Parents shouldn’t let their children play Roblox if they are worried about their kids’ safety in-game, Roblox boss Dave Baszucki has said.
Roblox, the gaming and social platform with 80 million daily users, has frequently been criticised for its lax player safety – particularly as the bulk of its audience is under 18.
“My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox,” Baszucki told BBC News in a new interview. “That sounds a little counter-intuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions.”
Roblox made a flurry of changes in late 2024 designed to improve child safety with the addition of basic parental control features, such as the ability to set playtime limits, remotely manage a child’s account and view a child’s friend list.
Parental access is now required for children to access some in-game chat features, and children under 13 have been blocked from social hangout games due to “user behaviour that can potentially pose a risk”.
The changes came a month after a damning report was published detailing the ongoing safety issues for children in-game, which had been regularly highlighted for years.
“We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many,” Baszucki told BBC News today.
“We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.”
In 2013, Roblox reported 13,316 instances of child exploitation to US authorities, and responded to over 1300 requests from authorities for detail on predatory players. Over the last six years, at least two dozen people have been arrested in the US for abusing victims met via Roblox.
During the interview, BBC News showed Baszucki evidence of how easy it was to still set up accounts to chat between a user who was a minor and adults, as well as the titles of Roblox experiences recommended to an account of an 11-year-old, including “Late Night Boys And Girls Club RP” and “Special Forces Simulator”.
“One thing that’s really important for the way we do things here, is it’s not just on the title of the experience, it’s literally on the content of the experience as well,” Baszucki said in response.
Last month, Roblox shares dropped by 20 percent after the platform’s reported daily active users fell short of expectations, something the company blamed on a recent ban of the platform in Türkiye over child safety concerns.