Roblox Corporation markets its gaming platform as a safe online environment for children. The reality is far different—and Roblox knows it.
Each year, Roblox quietly tallies up thousands of reports of children being groomed, threatened, sexually exploited, kidnapped, raped, and otherwise assaulted by predators who use Roblox to get easy access to kids. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, reports of suspected child exploitation on Roblox have surged in recent years from 675 reports in 2019 to 13,316 in 2023.
These crimes are horrific and happen on a daily basis.
The truth about Roblox has begun to come out, including in Bloomberg Businessweek (“Roblox’s Pedophile Problem”) and in Hindenberg Research (“Roblox: Inflated Key Metrics For Wall Street And A Pedophile Hellscape For Kid”).
Yet, shockingly, none of this has stopped Roblox from deploying millions in marketing to lure an increasing number of children to its fast-growing and lucrative platform.
Two months ago, our client, a 13-year-old child (“John Doe”), bravely filed a lawsuit against Roblox, detailing how the purposeful design and operation of Roblox, together with the company’s fraudulent claims of safety, allowed a known pedophile to identify, contact, groom, and eventually subject him to criminal sexual exploitation.
Now, Roblox is attempting to force John into confidential arbitration proceedings to keep the abhorrent conduct that led to his injuries under wrap. That is not going to happen. No matter how contorted their arguments get, they cannot force a child to the Terms his father supposedly agreed to, especially given that minors are allowed to disaffirm agreements, which is expressly what John did.
But those technicalities are not the bigger issue.
The response we filed yesterday calls on the court to find the terms of the forced arbitration clause do not apply to John and are unenforceable as a matter of law.
The point of our legal system is to achieve the results that we, as a society, believe are best. Do we really believe that a mega-million-dollar company should have so much power over a child that when the child is sexually exploited on the company’s platform, the company itself can then exercise inappropriate power over the child to force a full airing what happened into a secretive arbitration? Is that really who we are as a society?
No, it is not. Roblox designed its platform for children and the majority of Roblox users are children. It is unconscionable for Roblox to force children to give up rights in exchange for playtime on the platform.
No parent, let alone no child, expects that sexual exploitation is a reasonable risk of being on a gaming platform marketed to children.
C’mon, Roblox, do the right thing.
