[Content note: This story contains discussions of children being propositioned for sexual actions and receiving sexual messages.]
Employees at Roblox are growing more and concerned about deficient child safety protections on the platform. That’s according to a new Bloomberg report exploring the extent of Roblox’s alleged issues with would-be child predators reportedly targeting younger players on the popular User Generated Content platform.
Per the report, at least two dozen players have been arrested between 2018 and now for allegedly abducting or abusing young players they met via Roblox. Many of them already had prior allegations, with a total of seven arrests transpiring in the past 13 months.
As these incidents increased in frequency, workers told Bloomberg that they felt the company was not heeding their warnings about the number of inappropriate messages being sent to Roblox’s relatively young audience.
Accusations of insufficient child safety protections have been an issue for Roblox for years in various forms. Just last year, a group of parents sued developer Roblox Corporation. for allegedly enabling child grooming and exposing its young player base to sexual content. With 40 percent of the game’s community being preteens, these arrests and statistics paint a grim picture.
Roblox is free-to-play available for essentially every game platform. The situation is exacerbated by its open chat function, which makes it easy for adults with ulterior motives to interact with and target kids. As Ron Kerbs, who founded the online child safety platform Kidas, noted in a comment to Bloomberg, the platform has replaced the playground as a de facto spot for predators.
“If [they] want to target younger kids and talk with them to build trust and start the grooming process, Roblox is an easy way to do that,” he said.
What can be done about Roblox’s predator problem?
Bloomberg’s report outlines how several predators lure young players by promising in-game currency (Robux) in exchange for explicit photos or real-world contact. Others were well-known developers in the community taking advantage of their in-game clout to draw in players.
Current and former Roblox Corp. staff told the outlet that watching out for child predators was a “Sisyphean task.” Along with there being too many reports to get through, the company is allegedly focusing more on reaching 1 billion players.
Staff calls for more resources have allegedly gone unanswered and unfulfilled in at least one instance where more help was promised. Features that could help (like pop-up safety notices) were said to be rejected, and generative AI-based moderation systems are inadequate in detecting the more subtle signs of grooming.
Roblox Corp. disputed these claims in a statement to Game Developer. A spokesperson told us that the company weighs “various considerations” when exploring safety ideas. They stated that Bloomberg’s story “contained glaring mischaracterizations about how [Roblox Corporation] protects users of all ages on the platform and failed to reflect both the complexities of online child safety and the realities of the overwhelmingly positive experiences that tens of millions of people of all ages have on Roblox every single day.”
Chief safety officer Matt Kaufman also reiterated that safety is “foundational” to Roblox in a blog posted before Bloomberg’s story went live. “Tens of millions of people of all ages have a safe and positive experience on Roblox every single day,” he wrote.
Roblox Corporation’s spokesperson that the company published the above blog to “set the record straight” about safety issues on Roblox.
Bloomberg’s full report on Roblox and its issues with child safety can be read here.