Roblox is loved by children. The lawsuit alleges there are predators lurking.
Roblox is one of the most popular children’s games in the world, but the lawsuit alleges that predators are hiding in plain sight.
SAN MATEO, Calif. — At first, the messages seemed normal. Even innocent.
“Hello,” “How are you doing?” and “Do you want to make Robux?”
These words may seem irresistible to the millions of kids who play Roblox every day, but the same was true for Amy’s then 13-year-old daughter.
Roblox has nearly 83 million daily active users, and 42% of its global player base is under the age of 13. That means approximately 34.9 million kids play every day. Founded in 2006, the online platform currently hosts over 40 million games known as “experiences.” Robux, an in-game currency, powers these virtual realities, and players can use this in-game cash to purchase new avatars and accessories, as well as obtain premium in-game features in popular games such as Grow a Garden and Dress to Impress.
Amy’s daughter was having trouble making friends at school. When Amy asked her mom if she could download Roblox, she hesitated. She worried about having too much screen time and didn’t see value in games. But eventually she relented. As it turned out, the rest of the kids in the neighborhood were already in on it.
But last March, a stranger who sent Amie’s daughter a message offering Robux told her to move the conversation to Discord, a messaging platform popular among gamers.
“Before we begin, can you please confirm this? Please take a photo of yourself with two fingers up,” she said, asking the children to take the time to verify their identities before instructing them to send sexually explicit videos or images.
USA TODAY is withholding Amy’s last name to protect her daughter’s privacy.
Amy’s experience, while disturbing, is not entirely unique. Families across the country have also reported similar incidents. Predators used Roblox as a gateway to grooming, which in some cases escalated to sextortion, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Some companies have already sued Roblox, and others are planning to do so.
Roblox says it has made strides toward safer guardrails in recent years and even in recent months to protect against these types of incidents. USA TODAY spoke more with company representatives about these efforts, and we visited their headquarters to see a demo of Roblox’s AI-powered age verification technology. The feature is currently optional, but chat usage will become mandatory in January.
Still, some experts and families whose children have encountered predators argue that the changes are not enough and may be too late.
“A haven for adult sex offenders and pedophiles”
For Amy’s daughter, the abuse was framed as a game in which she could gain validation. Her learning disabilities, anxiety, and ADHD made it difficult for her to connect with her peers, and this predator helped fill that gap.
When she logged in after school, he wrote, “I missed you.” The predator showered her with affection, telling her “I love you very much” and often sending her sexual content of his own. “I’ll never leave you (baby).”
If more than a few hours go by without her texting him, he will contact her relentlessly. One day, when she wrote that she was in class, he suggested that she go to the school bathroom to take sexual photos.
When Amy discovered what was going on and messaged Predator on Discord, he didn’t give up. Amy stopped her daughter’s use of both Roblox and Discord and reported the predator’s username to the FBI.
Her daughter never received a penny of the Robux she was promised.
Long before the Roblox abuse, Amy was monitoring her daughter’s text messages and using parental control apps like Net Nanny, Qustodio, and Kaspersky Safe Kids. But she didn’t think Roblox was where she needed to be.
“She became mentally obsessed.[She]thought this man loved her,” Amy says.
Roblox is currently being scrutinized by attorneys general across the country, including Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida. At the same time, nearly 80 lawsuits are pending against Roblox for sexual predation-related claims.
A California man has been arrested and accused by authorities of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy who he initially communicated with on Roblox and Discord. An Oklahoma mother claims a man posing as a 15-year-old boy sexually blackmailed her 12-year-old daughter at her home and threatened to harm her family if she didn’t send him more photos and videos.
When the family reported the exploitation to police, they were told that the suspect was a criminal with a history of sexually inappropriate behavior. A complaint similar to the one filed by Gould, Grieco & Hensley calls Roblox a “haven for adult sexual predators and pedophiles.”
“This is a fertile hunting ground for children,” said Matthew Dolman, managing partner of Dolman Law Group. Dolman Law Group has received more than 3,600 calls from families about Roblox abuse. “Roblox has materially misrepresented the safety of its products to both its shareholders and the general public.”
In Chicago, another mother told USA TODAY she learned about two-way communication between Roblox players too late. In August 2020, an adult man posing as a teenager began chatting with his 10-year-old daughter over a Roblox building game before moving the conversation to a text chain. He sent her sexually explicit photos and demanded something in return.
After weeks of chatting, the predator convinced her to leave the house to see her child. In the middle of the night, her 10-year-old son walked five blocks to meet him. He took her to a motel on Chicago’s south side, where he and four other men raped her.
“This was the ultimate destruction for my family,” says the mother, who asked not to be named to protect her daughter’s privacy. “I feel like I’m in a movie and I can’t wake up.”
In October, Roblox’s mother sued Roblox for “reckless and deceptive business operations that directly led to the sexual exploitation and abuse” of her daughter.
Roblox’s new age estimation software helps curb abuse
At Roblox, Matt Kaufman, the company’s chief child safety officer starting in 2023, is tasked with addressing child safety concerns.
The company has come under intense scrutiny for banning so-called vigilante groups from its platform and for requiring some legal cases to be resolved in arbitration rather than in public court, the latter of which Roblox declined to comment on.
“Roblox takes these things very seriously,” Kaufman said. “As soon as we discover something or discover something, we immediately investigate it and put all sorts of systems in place to manage it.”
Roblox has traditionally relied on self-declared age sign-ups to prevent users under 13 from accessing features like private chat messaging and voice chat, but the company hopes that plans for a new AI-powered age estimation feature announced on November 18 will change the game and help address the criticism the company has faced by allowing interactions between children and adult users.
The feature began rolling out in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands in December. It will be mandatory for all users worldwide from January 7th.
Kaufman said any photos used for the app’s one-time age estimation will be immediately deleted. However, he said safety moderators continually monitor the types of games users play, who they add as friends and who they interact with on the platform. If there is any indication that the age estimate is inaccurate based on a user’s activity, moderators may prompt the user to reconfirm their age to ensure that the account is not shared among multiple users or that the detection is not made on someone else’s face.
“Almost every application platform out there uses self-reported age, where you enter your date of birth or hit a check box to claim you’re 13 or older. If you compare that process to what we’re doing, our accuracy has improved dramatically,” Kaufman said.
Similar popular games like Minecraft and Fortnite rely on self-declared age verification and parental controls to monitor safety. But these apps haven’t experienced the same level of problems with child predators as Roblox. Roblox believes that part of this is due to its large number of users.
Age checks are optional, but without them users will not be able to chat after January 7th. Once a user completes the age check process, they are assigned to one of six age groups, ranging from under 9 to over 21. Kaufman said this mimics the age group groups you would see in real life.
Kaufman said Roblox is proud to be one of the world’s largest platforms for age estimation. But some safety advocates and affected families argue that this feature is not enough.
Becca Dallas of San Diego is one such critic. She lost her 15-year-old son Ethan to suicide due to trauma from a predator she encountered on Roblox.
The 37-year-old Predator, disguised as a teenage boy, gained Ethan’s trust when he was 12 years old. The man encouraged Ethan to chat on Discord and forced him to send explicit photos. Dallas recalled setting up parental controls on Ethan’s Roblox account, but the Predator taught his son how to circumvent them.
Even though he was autistic, Roblox was a place where he felt accepted, she said. Dallas thought the app was safe.
“In the end, what he loved killed him,” she says. She is suing Roblox and Discord for wrongful death. “We can’t bring our son back, but we need to do everything we can to save other families.”
How to stay safe with gaming apps
Stranger danger and sexual abuse online have been problems for decades, but safety experts say modern technology is exacerbating the problem. Predators now have near-constant access to their victims via smartphones.
Cybersecurity expert Ben Gillenwater, known as TikTok’s “Family IT Guy,” said parents should actively talk to their kids about safe online gaming, and the best thing parents can do is manually turn off the chat feature.
Roblox’s Global Head of Parental Advocacy, Dr. Elizabeth Milovidoff, emphasizes the importance of properly setting up parental controls on Roblox or other similar apps. Roblox’s parental controls allow parents to manage privacy and communication settings, and provide tighter monitoring for users under 13.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, if a user encounters a predator online, the victim must report the person’s account, but must keep a record of all messages. A paper trail with timestamps and messages can be essential to finding the identity of a criminal.
Victims should block predators and report abuse to authorities using NCMEC’s CyberTipline (report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678), tips.fbi.gov/home, or the Know2Protect Tipline (833-591-5669).
Young victims of sexual abuse often experience shame, guilt, or confusion about what happened to them.
When Amy’s daughter told her best friend about the abuse, the friend didn’t understand. She said she didn’t want Roblox to be taken away.
“It’s not Roblox’s fault,” a friend told her. “Roblox is my life.”
When Amy deleted the app, her daughter felt like she had no social outlet. She had other friends who were always using the app.
“I know my mother’s heart was in the right place,” she says. “But (I) wanted to get the game back.”
Rachel Hale’s role covering youth mental health for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. please contact her rhale@usatoday.com and @rachleighhale With X.
