A beloved Roblox game – Be Dead Forever Simulator – has been made unavailable to download due to the platform’s new age verification rules. It’s looking very unlikely it’ll ever be available ever again.
Be Dead Forever Simulator was first created in February 2019, and quickly gained a following among Roblox’ community. The aim of the game is to die in different ways to earn currency, which can be spent on various cosmetics. As of writing, it has over 153m visits, nearly 500,000 favourites, but no active players.
The reason why is tied to the Roblox age verification system added earlier this year. Criticism from users, parents, and politicians about the safety of children on the platform has been a growing concern for years, pushing the Roblox Corporation to implement age verification rules. This requires players to verify their own ages to play certain games, but more importantly to the Be Dead Forever situation, Roblox game experiences must also be rated so people of an appropriate age can play them.
The creator of Be Dead Forever Simulator – Mad_hhhh – hasn’t worked on the game in years, leaving it essentially abandoned. Because of this, the game’s maturity rating has not been set, and the game has been made unavailable to all players. Unless the creator comes back to verify its maturity, a game played over 153m times will become lost media.
As you can imagine, those Roblox players who spent time playing Be Dead Forever Simulator are gutted about this. Michael_Le41 wrote on the Roblox Reddit: “God, 2 years ago this wouldn’t even be a possibility, hell you’d be mocked for trying to predict this.” Others see this situation as an example for why unrated games should be automatically placed in the 18+ age category, such as Vaxtez who wrote: “Yes, it means it’s behind a wall, but at least it allows 18+ users to play these games. Besides, it allows Roblox to go on the side of caution with these games.”
It’s a sad, and somewhat ironic, situation. While obviously the safety of children must be a priority on Roblox given its size and popularity, one has to wonder how many games will be lost to time as a result of the age verification changes. As someone older, I can go back and play the games of my youth one way or another. For the younger generation of gamers, that’s not necessarily true.
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