open-sourced in 2024.

Popular online game on notice over child safety. By Noah Secomb and Max Aldred August 19 2026 - 10:53pm Roblox compelled to tighten guardrails for 1.7 million users over alleged exploitation concerns. Photo: AP PHOTO The national internet regulator is threatening a gaming giant with legal action if it fails to take steps to protect kids from grooming. Roblox on Thursday received an enforceable undertaking following concerns about exploitation and abuse guardrails on its platform. The eSafety Commission alleged the game was not meeting its obligations under the Online Safety Act's codes and standards. eSafety Cmr Julie Inman Grant says a platform with "a high preponderance of kids" needs to be safe. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS) Roblox does not have adequate measures to prevent contact between adults and under-16s, the office alleged. The company said it met its obligations. The platform's service standard requires children's accounts to be set to private by default with accessible reporting procedures. The scrutiny from the commission has the support of Communications Minister Anika Wells who said the gaming platform has "talked a big game" on child safety. "Despite promises made to me in person and to the eSafety Commissioner in February, Roblox has not yet managed to clean up its act," Ms Wells told reporters. "It is not good enough. "Parents need to know that their children will not be approached by adults while playing the game." Communications Minister Anika Wells said Roblox "has not yet managed to clean up its act". (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS) Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said her department had been engaging with Roblox "for some time at senior levels". "The company has responded, making a number of improvements to its service," she said. "Their executives clearly understand that verifiable safety measures are critical to their long-term viability and success. "We want to ensure that any platform with a high preponderance of kids to be a safe place where they can enjoy the benefits of online gaming, creativity and connection, including building their own worlds and experiences online." Roy Morgan research estimates there are about 1.7 million Australian children on the platform. Under the agreement, the platform committed to better prevent adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent and to ensure children's accounts are set to private by default. Roblox also committed to implementing accessible report mechanisms notifying of complaint outcomes and agreed to engage a third-party auditor to assess its safety measures' efficacy. All commitments must be enacted within three months. It comes after the eSafety Commission tested the platform's guardrail claims earlier in 2026. The testing found adults could send connection requests to children, and children's profiles were visible to others on the platform. Roy Morgan research estimates there are about 1.7 million Australian children on the platform. (Dean Lewins/AAP PHOTOS) The platform launched restricted accounts for children and teens in June. The eSafety office also previously issued transparency notices to Roblox and other services about their basic obligations under Australian rules. A report on the findings is expected later in 2026. Australian Associated Press Read More: Most viewed