Roblox Responds To Louisiana Lawsuit Alleging Child Exploitation as More Lawsuits Loom

Published in the Newsroom section of Roblox’s website as “Roblox Responds to Louisiana AG Lawsuit” on August 15, the company starts off by saying it usually wouldn’t comment on pending litigation, but felt the need to “address erroneous claims and misconceptions about our platform, our commitment to safety, and our overall safety track record.” It then goes on to say that “any assertion that Roblox would intentionally put our users at risk of exploitation is simply untrue,” followed by a lengthy bullet point list of ways the company tackles safety and moderation on the platform. While the list mentions several practices, including current communication safeguards and collaborations with law enforcements, it’s difficult not to read a bit cynically given it’s addressing an issue that has troubled the game for years.

However, while the aforementioned statement repeated the safety status quo, another shared a few upcoming changes. Also on August 15, the Newsroom section published another post from Roblox’s Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman called “Clarifying Our Policy on Romantic and Sexual Content.” It wastes little time in getting to the point, stating among other things that “we’re clarifying our policy that prohibits romantic and sexual content to also explicitly prohibit content, settings, or behavior that implies sexual activity.”  It then states how all unrated experiences in the coming month will be restricted to the developer and all those working on the experience, followed by a bullet point saying Roblox is rolling out a tool meant to “detect violative user behavior in otherwise policy-compliant experiences.” 

The remainder of the article mentions updates of what experiences will be restricted to ID-verified users 17 and older, including some Social Hangouts—“experiences where the primary purpose is to chat with other users as the user or their avatar,” as Kaufman puts it—that depict or primarily take place in private spaces. Among its final words, the article also mentions a community advisory council is being developed. 

This makes for a lot of change from Roblox to addressing issues that have plagued it for a long time, but the company shouldn’t expect to stop answering questions from concerned users anytime soon. According to an exclusive from WIRED published August 18, a “flood of lawsuits” is coming Roblox’s way in the coming months from a group of law firms. All of its clients are alleging similar issues found in the Louisiana lawsuit including facilitating the sexual exploitation of children. The full report is worth a read for more details, but overall it paints a turbulent picture for Roblox as it seems potentially hundreds of cases are being prepared against it.