‘Predators go where the prey is’: Crackdown for popular children’s game

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Every day, 13-year-old Jack* logs into his school laptop and plays his favourite game on the Roblox platform. In this virtual world, he embodies his Lego-like avatar, joining thousands of other children diving into mini-games, chatting with friends, and role-playing elaborate, imaginary stories.

A few weeks ago, he saw something that made him feel deeply uncomfortable. His experience is why Australia is leading the world in enforcing groundbreaking new standards that will force platforms such as Roblox – one of the most popular for online games among Australian children – to change.

Gaming platform Roblox is known as a hotspot for predators looking to abuse children.

When Jack logged on, he saw a sign that said, “come to house 16 for [a hot emoji].” Curious, he attended the house. Two players were talking suggestively. Then “they took their clothes off and were crawling all on each other on the bed,” he said.

“I’d never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know you could take your clothes off in the game. It was just really disturbing to see two people with no clothes on in a Roblox game,” he said.

Australia is cracking down on game sites such as Roblox by enforcing mandatory codes and standards that require it to act to tackle the worst online content and conduct, including child sexual exploitation and abuse. By December, the game must adhere to Australia’s eSafety codes or risk $49.5 million in non-compliance fines.

Roblox, which has 79 million daily users globally, is like a virtual sandbox, providing the tools for users to create their own gaming “experiences” to play with friends. Since US political activist Charlie Kirk was shot on Wednesday, it has been forced to remove dozens of experiences that reference the assassination.

The game site, created to encourage children and young teens to code and think like entrepreneurs, has become known as a hotspot for adults looking to abuse children.

In the United States, the company faces a lawsuit for the wrongful death of a child from the state of Louisiana, which alleges the site created an environment for predators to “thrive, unite, hunt and victimise kids”.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the commission had been watching and engaging with Roblox for a long time.

“There were some key things that we needed them to do that they weren’t doing voluntarily,” she said.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has been meeting with Roblox.

In some cases, adults have been sending their addresses and phone numbers to children and asking them to connect offline, Inman Grant said.

In others, they might “instruct a child or their avatar to perform sexual acts in games on the platform, but we’ve also seen children being coerced into sending explicit messages in exchange for gifts like new sneakers or the platform’s digital currency, and we’ve also come across sexual advertisements targeting minors,” she said.

Roblox said the company was “deeply committed to the safety of our users”, promising to “expand the use of ID age verification, verified parental consent and facial age estimation technology with the goal of knowing the approximate age of everyone who is communicating on Roblox and limiting communication between adults and minors unless they know each other in the real world”.

“We share the eSafety Commission’s mission to protect children as we remain focused on our long-term vision to connect people with optimism and civility,” said a spokesperson.

International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children chief executive Colm Gannon said Roblox should have made the changes a long time ago. He said the world’s eyes are on Australia’s approach to online safety. “Australian regulation is setting a standard,” he said.

Former Queensland police detective Professor Jon Rouse, best known for his work targeting internet child sex offenders, said parents “need to realise if you leave your kids on the game unsupervised, the worst can and does happen”.

Inman Grant recently met with the gaming company’s top executives, including its chief legal and safety officers, to define regulatory expectations. She outlined the need for them to tackle harms such as grooming, sexual extortion and other forms of child sexual exploitation.

“I am pleased to see them come to the table with these new safety commitments,” said Grant, making it clear that under Australian law, “they are required to take meaningful action to prioritise the protection of children”.

Previously, the burden fell on parents to activate restrictions. Now, all accounts for people aged under 16 will be private by default and adults will be blocked from contacting under-16s without parental consent.

The company will also expand parental controls to cover 13-to-15 year olds. Previously, stronger protections applied only to children aged under 13. The game is also expanding its age estimation technology, and chats will be turned off until users go through verification.

Voice chat will be banned between adults and 13-15 year olds, extending a current prohibition on use by under 13s.

Sydney parent Louise Edmond locked down her daughter’s Roblox account after learning the game allowed players to chat inside mini-games. When her 12-year-old daughter started playing when she was eight, she was quick with a warning.

Louise Edmond’s 12-year-old daughter has been playing Roblox for years. Edmond is wary that the in-game chat functions could attract predators.

“You might have someone ask to be your friend, and they could say they are a 10-year-old girl, but behind that could be a 30-year-old man who wants to do bad things,” she said.

Screen and Gaming Disorder Clinic director Brad Marshall said Roblox was a huge issue, because of misunderstandings by parents who think it’s a single game and don’t understand the social element.

While parents were afraid to send their kids outside due to concerns that they might be targeted by a predator, the reality is “you’re much more likely to have that while you let them play Roblox in their room, unmonitored,” he said.

*Not his real name to protect the child’s privacy.

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