Child safety on Roblox Wikipedia

Among them was Anika Wells, who had described the platform as “disturbing” after seeing how children could easily bypass the platform’s security to access sexual content as well as experiences that promoted suicide and self-harm. Developers and players alike began revolting and demanding the platform to revert the update while also claiming that the system fails to tackle the flood of predators using the platform by having the system make it easier for them to target children. Chat on the platform is further limited to users in or near the specified age groups, with exceptions for “trusted connections”, and is disabled by default for players under 9 years old unless overridden by an age-verified parent. In August 2025, Roblox announced that social hangout games featuring private spaces, such as bedrooms or bathrooms, would only be accessible to users who have verified they are at least 17 years old through government-issued ID. On November 6, 2024, Roblox made an announcement to their developer forum that “social hangouts”, specifically experiences meant for socialization rather than playing games, and games that allowed for users to draw on 2D canvases would no longer be allowed for users under 13.

Positive playing experiences and player tools go hand-in-hand.

While Roblox is free-to-play, it features a virtual currency known as “Robux” that can be purchased with real-world money. We’re passionate about making sure it’s a super safe environment for kids to play and enjoy themselves. We watch for any act of targeting, or verbally attacking or intimidating your child. See all your child’s activity in one place. “GameSafe is a parent’s best friend in the digital age.”

• The appropriate age for online gaming varies by child and game content, but generally, most experts suggest waiting until around age 7-8 for limited, supervised online play.
• The content could contain damaging software (such as spyware or viruses) or it might be offensive.
• Gamers overwhelmingly believe that the responsibility for cleaning up online spaces lies with the platforms and publishers who run them.
• Of course, implementing this kind of system isn’t plug-and-play.
• “A safer user experience leads to more enjoyment, stronger communities, and ultimately, more engagement and revenue,” he adds.
• For younger children, opt for games that don’t require online interaction with others.

Electronic Arts Games & Ratings

She also requested that the game’s PG rating be reviewed again by the Australian Classification Board, where it was noted that the platform hosted games intended for adults. The system requires users to either upload an ID to verify their exact age or perform a facial scan via Persona to place a person into an estimated age group. On November 18, 2025, Roblox announced that all forms of in-game chat and experiences rated “18+” on the platform would be locked behind an age verification system. In October 2025, Roblox planned revenue changes in order to expand child safety and moderation which caused the stock of the company to fall by 15 percent, though the company stated they expect a rising third quarter capital after the changes are made.
Ben Simon, known online by the pseudonym Ruben Sim, pushed for action against the Sonic Eclipse Online developer, publishing screenshots of his alleged child rape fantasies and sending a video compiling allegations to a Roblox employee. In a 2025 lawsuit by the state of Louisiana against Roblox, the state also alleged that Public Bathroom Simulator Vibe was a sexually explicit game. Rolling Stone profiled one 16-year-old girl who performed child prostitution as part of these games, who stated that she primarily did it for attention and secondarily for monetary gain via Robux. They found that there was a significant amount of sexual content involving minors simulating explicit acts on the platform in order to obtain Robux.

Harassment is normal in gaming (and players are fed up)

Núcleo journalists claimed that much of the platform is supported by microtransactions and uses methods to make minors addicted to online purchases to a certain extent, which can be used to abuse them. In March 2025, Roblox CEO David Baszucki said in response to concerns over child safety, “if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox”. Sexual exploitation of minors on Roblox has been used to justify and promote the short-selling of Roblox Corporation’s stock by organizations such as The Bear Cave (which compiled a list of 16 arrests and indictments since 2020 among other instances of sexual abuse) and the investment firm Hindenburg Research. Roblox refused action towards the game, as they did not see it as a safety concern; Sonic’s owner Sega later took the game down via a copyright infringement notice after being notified. On December 13, 2021, the YouTube channel People Make Games released a video featuring an interview with an anonymous individual who maintained to be a victim of sexting with a 24-year-old Roblox game developer, who created the Sonic the Hedgehog fangame Sonic Eclipse Online, when she was 12. It cited the fact that the game hosts millions of instances of user-generated content which makes the platform difficult to classify as a whole.
The law firm stated it was “investigating hundreds of similar cases” and intended to file more lawsuits in the subsequent months. Within the same month, Venezuelan authorities noted that Roblox was being used by local pedophile networks to extort minors. Between 2023 and 2024, the Public Ministry of Labor (Ministério Público do Trabalho) of Sao Paulo launched an investigation into monetization on the platform and how the American company was taking advantage of young developers in Brazil, where the company did not provide them with proper payment for their work. In addition, the Spanish Civil Guard also issued a statement saying that reports of sex offenders using Roblox to extort minors were becoming much more frequent in Spain, where they recorded cases of several minors in Murcia who had begun to interact and maintain direct contact with pedophiles in southern Spain. In 2025, the Committee for Children’s Rights Protection of the Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan issued a statement alerting parents to the presence of pedophiles on the platform. Developers also claimed that the verification system could not be trusted in the sense of how they may collect and store users’ faces.

• On December 18, 2025, the Attorney General of Tennessee Jonathan Skrmetti would sue Roblox for misleading parents about child safety, saying that “Roblox is the digital equivalent of a creepy cargo van lingering at the edge of a playground”.
• The platform is made to appeal to a family-friendly audience, and has been described as a massively multiplayer online game (MMO).
• A good gamertag should be memorable but not personally identifiable.
• “GameSafe is a must-have for any parent with gaming kids.”
• At Besedo, we care deeply about trust, safety, and user experience.
• Bloomberg Businessweek reported the existence of forums on the dark web sharing tips on how to encourage children to contact predators offsite without detection by chat filters through the use of intentional typos and emojis.
• If nearly half of a player base quits or avoids a game due to toxicity, any plans for growth or monetization are basically dead on arrival.

At Electronic Arts, we want to empower our players and parents to make informed decisions about gameplay.

First, ethically, it’s alarming that online games often have teen or even “Everyone” ratings – environments where children face such hostility. The kinds of slurs, sexual comments, and hate imagery that proliferate in some games are absolutely not what most parents want their kids to witness or endure. Recent studies show that three-quarters of teens and pre-teens (ages 10–17) experienced harassment in online games, a sharp rise from the previous year. When even seasoned adult gamers are wary of exposing children to the standard multiplayer experience, it’s a damning indictment of the status quo. We surveyed 2,000 gamers in the United States to understand how toxicity impacts online multiplayer games. As they get older, introduce more interactive games gradually, always with parental controls enabled to manage content, communication, and time spent gaming.
Following the public backlash, senior Australian government officials called meetings with Roblox, where they indicated that if the company is unable to neutralize cases of child sexual abuse on its platform, it could face fines of A$49.5 million. In September, Roblox announced it will collaborate with International Age Rating Coalition to assign age ratings to individual games, complementing Roblox’s own ratings. Players linked with a trusted connection would have chat filters removed between each other, specifically in hopes that users would be less likely to leave Roblox for platforms they did not moderate, but could only be accessed after using an AI-based age verification system using facial recognition. They also reimplemented “experience guidelines” as “content labels” that parents could use with parental controls settings to regulate the content their child was allowed to see. On November 18, 2024, Roblox announced that they would be implementing new safety features for children under 13 set to take effect in the first quarter of 2025. Developers would also need to designate their games as meant for users under 13, otherwise their games would no longer be accessible to those users.

Public Bathroom Simulator

These gender differences are important because they show how targeted harassment can dramatically impact player retention and brand reputation. More troubling, a significant portion are walking away entirely from games they once enjoyed. Women experience notably higher rates of unwanted sexual messages (25%) compared to men (14%). Some allow you to receive notifications, while others offer message filters to block inappropriate content. Many platforms, like Discord and Roblox, have parental controls or notification settings for monitoring direct messages. Parental control settings can help you keep tabs on how long your child is gaming, set daily time limits, or even restrict internet access when gaming time is over.
You can also choose to watch the video on YouTube. The content could contain damaging software (such as spyware or viruses) or it might be offensive. If you want to meet someone IRL that you’ve been talking to online, always let a friend, parent or guardian know.
Between September and December 2025, authorities in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul informed parents that the platform was being used by pedophile networks to solicit sexual and self-harm videos from minors in exchange for Robux in cities in southern Brazil. In August 2025, the Defensoría del Pueblo de la Provincia de Catamarca informed parents in the Argentine province that the platform’s security was insufficient to protect minors and that in recent years cases of sexual harassment of minors were becoming more frequent in the province thanks to Roblox. The Division of Cybercrime of the Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC) was the first Venezuelan government organization to issue a national statement warning that the platform was not safe and that parents should monitor their children’s chats. The Netherlands and Belgium have restricted certain games on the platform due to their regulations on in-game “loot boxes”, which give out items based on random or unknown chances, to reduce children’s exposure to gambling. In the same month, Janybek Amatov, a member of the Kyrgyz parliament, raised restrictions on games marketed to children, such as Roblox and Minecraft, following the presence of pedophiles.
And one cannot upsell content to players who have already left. Moderating images, voice, and video content in real time requires a different architecture than batch- or queue-based moderation systems. According to Apostolos Georgakis, our CTO at Besedo, real-time, AI-driven content moderation combined with strong policy enforcement is the robust solution online gaming desperately needs. The end goal isn’t to play nanny or ruin the fun – it’s to cultivate communities where all players can have fun without fear of harassment.
May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language. Game ratings and content descriptors can vary by country. Ratings systems also give additional  information on features, like in-game purchasing. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this Web site (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided). Download presentations, tip sheets, lesson plans, and other safety resources.
On June 25, 2025, Aftermath reported that 6 people had been arrested in the United States in connection to grooming on Roblox since the start of the year. Online child exploitation groups such as 764, CVLT, and other groups affiliated with The Com have been discovered operating on Roblox, something which has been acknowledged by Roblox themselves. In the second quarter of 2025, Roblox reported a daily active user count of over 100 million, its highest on record. Robux can be used to purchase virtual items that the player can use on their virtual character (or “avatar”) on the platform, or access experiences that require payment.
If the user’s age could not be determined with high confidence after a facial scan, the platform would ask for the ID of the user or their parent. By default, users under 9 were only allowed to access “minimal” and “mild” experiences, whereas “moderate” experiences would require parental consent. They had met on Roblox and had been friends for around six years, communicating through various social media platforms and meeting in person four or five times. The perpetrators in both cases were in close contact with each other and communicated through online communication. Online child exploitation groups which operate on the platform like 764 and CVLT are also known to hold neo-Nazi and other extremist ideologies.

All participants confirmed they are active players participating in online multiplayer games. Conversely, players are willing to spend more in games that feel safe – one analysis found gamers spend 54% more on titles they perceive as “non-toxic”. If platforms clearly enforce rules against harassment, players will reward them with loyalty, more engagement, and increased spending.
Statements like this are important – they set the tone from the top that toxic behavior is not welcome on major platforms. Leading figures in gaming have cubet started to openly acknowledge this responsibility. Players aren’t asking for censorship, they’re asking for safety. For platform owners, this is yet another signal that cleaning up online spaces isn’t just a moral duty – it’s necessary to secure the trust of families and the market’s longevity. The gaming industry has long focused on cultivating the next generation of fans, but toxicity is blocking the on-ramp. If most adults wouldn’t let their kids into your online ecosystem, you’re seeding a future audience problem.