Roblox is an ‘X-rated paedophile hellscape’ that exploits children, report claims --[Reported by Umva mag]

A new report has flagged concerns over child safety in Roblox, while accusing the platform of inflating player metrics for their financial reports.

Roblox is one of the most popular video games in the world, alongside Minecraft and Fortnite, but it’s also among the most controversial.

The online gaming platform, which encourages children to make their own mini-games, from which it takes a cut of any money generated, has frequently been accused of exploiting children – with Turkey becoming the first country to ban it entirely over these concerns.

A new report has accused the developers behind Roblox of failing to stop inappropriate and illegal content circulating on the platform, along with inflating player counts to mislead investors in financial reports.

In a report published by financial research group Hindenberg Research, Roblox is dubbed an ‘X-rated paedophile hellscape’, which is ‘replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content, and extremely abusive speech’.

The report, which was based on researchers registering an account as a child under the age of 13, highlights Roblox games named after sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs – the latter of who was charged with sex trafficking last month. These include Escape To Epstein Island, Survive Diddy, and Run From Diddy Simulator.

It also claims they found a group openly trading child [abuse content] and ‘soliciting sexual acts from minors’, which had 3,334 members.

Based on interviews with former employees, the report also accuses Roblox of ‘lying to investors, regulators, and advertisers about the the number of ‘people’ on its platform’, claiming statistics for the amount of players has been inflated by 25-42% and the amount of time they spend on the platform by over 100%.

According to the research firm, these player numbers are increased through alternative or bot accounts, which can be created by a single Roblox user, with tools allegedly available to create over 20 accounts at a time. According to former employees, Roblox does internally track single users with multiple accounts but it doesn’t publicly flag them.

As such, it’s claimed Roblox uses its Daily Active Users metric, which hasn’t been ‘de-alted’ to include users with multiple accounts; this results in a higher metric, when reported to investors.

‘If that number [Daily Active Users] is not de-alted, I think the actual one would be like anywhere between 30 to 20% lower,’ a former data scientist told the outlet. In 2022, Roblox claimed it had ‘over 54.1 million people coming to Roblox every day’.

To investigate the amount of hours in game, Hindenberg Research hired a technical consultant who monitored the top 7,200 Roblox games across 2.1 million Roblox servers. Based on this data, which covered an average of 30.4 million unique daily users, they found that players spent just 22 minutes in games per day, a significant reduction from the 2.4 average hours reported by Roblox in 2023.

Speaking to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for Roblox denied all the claims, alleging that the research firm has an ‘agenda’ as short sellers.

‘We totally reject the claims made in the report,’ a Roblox spokesperson said. ‘The authors are, admittedly short sellers (and have an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox’s business model and results).’

‘We firmly believe that Roblox is a safe and secure platform and in the financial metrics we report,’ they add.

Roblox also point out that, since the company’s initial public filing, it has included a Special Note Regarding Operating Metrics that explains how its key operating metrics are calculated and what other factors can influence the figures.

Since the report was published, Roblox’s share price has fallen 4.6% but it’s currently unclear if the report will have any lasting effects on Roblox’s business.

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