How Roblox became parents’ worst nightmare

Game maker accused of allowing its online community to become a playground for child predators

With its brightly coloured characters, simplistic graphics and comic-book text, Roblox appears remarkably non-threatening.
Wary parents who are concerned about titles such as Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty are likely to be disarmed by the online game’s Lego pastiche, seeing it as a safe environment.
Today, Roblox has a strong claim to be the world’s most popular video game. More than 80m people play it each day and close to 400m log on each month – five times the number who play Fortnite. Most of those are 15 or younger; a fifth are less than nine years old.
However, the game is facing growing accusations that it has become a playground for child predators and inappropriate content, failing to moderate illegal content or protect its millions of young users.
Earlier this month, the New York investment firm Hindenburg Research described Roblox as a “paedophile hellscape”, claiming it had found accounts trading child abuse material and hundreds of users named after Jeffrey Epstein.
This summer, the US National Centre on Sexual Exploitation, a conservative pressure group, claimed the game was “a tool for sexual predators”.
Critics say Roblox has failed to crack down on thriving communities devoted to trading illegal images, virtual strip clubs and depression themes, while its default settings allow strangers to interact with children within minutes.
“We think Roblox has adopted the Silicon Valley approach of ‘growth at all costs’… by opening its platform to dangerous predators and illicit content unsuitable for children,” Hindenburg said.
The company, which is worth $26bn (£20bn) but has never turned a profit, denies the claims, saying safety is “foundational” to Roblox and that every day tens of millions of users of all ages have positive experiences.
“We take any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by our standards extremely seriously and we have a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on our platform,” the company said.
Roblox says that Hindenburg, which stands to make a profit if Roblox’s shares fall, is driven by an agenda and that the company’s claims do not stack up.
Investors have sided with the company. After an initial fall, Roblox’s shares recovered. But concerns about the wildly popular game are unlikely to go away quickly.
Roblox, founded in 2004, allows users to enter any one of millions of “experiences” such as virtual chat rooms and mini-games. These are created by the game’s own users, participants in a thriving digital economy where the inventors of popular experiences can earn in-game currency known as Robux, which can then be converted into real money.
There is no minimum age and users can sign up without an email address, making the game instantly accessible. Additional parental controls can be added, but must be actively turned on.
While the game’s voice chat feature is disabled for younger users, child accounts are able to access all experiences, even those deemed only suitable for over-13s.
The potential to earn, as well as the variety of experiences, is a large part of the game’s appeal. Some of the most popular mini-games include Blox Fruits, a pirate-themed loot-collecting game, and fashion simulator Dress to Impress.
But beneath the surface are a host of less-innocent titles. Hindenburg claims that researchers who set up child accounts stumbled across experiences such as “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party”, a reference to the musician Sean Combs who was recently charged with sex trafficking. (Combs denies the claims and is contesting them.)
Lisa Strohman, a psychologist and founder of the Digital Citizen Academy, says parents are often unaware of the freedom allowed in the game.
“We want to know our children are safe because it’s a ‘kids’ game’. But I go out all the time, and ask [audiences] how many have had your child ask you to play Roblox and 90pc of hands go up.
“Then I say how many of you understand that it is not one game like Monopoly, but it has 40m different experiences. And you just see the shock on the parents’ faces.”
Andy Burrows, the chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity set up after the suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who saw thousands of images promoting self-harm online, points out that a number of depression-themed experiences are easily found and are even auto-suggested when users type “dep” into a search bar.
He says that “depression rooms” in the game have been well-known for some time. There are concerns that, rather than being a place for support, these are spaces where users’ misery is simply compounded.
“It raises some pretty clear questions about the fundamental judgement of the company when it is being made aware of these spaces, and they still don’t appear to have taken action,” says Burrows.
David Everitt, the founder of chat monitoring tool GameSafe, which alerts parents when suspicious chats are detected in Roblox and Minecraft, another popular online video game, says Roblox accounts for 94pc of alerts across the two games.
Common Sense Media, an advice organisation for parents, gives Roblox a four-star rating for children aged 13 and above, but recommends that any parents allowing younger children to play dial up the parental controls far beyond the default settings.
Recommended
It points out that despite Roblox’s attempts to police the service, “bad actors continue to find ways to share dubious content”. Reviews from parents themselves are less positive. “Don’t make the same mistake I did,” one message reads. “I was stunned with the conversations I found.”
Those conversations are often moved off Roblox onto messaging apps, and occasionally, to real life. An investigation by Bloomberg found at least two dozen arrests linked to grooming that started on Roblox.
A Freedom of Information response by West Midlands Police logged 132 crime reports related to the game since 2018, including 10 grooming cases.
Roblox reported around 13,300 cases of suspected child exploitation to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year, up from 3,000 a year earlier.
More reports does not necessarily mean more suspicious activity, it could also mean the company is doing a better job finding it. But Roblox has faced questions about whether it is up to the task of policing its own service.
The company has a relatively low number of moderators compared to social media companies such as Meta and TikTok, and some of those it does employ say they are stretched.
Last week, Labour MP Mike Reader said a constituent who voluntarily moderates on Roblox was part of a group that had banned more than 14,000 accounts related to child grooming. Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Secretary, said he expected the company to do better.
Stronger demands than that may be coming. Burrows, who campaigned for the UK’s Online Safety Act that will start to be enforced next year, says Roblox appears to be failing to provide an age-appropriate experience, as the new laws require. “The scale of these issues are such that there’s a very substantial journey that Roblox is going to have to go on,” he says.