Crime Even More Problems at Roblox (RBLX) - "Roblox has facilitated more child abuse than any public company in history."

(Link) (https://archive.ph/jtgqp)

SPRATE NOTE: this article is partially behind a paywall - everything in this post is what was publicly available.

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Roblox (NYSE: RBLX — $18.0 billion) is a popular platform for children generally between six and fourteen to play online. The Bear Cave previously published on Roblox in February 2022 and alleged that “the company has engaged in litigation and intimidation to help conceal allegations of pedophilia on the platform.” Today’s investigation by The Bear Cave finds that Roblox has facilitated hundreds of known child abuse cases, popular Roblox game developers have been arrested on child abuse allegations, Roblox games include images of dismembered bodies and Nazi logos, and the company has been linked to child suicide attempts and the widespread production of child pornography. In sum, The Bear Cave believes Roblox has facilitated more child abuse than any public company in history.

In April of this year, FOX2Detroit reported that 21-year-old Danil Baker met a 14-year-old girl through Roblox and “pretended to be a 17-year-old” and “convinced the victim to give him her phone number and started texting, and allegedly convinced the girl to share nude images.” Baker then “picked her up from school in Ohio and took her to a park [and] coerced her to perform sex acts on him.” At the time, Baker was out on bond for a separate pending criminal case also involving a minor.

Ultimately, the 14-year-old girl was “found crying alone in the bathroom of a Kroger.”

In February 2022, 33-year-old Howard Graham drove around 900 miles to meet a 13-year-old girl he had connected with two days earlier on Roblox. Graham drove the girl from her home in Topeka, Kansas back to his home in Clayton County, Georgia. The next month Graham, who had a prior criminal matter from 2007, was arrested on multiple charges including “rape, kidnapping, and sex trafficking.” Regarding the case, Clayton County Police Captain John Ivy said,

“The subject got on there, praising these little kids, because they think they’re playing on there with other kids. And they’re not. They’re playing with people who are preying on kids. We’re extremely lucky we found this young girl and she’s alive.”

Police found the 13-year-old girl outside a Dollar General.

In January of this year, a federal jury in Grand Island, Nebraska indicted 26-year-old Tadashi Kojima on charges he “willfully and unlawfully kidnapped a 13-year-old and took the minor across state lines with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity.” The child’s father told police “his son had been communicating with someone while playing Roblox and then was invited to talk on a chatroom service.” In an interview, the child’s mother, Heather McConney, said in part,

“I don’t understand what this person had on my son. What grasp he had on him that convinced him to just walk away.”

(Heather McConney, mother of a 13-year-old boy who was kidnapped after messaging a predator on Roblox.)

Grand Island Police found the 13-year-old boy along with Kojima sitting inside a white Toyota Avalon at a Git-N-Split convenience store.

Law enforcement seems acutely aware that Roblox is an unchallenging place for predators to meet children. For example, Osiel Mendoza Guevara, a 20-year-old Georgia sheriff’s deputy, flew from Georgia to Alabama to allegedly meet with a 16-year-old girl he had connected with over Roblox. Guevara was charged with “enticing a child for immoral purposes” this January. News reports added, “Investigators are asking parents to keep a close eye on what their children are doing on these platforms, saying evil intent can lurk in what appears to be the most harmless of activities.”

An October 2022 lawsuit filed in the San Francisco Superior Court against Roblox “for the harms caused to a 13-year-old [girl] and her family, beginning when she was only 10 years old, from use of and exposure to Defendants’ unreasonably dangerous and defective products” raises more concerns.

The lawsuit alleges at age ten the victim, abbreviated as S.U., was given an iPad with Roblox installed but was quickly connected to “adult men who abused her for months” and was coerced into downloading other apps to share inappropriate photos. The lawsuit also alleges, in part,

“From the outset, S.U. was approached by adult males who claimed to want to be her ‘friend.’ They were allowed to message her privately through the Roblox private message features, but also messaged her in group chats once they learned that she was a minor female. S.U. always wondered how Roblox knew when someone was swearing, or fighting, or engaged in other ‘prohibited’ behavior on the Roblox game but ignored entirely the rampant and overt sexual advances she received from adult players on a regular basis.”

(Page 57 of October 2022 lawsuit against Roblox and others.)

The lawsuit adds that the victim attempted suicide in July 2020, attempted suicide again in August 2020, and planned a third attempt for her 12th birthday in March 2021. Ultimately, she “had to withdraw from school after multiple suicide attempts.”

A recent video by popular 26-year-old Roblox YouTuber Ruben Sim appears to corroborate the lawsuit’s allegations that predators often first meet children on Roblox and then use Roblox to lure children to other sites. For example, in some Roblox group chats used to trade virtual items such as virtual clothing and accessories, The Bear Cave believes predators will encourage children to download other apps, like Snapchat and Discord, to have more open communication.

In one Roblox chat first highlighted by Ruben Sim, a Roblox user says “add me to trade on [ghost emoji] (only girls)” with the ghost emoji representing Snapchat. Another user writes “add me to trade on [disc emoji] girls. (14 btw),” a likely reference to Discord.


(Screenshots from December 2022 Ruben Sim YouTube video “ROBLOX NEEDS MY HELP” 6:36 mark and 6:52 mark)

Roblox doesn’t appear to appreciate the efforts to highlight pedophilia on its platform. In November 2021, Roblox sued YouTuber Ruben Sim for $1.6 million and issued a lifetime ban on his usage of the platform.

Nonetheless, many top comments on the Ruben Sim Roblox video agree that Roblox moderation is not up to par and read, in part,

“Roblox really is just falling apart. Glad you're doing stuff like this because the Roblox moderators don't do [anything] literally almost half of the time unless they are caught…”

“Imagine a multi-billion-dollar corporation not being able to have a bare minimum moderation team.”

“It’s sad that most of the time Roblox moderation literally has to be called out by the voices of big YouTubers to take decisions on stuff like these.”

Sometimes the predators are Roblox’s own game developers.

In July 2022, Roblox game developer Arnold Castillo was “arrested on charges of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and coercion and enticement of a minor.” Castillo had gained a major following on Roblox starting in 2017 after developing a popular Sonic the Hedgehog spinoff Roblox game and would allegedly encourage children to join his off-platform Discord server for the game.

Notably, in an unlisted October 2022 video with over 1 million views titled, “The Roblox Developer Arrested By The FBI” Ruben Sim said he had repeatedly warned Roblox and police about Castillo as early as 2020, but the company took de minimis action.

The top comment on that video reads,

“The fact that Roblox protected this predator is insane, thankfully police finally took action against him.”

Problems in Roblox’s developer community run deep.

Another example is “MisterObvious” a major Roblox developer who won a “Bloxy award” from Roblox for being one of the best developers in the Roblox community. Ruben Sim later published videos, audio, and text screenshots showing “MisterObvious” sending and soliciting inappropriate content from underage girls. In addition, in April 2017 he filed a police report and in June 2017 uploaded a video on YouTube with over 1.2 million views covering the allegations. Roblox ultimately terminated MisterObvious’s account… in May 2021.

And just earlier this month another popular Roblox developer faced allegations of inappropriate conduct.

These issues extend to Roblox corporate as well. As The Bear Cave previously reported: “Roblox’s former social media manager ran a pornographic blog while employed by the company. Roblox’s official Twitter account retweeted content made by a self-described pedophile [and] Roblox allegedly shut down its own community forum after it became inundated with links to illegal child porn sites.”

None of these are isolated cases. Below is just a sampling of additional stories on child abuse facilitated by Roblox:

29-year-old convicted pedophile Owain Thomas “groomed 150 children to engage in sexual activity using Roblox” and the volume of abuse was “possibly unprecedented.” 48-year-old registered sex offender Clinton McElroy was arrested after convincing an 8-year-old girl “into sending sexually explicit videos in exchange for Robux.” 18-year-old Ron Machluf was indicted for using Roblox “to lure and commit sexual offenses against several girls between the ages of 7 and 12.” 23-year-old Terrence Barto was arrested for “indecent solicitation of a child, violation of sex offender registry and grooming” after “he contacted a 12-year-old boy in Texas via Roblox.” 61-year-old John Mathew Piecuch was indicted after posing as a 13-year-old boy on Roblox and “contacting a 12-year-old girl and requesting sexually explicit photos of her and her 5-year-old sibling.” 45-year-old Patrick Shane Penczak was charged with seven counts of crimes against children after meeting kids through Roblox. Two months ago, 21-year-old Daniel Diaz was arrested “for contacting a minor for purposes of committing a felony offense” after meeting with a child he contacted through Roblox. And last week, 19-year-old Faruq Balogun was arrested “for arranging to meet with a minor for lewd purposes” after connecting with a child on Roblox.

Roblox CEO and founder David Baszucki sees things differently. In a June 2023 interview with The Verge titled, “Roblox doesn’t want to be just a kids game,” Baszucki was asked about the company’s conversations with lawmakers around safety on the platform and responded, in part,

“I think we are in an exceptional position both from a company culture point of view as well as strategically what we are building as a platform. Our Civility people are out speaking in various forums trying to take a leadership role in what’s the vision for kids on the Internet.” (13:52)

(Roblox CEO and founder David Baszucki talks about how Roblox “keeps the platform safe for kids.”)

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That's it, the rest is paywalled. If anybody gets ahold of the rest of the article, I'll add it here.

Subscribe to Ruben Sim.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

Also the Roblox Oof is one of the most well-known, reused, recognizable sound-effects on the Internet.

It's no dancing baby.

 

[Slav Power]

I see you're pretty familiar with this game huh...?

You realize the Roblox death sound is a pretty big meme? In fact, most people will only think of that sound when hearing the game's name and they've never played it in their life. It's like calling someone a die-hard Punisher fan just because they used the "nonono waitwaitwait" clip.

 

[Osama Bin Laden]

HOLD THE FUCK UP NOW

Ex-Fucking-SCUSE ME???

yeah, you didn't know that? ruben made a multi-part series on how roblox was basically ignoring child abuse and pedophiles on their platform. to explain it in the simplest of terms, roblox levels are user created and it gives you an opportunity to make a shitload of in game currency for it (correct me if i'm wrong, but i haven't played it in 10+ years) which you may be able to trade it in for IRL money. these pedophiles would recruit children who were aspiring developers as basically slave labor and pay them in game currency (which means fuck all in the real world) to work on levels that end up being big.

like most shitty software companies, these children would get overworked, be pushed to add features to a level that wasn't in their pay grade, constantly miss deadlines (keep in mind, these are pedophiles working children on a roblox level as if you were in a chinese sweatshop). and with great power comes great responsibility, these pedophiles would at some point groom children into sending CP and other weird degenerate shit on discord.

a lot of the most popular levels are owned by a "group account" which is an account owned by a group of individuals that's only purpose is to store in game currency they made from a level. ruben called this out saying they are literally using children as slave labor and profiting off it, and the people who are making levels are sexually abusing the children. roblox at first banned the pedophile (which is a good step but you'll see why in a second) but then, shortly UNBANNED THE PEDOPHILE. then after ruben was like "erm, what the fuck. why did you unban a pedophile that makes money off slave labor". roblox ignores this and says "uh oh, looks like we made a fucky wucky" and banned the group account making money from it.... until somebody else who wasn't the pedophile reappealed the ban and got the account unbanned

this may not be completely accurate but you should watch the video series on it. this is written completely from memory so could be wrong.

 

[Otterly]

Yeah, but all that requires you pay attention to what your kid does on the Interne

Mine are allowed to play but they have to do it in the family areas of the house where I can see or hear and I do keep an eye on it.
Everything’s locked down as much as is possible. No chat, voice or text. Only friends are friends from school that I can confirm who they are. I check their profiles regularly for chats (none, it’s off but I check anyway) and friend requests. They’ve been told that if anyone approaches them or friends them they tell me (shouldn’t be possible but I tell them anyway)
If there’s anything else I should be doing then I’m grateful to hear it. Other than ‘burn all screen’ which I would do but mr. I is a big gamer and doesn’t mind so I’ve kind of lost that battle

 

[Pimpleking55]

Tsmt, Gen Alpha will be one that was raised by the internet. Like how some parents would make the TV babysit their kid, except now it isn't approved programming on a couple channels, it's trannies and pedos and tranny pedos making the content.

I weep for the future of mankind

 

[WelperHelper99]

Mine are allowed to play but they have to do it in the family areas of the house where I can see or hear and I do keep an eye on it.
Everything’s locked down as much as is possible. No chat, voice or text. Only friends are friends from school that I can confirm who they are. I check their profiles regularly for chats (none, it’s off but I check anyway) and friend requests. They’ve been told that if anyone approaches them or friends them they tell me (shouldn’t be possible but I tell them anyway)
If there’s anything else I should be doing then I’m grateful to hear it. Other than ‘burn all screen’ which I would do but mr. I is a big gamer and doesn’t mind so I’ve kind of lost that battle

Really just keep on doing what you are. Locking everything down is the best you can do anymore. Kids are gonna play games, and if they are, might as well be in full control. Vetting their friends is a really smart step. The government already spies on us enough, no need for some predator to do the same

 

[The Hero of Kvatch]

I used to play this game when it was just Lego men surviving hurricanes and volcanoes and shit. Almost depressing how much it's fallen. I don't play Roblox anymore, but I do watch Ruben Sim's videos, because he's a pretty entertaining guy. Disturbs me just how much sexual content there is in a game aimed for like 12 year olds, and it's sad that people like Ruben have to basically do Roblox moderation's jobs for them. IIRC, moderation is also outsourced to India too.

 

[WULULULULU]

The amount of young Filipinos I've met almost always have a link to Roblox on the computer or their phone/tablet. It is very damn horrifying to see stuff like this while a bunch of clueless generation kids using the very same platform.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

If there’s anything else I should be doing then I’m grateful to hear it. Other than ‘burn all screen’ which I would do but mr. I is a big gamer and doesn’t mind so I’ve kind of lost that battle

No. That is pretty much it. Honestly just disabling chat to anyone outside of known people cuts out the issues.

As does never giving them access to your passwords or credit card.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

Mine are allowed to play but they have to do it in the family areas of the house where I can see or hear and I do keep an eye on it.
Everything’s locked down as much as is possible. No chat, voice or text. Only friends are friends from school that I can confirm who they are. I check their profiles regularly for chats (none, it’s off but I check anyway) and friend requests. They’ve been told that if anyone approaches them or friends them they tell me (shouldn’t be possible but I tell them anyway)
If there’s anything else I should be doing then I’m grateful to hear it. Other than ‘burn all screen’ which I would do but mr. I is a big gamer and doesn’t mind so I’ve kind of lost that battle

Personally, I think you are doing fine. Everything you are doing is what parents used to do before social mexia became a thing and told us to deanonymize ourselves because they knew the inherent risks of predators on the Internet. So long as your kids have a responsible parent watching over them like what your doing, they should be fine from predators.

 

[WelperHelper99]

The amount of young Filipinos I've met almost always have a link to Roblox on the computer or their phone/tablet. It is very damn horrifying to see stuff like this while a bunch of clueless generation kids using the very same platform.

Considering when it was made, it's low powered enough you can shove it on a potato at this point, which is how kids can play it anywhere, be it there phone, home, or the library, and how even in poor countries, you can find kids online, who probably know very little on internet safety, which is saying a lot already.

 

[The Hero of Kvatch]

Considering when it was made, it's low powered enough you can shove it on a potato at this point, which is how kids can play it anywhere, be it there phone, home, or the library, and how even in poor countries, you can find kids online, who probably know very little on internet safety, which is saying a lot already.

I just checked the system requirements for Roblox, they're significantly lower than I expected. Like 20mb disk space, 1GB RAM, 1.6ghz processor. You could probably play this bitch on literally anything, like 1993 DooM. While this makes it easier for kids to get onto the game and play their pizza place games, it also makes it easier for any pedophile to just use some shitbox burner device or something.

 

[Super Dilator Duel 3D]

Huh, well, sounds like they're still similar so I'll take that as being half right.

Minecraft is an action-adventure sandbox game that can stand on its own just fine without user-generated content (though adventure maps and the like are heavily encouraged and make the game much more fun) whereas Roblox is essentially an MMO. As opposed to MMOs like WoW, however, Roblox has no central hub world and is instead made up of millions (probably billions by now) of individual games made by the community using a creation program based on Lua. For a very long period of time, Roblox's design was essentially meant to be digital Lego (without the licensing). That's honestly what drew many kids to the game back then; the idea of an MMO where you could play as Lego people and create practically any type of game you could think of with others from around the world was an awesome concept as a kid. As time went on, they tried moving further and further from this idea and now while you still see "retro" faux-Lego style games pop up from time to time, the engine has gotten so advanced and the playerbase so massive that many games look completely different from each other in visual design, audio design, gameplay mechanics, etc. There are games on modern Roblox that seriously resemble AAA tech demos. Minecraft has some cool graphical and gameplay shit you can mess with through modding but it's still almost always recognizable as Minecraft.

With the pedo shit, I get that the company can't be omnipotent in terms of moderation especially with such a large amount of players. Every social media platform/online game has bad apples that slip through the cracks. If they were actually putting effort into sealing these cracks than I think people would be more forgiving. But it's been made very clear by the lawsuit with Ruben Sim that Roblox gives zero fucks about stopping child exploitation on the site beyond barely meeting the bare minimum. Not just by exposing them to groomers and deviants of all flavors, but through monetization. Roblox used to be much less bold in its monetization; you could go to the clothing catalog to buy avatar items for your character using their fake currency, Robux (bought with real money), just like you can now, but these items were generally cheaper and more distinct from one another. In addition to that, there was actually a free currency called Tix which every player could receive daily and use to buy cosmetic items, and if you didn't want to spend money on the game it was a perfect substitute for the premium stuff especially given that it could be used to buy many of the avatar items that you could buy with Robux. In 2016, Tix was totally removed from the site and no replacement was introduced for free-to-play players, and over the years the monetization has become so heavy-handed that the site basically has its own economy and it leans towards being predatory most of the time. Microtransactions in user-made games are now encouraged which reward the developer of the game with a portion of the price in Robux when one is bought. You may ask why people care about making this fake currency so much but it all clicks when you realize Roblox has a program called the Developer Exchange which allows you to trade in the Robux you earn for actual, real-world paychecks... and these are substantial amounts of money, too. There are entire game studios focused solely on making Roblox games, with employees that make a living from Roblox. This is something Minecraft doesn't have at all... and it's also why so many of Roblox's most popular games are microtransaction and advertisement-ridden dystopian hellscapes designed to suck every penny from the parents of the kids playing them. These practices have been exposed many times by individuals like Ruben Sim, but again the company not only ignores it but takes steps to silence those speaking out about it. Behavior like that I have zero tolerance for. It's not easy to moderate every single degenerate on such a large platform, I get that, but it's certainly possible to stop these predatory pajeet shell companies from designing games with monetization models that make some of EA's worst offerings look like charity programs. It's soulless.

tl;dr minecraft is a singleplayer game, roblox is an mmo/game platform, increased monetization is mostly the cause of the company's abysmal reputation now

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

tl;dr minecraft is a singleplayer game, roblox is an mmo/game platform, increased monetization is mostly the cause of the company's abysmal reputation now

Thank God for that tldr

 

[WelperHelper99]

I just checked the system requirements for Roblox, they're significantly lower than I expected. Like 20mb disk space, 1GB RAM, 1.6ghz processor. You could probably play this bitch on literally anything, like 1993 DooM. While this makes it easier for kids to get onto the game and play their pizza place games, it also makes it easier for any pedophile to just use some shitbox burner device or something.

Well it was designed for Windows Vista. That's what we're working with. A pedo can set up a burner and toss it if something goes bad for fucking cheap.

 

[Super Dilator Duel 3D]

Thank God for that tldr

My bad for the long-winded post. The unique brand of child exploitation and endangerment going on with Roblox is one that I feel often needs a lot more context to analyze compared to, for instance, Discord or TikTok.

 

[The Hero of Kvatch]

A few YouTube videos that highlight Roblox's less than ethical business practices, and the vile degenerates the game attracts. Recommend watching if you've fallen into this autistic rabbithole like I have. I forgot this game even existed until I saw this thread on the homepage, it's insane just how much the game really has taken a nose-dive.
People Make Games' first video
People Make Games' second video
Ruben Sim going through NSFW content on Roblox
Ruben Sim's video on his lawsuit filed by Roblox
Ruben Sim's second video on his lawsuit
Turkey Tom's first video on Roblox pedophiles
Turkey Tom's second video on Roblox pedophiles, specifically game devs
What gets me, is that there are multiple videos these Youtubers make on the same subject. It's not just a one-off case of one guy trying to fuck little girls on Roblox, it's a horde of these monsters.

Another thing I want to point out is that many of the pedophiles on Roblox are game developers or YouTubers who use their position to take advantage of young impressionable children. These are popular people trying to cash in on their success by using it to fuck kids.

 

[Dysnomia]

They're cloistering pedos like the Catholic church.

 

[Anonitolia]

Surprised no one has tried to sue Roblox corporate for negligence in a class action lawsuit yet.

Yeah, no, considering this and the semi-reasonable accusations of child labor (Roblox actually pays creators of some of the most popular games- most of which are children- and they are payed a pittance at best and nothing at worst, assuming these videos aren't complete and total BS) it's a wonder how it hasn't been investigated yet.

It's like if you only took the worst parts of social media- the extreme rat race for attention, the constant echo chambers, the ease of communication between minors and adults- and the worst parts of any MMO- a hilariously toxic userbase, incredibly predatory monetization tactics, horrible user-driven stock markets that make getting basic cosmetics hellish, paid memberships that create a primitive caste system, constant sex rp- and combined them into the ultimate platform for predators of all kinds everywhere.

Take my analysis with a slight grain of salt; I'm going off of what i've heard online + what family that plays it has told me and my experience playing it back in the early 2010s, I'm not an expert or anything.

Seriously though. Shit like Roblox is why the law seriously needs to catch up with the internet much much faster than it's doing right now. Like, light years faster. Thousands of light years faster. Please.
There's an entire generation being completely warped and abused by the internet right now thanks to idiot parents being atrociously terrible at their jobs and being mostly unaware of that danger to their children and- while I would generally never advocate for the government taking over parental duties of any kind- I do believe that something as basic and hands-off as a PSA campaign could greatly help stem the constant flow of very little children into places ABSOLUTELY not safe for them.

 

[Echo_Ender]

I knew the issue in Roblox was bad, but I didn't realize how bad until I watched some of Rubens stuff. The game is almost perfect for a bunch of the usual pedo "Groom, then blackmail" tactics.

I don't know why any adult would want to play a game full of screaming 13-year olds unless said adult has dark intentions.