The CEO of Roblox has told parents if they’re worried about their children on the platform they shouldn’t let them on it.
The site is popular amongst children between the ages eight to 12. However some claim children have been exposed to explicit content, bullying and grooming while on it.
In an interview with BBC News, co-founder and CEO Dave Baszucki has insisted that the company protects its users, saying “tens of millions” of players have “amazing experiences” on the site.
The BBC asked Baszucki what his message was to parents, to which he said: “My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox.”
“That sounds a little counter-intuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions,” he said.
In 2024, Roblox averaged over 80 million players per day, roughly 40 per cent of them below the age of 13. The Online Safety Act, which comes into force in the UK in April, has strict laws for all tech firms aimed at protecting children from the dangers of the internet.
However, Baszucki says he believes Roblox’s safety tools keep users safe.
“We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many,” he said.
“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.”
Last November, users on Roblox that were under 13 were banned from sending direct messages and from playing in ‘hangout experiences’ which allows players to chat to one another.
However the BBC said they created “two fake accounts, one aged 15 and one aged 27, on unlinked devices and exchange messages between the two.”
“While the filters caught our attempts to overtly move the conversation onto a different platform, we found easy ways to re-word requests to chat elsewhere and make suggestions about playing more adult games,” the news organisation said.
After the BBC presented their findings to Baszucki, he said it shows the comparative safety of Roblox as users had to take content which breaches the platform’s rules elsewhere.
“We don’t condone any type of image-sharing on our own platform, and you’ll see us getting more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is on this type of behaviour,” said Baszucki.
The BBC also said they found games such as ‘Late Night Boys And Girls Club RP’ and ‘Shoot down planes…because why not?’ being recommended to an 11-year-old.
In response, the Roblox CEO said he had faith in the age rating systems on the platform.
“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,” he says.