Roblox opens Build's text-to-game AI tool to public alpha in New Zealand

Roblox began a public alpha of Build, its AI-powered text-to-game creation tool, in New Zealand on Tuesday, opening the mobile-first feature to age-verified users 9 and older. Games that pass Roblox's safety review can be published globally, but only to creators 16 and older — a two-tier age structure the company is using to test the tool before any wider rollout.

Build lets a user type a plain-language description — the company's own example is a "cozy adventure game set in a dense forest" — and receive a generated starting project complete with gameplay mechanics, environments, characters, visual styling, and sound. From there, creators iterate and playtest directly inside the Roblox mobile app, or move into Roblox Studio for deeper editing using the same backend and chat history established in Build.

Why Mobile-First Matters Here

Roblox Studio, the platform's existing creation toolset, has historically been a desktop-only workflow — a real barrier for the large share of Roblox's user base that primarily accesses the platform on phones and tablets. Build is explicitly designed to remove that barrier, letting anyone with a phone go from an idea to a playable prototype without touching a desktop editor. Roblox first announced Build on July 16, with the New Zealand alpha marking the first public-facing test of the publishing pipeline rather than just the generation tool itself.

How the Age Tiers Work

During the alpha, age-verified users 9 and older in New Zealand can access Build's creation and generation features. Publishing a finished game for a global audience, however, requires the creator to be 16 or older and requires the game to pass Roblox's standard safety review process — the same extended review every Roblox game goes through regardless of how it was made. Roblox has framed this structure explicitly around child safety, following broader industry and regulatory scrutiny of AI-generated content reaching younger users without adequate review.

Competing on Discovery, Not Just Generation

Roblox has been direct about one design choice: AI-generated games compete in the exact same retention-based discovery system as every other game on the platform. A generated game that fails to hold player attention won't surface regardless of how it was made — the company's stated goal is to prevent what it calls "AI slop" from flooding the platform's front page simply because it's cheap to produce at volume. That's a meaningful distinction from a pure content-generation tool, since it puts the same engagement bar on AI-assisted creators as on anyone building manually in Studio.

Pricing and Rollout

A base-level version of Build is free to use, with additional paid options aimed at power users who want expanded capabilities. Roblox says it will expand Build to additional regions and creator segments over the coming months as it continues iterating on the tool based on the New Zealand alpha's results, as detailed in the company's newsroom announcement.