Roblox Settles With 3 States Over Endangering Children, Will Pay $36 Million

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Online interactive gaming platform Roblox has agreed to settle with West Virginia, Alabama, and Nevada for a combined $35.78 million, committing to strengthen children’s safety through measures such as mandatory age verification and chat restrictions.

Roblox reached an $11.08 million settlement with West Virginia. In an April 21 statement, the office of West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey said that Roblox has agreed to “major child safety overhaul.” The settlement came after an investigation conducted by the office found that the platform exposed child users to sexual predators, sexual and violent content, and grooming risks.

McCuskey said there were “serious failures that left children exposed to real danger.”

Under the agreement, Roblox will verify the ages of all users before allowing chat access. This is expected to limit instances of adults contacting minors and reduce the risk of grooming. The company will block all chat until users verify their age, seeking to reduce the use of anonymous accounts by predators to target children.

Once age verification is complete, adults can contact under-16 users only through verified trusted friends, according to the statement. The accounts of all under-16 users will, by default, run on safe content mode, which will reportedly block out adult-rated material.

Roblox has also committed to recruiting an internet safety specialist in West Virginia. The settlement funds will be paid over several years.

“I have two young daughters who love Roblox, so I know how popular it is,” McCuskey said. “I am thankful that Roblox took our concerns seriously and worked with us to make these major safety changes.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced in an April 21 statement that the state has reached a $12.2 million settlement with Roblox.

Under the deal, Roblox has agreed to verify the age of users and restrict content accordingly, use facial estimation technology and government ID to verify users, and utilize behavioral monitoring to identify those whose ages may have been recorded incorrectly.

“Roblox will not allow communication involving minors to be encrypted. Unencrypted communication allows law enforcement to be able to more easily combat child exploitation networks, trafficking, and the distribution of illegal and harmful content,” the statement said.

Parents will have expanded control over their child’s use of Roblox, including deciding whom their children can talk to and what games they can play, according to the statement.

“This settlement sends a clear message to every platform operating in this space—you cannot turn a blind eye to the exploitation of children and expect to avoid consequences,” Marshall said.

“Platforms that host child consumers must do their part to give parents a fighting chance to shield their children from harm. While parents will always play the primary role in protecting their children online, we are raising the bar on what we expect from gaming platforms—parents need a partner, not a black box.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Roblox for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Roblox’s deals with West Virginia and Alabama follow an agreement with Nevada announced last week under which the company agreed to pay $10 million.

The company also committed to spending $1 million on a safety awareness campaign targeting users, and $1.5 million on a law enforcement liaison position. The Nevada deal includes commitments similar to those of Alabama.

California-based Roblox, which has about 151.5 million daily active users, is used by “nearly half of the entire U.S. population of children under 16 years old,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said during an April 15 press conference. About 42 percent of Roblox’s users are under 13.

Responding to the Nevada settlement, Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that it disputes the allegations made against the company.

However, “[Roblox is] proud to have worked alongside Attorney General Ford to reach this landmark agreement, which builds on our work to establish a new standard for digital safety,” Kaufman said.

“This resolution creates a blueprint for how industry and regulators can work together to protect the next generation of digital citizens.”

Child Safety Concerns

Activities of the online predator network “764” have been linked to Roblox, with the predators using the platform to communicate with minors. The network is linked to a broader extremist online system that encourages children toward self-harm, suicide, sexual exploitation, and animal abuse.

In December, Iowa announced a lawsuit against Roblox, accusing the platform of being the “perfect environment for child predators, pornographers, scammers, fraudsters, online sex rings, and inappropriate content.”

Roblox allows users to create Lego-like avatars and play various games, called “experiences.”

“Some experiences are at strip clubs, others are at ‘Epstein’s Island,’ where simulated underage sexual activity takes place,” the lawsuit said. “There are also hundreds of experiences just about Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who was recently convicted of trafficking and prostitution. … These are just a few of the thousands of examples.”

Other states like Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Florida have also sued Roblox over child safety concerns.

On April 13, Roblox announced age-based accounts and expanded parental controls for users under 16.

Users between the ages of 5 and 8, and 9 to 15, will have separate accounts with stricter adult content censorship.

“All content uploaded to Roblox goes through their existing moderation systems, including AI asset scanning, ongoing user report review, and multimodal moderation that evaluates scenes in real time for potential policy violations,” the company said.

“For content made available to users under 16, they will apply an additional continuous process that dynamically selects games. This process will include developer verification, extended content evaluation and rating, and additional limits on content more suited to older audiences.”

Earlier this year, Robolox became the first online gaming platform to require facial age checks for users in order to access chat.

“Since then, over 50 percent of global and 65 percent of U.S. daily active users have completed an age check,” according to the company.

Child safety advocacy group Enough is Enough criticized Roblox for taking “so long” to institute stringent safety controls to protect children from predators, according to an April 16 statement from the organization.

Enough is Enough questioned the timing of these new measures, highlighting the numerous lawsuits Roblox is facing over child safety concerns.

“Once again, it is clear that nothing motivates tech platforms to protect children online like lawsuits or legislation,” Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of the group, said. “Tech platforms like Roblox must be compelled to do right by children. Congress must take note and pass online child safety solutions.”