Roblox is shutting down its video chat service

Roblox will be shutting down Roblox Connect, its video calling service introduced in 2023.

Roblox Connect let you video chat with other people using your Roblox avatar, which would be able to mimic the movements you were making in real life. You could also run around with people on the call in a shared virtual environment. But in a statement, the company says that users 13 and older “predominantly” chat via the platform’s party voice chat functionality for calls.

“Roblox Connect is being discontinued today, including both the developer-facing APIs and the Roblox Connect feature itself,” Roblox spokesperson Angela Allison tells The Verge. “Users 13 and up predominantly use our more recent Party Voice feature instead to make private voice calls with Trusted Friends on Roblox.”

In a post last month announcing the shutdown of the APIs, a Roblox staffer noted that Party Voice “handles private voice chat in a way that’s more capable and better suited to how players use Roblox today.”

When Connect was announced, Roblox said it intended to open source the feature, but I haven’t been able to find if that actually happened. I’ve asked the company for details.