St. Louis mom sues ROBLOX for her teen being groomed

ST. LOUIS—Less than a week after the state of Louisiana sued Roblox, lawyers for a St. Louis woman’s teenage daughter filed a similar lawsuit against the immensely popular mobile gaming platform. 

Only a couple weeks ago Roblox rolled out an open-source AI system to protect kids from predators in chat.

On behalf of their St. Louis-based Plaintiffs, attorneys, Wallace Miller, Dolman Law Group and Cooper Masterman accuse the Roblox Corporation of negligence, strict liability and fraudulent concealment and misrepresentations.

Spectrum News reached out to Roblox for comment Thursday morning but has yet to hear back.

“(Roblox) portrays its app as a safe and appropriate place for children to play,” stated lawyers within the lawsuit. “In reality, and as (Roblox) well knows, the design of its app makes children easy prey for pedophiles and (Roblox) had no appropriate safeguards to ensure that children were in face safe or that predators were screened.”

The lawyers argue that Roblox time and again refused to invest in basic safety features to protect users from exploitation despite knowledge of predator activity on the platform.

The Plaintiff, a 13-year-old girl (who’s mother sought justice on the behalf of), used Roblox for several years and relied on the gaming app for entertainment and social interaction, per the suit. Lawyers state that Roblox knew child predators freely roam the app looking for vulnerable children.

“Plaintiff was targeted on Roblox by a predator who posed as a fellow child and exploited Plaintiff’s age and vulnerability to build a false emotional connection with her by promising friendship and connection,” per the suit.

After trust was built, the suit says the predator escalated his grooming of the Plaintiff on Roblox where he transitioned the conversation to text messages. Once they were texting, the predator “sent sexually explicit images of himself and ultimately convinced Plaintiff to send him sexually explicit images of herself.”

The Plaintiff’s mother said if Roblox had disclosed what really occurs on the app, she would have never let her daughter use the app without strict supervision.

Due to the events that initially took place on Roblox without the Plaintiff ever entering any contract with Roblox, per the suit, “Plaintiff suffered emotional distress, psychological trauma and mental anguish.”

• Roblox launched in 2006 allowing online gamers to play myriad games which Roblox refers to as “experiences.”

• Over 40 million experiences exist currently within the Roblox platform but the majority are created by players and companies

• Roblox is easily accessible since it is free to download and play on various mobile and gaming devices

• Roblox is designed to be an interactive experience that allow and encourage users to communicate with each other through messages, voice chat and more

• Roblox markets itself as the “#1 gaming site for kids and teens” but also as an educational experience for young users

• Creating an account is easy since it does not require users to verify their age upon sign-up. A new user simply needs to provide a birthdate, username and password

Lawyers note that Roblox states that children must have parental permission before signing up but does not include safeguards to prevent anyone from creating their own account.

“Roblox does nothing to confirm or document that parental permission has been given, no matter how young a child is,” states the lawyers. “Nor does Roblox require a parent to confirm the age given when a child signs up to use Roblox.”

Roblox’s popularity boomed during the pandemic with around 30 million users in Sept. 2020, per the suit. Tis number continues to grow. Roblox’s 2023 annual report says it has 68.5 million daily active users. 21% of its users are under nine years old. An additional 21% are preteen. 16% of the users are 13 to 16 years old and 41% are over 17 years of age.

An algorithm generates recommended games for the user based on their age. If a user has lied about their age, portraying someone older, the content “recommended” would be potentially inappropriate. A falsely submitted age at sign up also enables the user to communicate with adult accounts, who as of Nov. 2024 cannot speak to users under 13.

The Plaintiff’s lawyers say Roblox has portrayed assurances to parents that Roblox is safe dating back to early 2007 with phrases like, “online virtual playground…where kids of all ages can safely interact, create, have fun and learn.”

They add, from 2008 to 2016, the website promised parents, “we take every precaution possible to make sure kids are protected from inappropriate and offensive individuals as well as from indecent and distasteful content.” Furthering this message, Roblox tells parents they have a zero-tolerance policy for “swearing and obscenities, messages and content of a sexual or violent nature, and any sort of aggressive or threatening communication.” Offenders would be immediately suspended or expelled.

Lawyers captioned a notice, allegedly from Roblox to parents after concerns were raisedsg.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation includes Roblox in its “Dirty Dozen” list, which highlights companies that facilitate, enable or profit from sexual exploitation.

People that identify as Roblox developers openly admit that Roblox is unsafe for children and would not allow their own kids to use the platform, per the suit.

Roblox’s CEO Baszucki encouraged developers to create experiences for older audiences because Roblox would be “rolling out features designed to appeal to older users, including use of real names, screen capture and sharing capabilities, video calls and relaxed chat moderation,” per the suit. Though Baszucki danced around the word ‘dating, even to the point of saying “I’m not going to use the D word,” he did note Roblox would build a platform to support real-life relationship.