Friends

Friends are users which are added when two users mutually agree to friendship. Users can have up to 1,000 friends.^[1] The friendship system was added on September 29, 2006.^[2]

Making friends

In order to make a friend on Roblox, users must send a Friend Request to the person they want to add. Depending on their standards, they have the option to accept, or decline.

Benefits of Friends

Users can join that user's current playing experience, invite them to experiences, chat with them using website chat, send messages to them (Depending on their privacy settings.), and invite them to Group Chats. It is best to make friends with users that you are confident in playing and communicating with often, instead of sending a request to everyone you see.

Followers

A Follower is established when one person chooses to follow the activity of another user. It is used to stay up to date on what users are playing and making. Users can follow an unlimited number of users.

Messaging

Users can message users by clicking on their profile and clicking the "Message" button located by the "Unfriend" button, or by triggering the dropdown menu and click the "Message" button. (Depending on their Privacy Settings, users might be limited or blocked from sending messages depending on their Privacy/Safety settings set in the Privacy Menu.) [UPDATE: Announced on October 9th 2024, Roblox will remove the ability to send messages to other users on due to privacy and spam issues. The Messaging System will now be used to recieve news from Roblox such as Group name changes, and major news like before.

Friends Only Places

Users can put their place into friends-only mode if they wish. This mode can be useful for hangouts and/or game testing.

Chat Function

Chat

A chat will open up if users go to friend's profile and click "Chat", or by selecting their name in the chat box. Users can chat with their friends directly from the website/app.

Parties

Users are able to create a party with one or multiple users using the chat system. The party leader can pick and join an experience, which forces all other members of the party to join in the same experience together. This feature was originally removed in 2019, but later brought back in late-2024.

Updates to the Friends System

Changes to Homepage Display

In the Summer of 2018, the Friends section on the Homepage was changed to only display the headshots of friends' avatars as thumbnails (prior to this change, it would show their entire body). Users can also see the experience that their friends are currently playing underneath their avatar's thumbnail.

Friend Limit

Starting in October 2024, Roblox began the gradual process of changing the friends limit to 1,000 - raising the limit by 100 friends each month.^[3]

On February 4, 2015, Roblox made it so that any user can have up to 200 friends, rather than an unlimited amount like before. Everyone's friends prior the update were converted into Followers. Additionally, Roblox converted any best friends into friends.^[4] Many users were upset at this change, arguing that 200 was too low of a number and should be increased.

Best Friends Removal

The best friend feature was added on July 30, 2009.^[5] Originally, users could set 10 users to be their best friends. When a user was set as a best friend, users could see their status updates via the feed, which was originally on profile. Sometime later, users could set more users as their best friends, and see all friends and best friends' status updates. On October 16, 2014, Roblox announced that they will remove the best friends feature. Before the feature was removed, users were allowed to have up to 200 best friends.^[6] Best friends was removed on February 4, 2015 along with addition of friend limit.^[4]

Custom Name

In the summer of 2019, Roblox gave users the ability to add custom names to their friends. This previously unannounced feature allowed users to give their friends a nickname/personal description. These custom names can only be seen by the user that sets them. Despite this, any real names will still get censored by the word filter.

Terminated Friends

If a friend's avatar card is grayed out, it means that their account has been permanently suspended. You will not be able to click on their avatar card, but their display name will have a menu button next to it. If you click on the menu button, only one option saying "Unfriend" will appear.

At some point in 2021, their avatar cards were rescripted so that they not only appear grayed out, but also have a status reading as "Inactive".

Beginning in January 2025, all banned users were given an anonymized profile card, meaning their profile picture would be blanked out and their username would simply display as "Account Deleted" or "Content Deleted", with the "Inactive" caption remaining. The cards also received a lighter shade of grey.

2014-2017

2017-2021

2021-2025 (Roblox Website)

2022-2025 (Roblox App)

2025-Present (Roblox Website)

Trivia

This section is a trivia section. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections of the article.

• There are multiple patents related to the Friends feature:
  • US20110307807A1, which relates to creating a Party to chat with friends and invite them to experiences.
  • US10728701B1, which relates to a method of establishing friendships with Roblox users who are physically near another Roblox user in real life by making request-based "proximity chirps" through the user's device(s).
  • US20170296929A1, which relates to adding friends to private server whitelists.
  • US20170291111A1, which relates to creating a Party with multiple users to launch the Roblox player to join the chat leader in experiences.
  • US9919220B2, which relates to a system that prioritizes connecting users to video game servers that their friends are in.
• It was previously possible to view the friends pages of terminated users; however, this has since changed, and attempting to view the friends page of a terminated user will now result in a 404.
• If users delete all of their friends, the user's Friendship Badge will remain on their profile.
• At an unknown date in 2025 Roblox removed the ability for users who are not friends to view the friends and following list of under 13 users.

References