‘PLAYGROUND FOR PREDATORS’: Texas third state to sue gaming titan, Roblox, for child endangerment

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - At the beginning of November, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the popular gaming platform Roblox.

Texas became the third state to sue Roblox, claiming the multi-billion-dollar company is not sufficiently protecting minors.

Roblox is an online platform where millions of user-created games live. Players can double as creators and design their own games, meaning hundreds of new games are popping up every day. From people all over the world.

And it wasn’t until just recently any kid could access virtually any game.

Roblox started to roll out the photo ID and selfie age verify system in 2021 but it wasn’t until September of this year that you really saw it take effect.

Additional to the age verify, Roblox has recently introduced stronger parental controls.

“Where you can actually turn off voice chat and text chat and if you say your account is for a child it will block certain games,” says longtime Roblox player, Trisha Oliver.

Oliver says regardless of what has been implemented, she still sees children on the game being overexposed.

“Over the years I’ve noticed, in my personal experience, a significant decrease in quality and moderation. Roblox, they say they strive to be children safe but you can just go online and search up some terms and you can still find those games,” Oliver explains.

The Verge reported in 2020 that more than half of all Americans under the age of 16 have a Roblox account.

“I would say since 2020 is when I noticed a decline in general quality when it comes to game play and moderation. Some people can say some very derogatory stuff within the voice chat and text chat,” Oliver says.

She says she her reports to Roblox of unacceptable behavior have all fallen flat.

“I have reported activity and I believe some of my other friends have but as far as I’m aware, nothing has come out of any of those reports. It’s always very disheartening and I just wish more could be done,” she explains.

In a statement to KWTX from Roblox, the gaming giant says:

“Roblox is deeply committed to child safety. Our policies are purposefully stricter than those found on many other platforms. We have a strong record of working with law enforcement and continue to invest in advanced safety systems to set the gold standard in online safety for the industry."

Sergeant Corey Powell with the Bell County Sheriff’s Office says technology, social and gaming mediums continuously create obstacles for law enforcement, especially when it comes to protecting children.

“And the next thing you know, this kid is meeting up with this person and then it’s too late and we are seeing that more and more and more,” Sgt. Powell explains.

Furthermore, Powell says gaming services like Roblox are a gateway for kids to interact with strangers on other platforms, like Snapchat.

“What we’re seeing a lot in Bell County is teens and pre teens think they are talking to another teen or preteen and they’ll send photos which end up being used for extortion,” he says.

They keep tabs on registered offenders to ensure known criminals aren’t engaging with others online, but he says those profiles are as frequent as they are fleeting.

“We’re making sure that they don’t have other sites. But unfortunately, for every one we find, there’s we don’t know how many others are popping up,” Powell says.

The lawsuit against Roblox claims the platform allegedly exposing children to sexually explicit content and exploitation.

“The Attorney General has a huge program just for child safety so that is the program and that is what the Attorney General is trying to do. He’s trying to say ‘you know there’s a problem and you aren’t fixing it and yet you’re going out here saying it’s a safe place for kids,’” he explains.

Julian Martinez is the child safety coordinator for the Killeen Police Department. Much of his time is dedicated to teaching parents how to navigate ever changing software often in the hands of their kids.

“The hardest part is educating families,” Martinez says.

He says the struggle is often found in the generational divide. “We forget that our kids, they’re there online and sometimes they’re smarter than us. You see parents give their kids that device asking them to fix it and that tells me that the child is more educated than the parent and that’s not the way we should do this.”

What he often sees is parents disconnecting their children from online due to someone else’s words or behavior.

“The first thing parents do is take them offline, it’s the very first thing they’ll do. Which tells the kids that they will be punished for someone else’s bad actions,” Martinez explains.

When the better route would be reporting and removing the harmful player.

“Block the individual. It is very hard to identify or find that individual who’s selling themselves as someone as young as the child,” Martinez says.

Oliver says she has distanced herself from the game quite a bit in recent years because of inappropriate activity.

But with new players popping up every second, “If you’re a parent, I believe you should teach your child about internet safety and you should be able to see what games your child plays on Roblox . And if you’re a young person, just be aware of the potential consequences and if you think something is wrong then you should tell a trusted adult,” she says.

Roblox CEO David Baszucki spoke recently to Tony Dokoupil on CBS Mornings where he responded to the flurry of lawsuits.

“To those families who say their children have been harmed and are now suing, you say what?.” Dokoupil asked the CEO.

“I wanna highlight something. The vast majority of the things you’re mentioning are not happening on Roblox. They’re happening on platforms where images can be shared where longer term communication can occur,” Baszucki responded.

Texas is the third state to sue the gaming titan, along with Louisiana and Kentucky. And a California judge recently rules that a high-profile lawsuit against Roblox must proceed in the public eye.

Roblox full statement to KWTX is as follows:

“We share Attorney General Paxton’s commitment to keeping kids and teens safe online, which is why we have implemented industry-leading protocols in an effort to protect users and remove bad actors. We are disappointed that, rather than working collaboratively with Roblox on this industry-wide challenge and seeking real solutions, the AG has chosen to file a lawsuit based on misrepresentations and sensationalized claims.

Roblox is deeply committed to child safety. Our policies are purposefully stricter than those found on many other platforms. We prohibit the sharing of images and videos in chat, use filters designed to block the exchange of personal information and our trained teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications to detect and remove harmful content. We have a strong record of working with law enforcement and continue to invest in advanced safety systems to set the gold standard in online safety for the industry.

We have introduced over 145 safety measures on the platform this year alone, and as a first for the industry, we recently announced our plans to require facial age checks for all users accessing chat features, which will help prevent adults from chatting with minors.” ~Roblox Spokesperson

Background Information:

• Roblox has taken an industry leading stance on age-based communication. Read more in this blog post.
• Roblox started as a platform for children, and while 64% of the user base is now 13 or over, the platform has rigorous safety features built in, and its policies are purposely stricter than those found on social networks and other user-generated content platforms. This includes rigorous text chat filters that block inappropriate language and attempts to direct users under 13 off the platform or solicit personal information. Furthermore, users under 13 cannot directly message others outside of games or experiences unless parental controls are adjusted, and direct image sharing between users is prohibited.   
• We dedicate substantial resources to help detect and prevent inappropriate content and behavior. Our Community Standards set clear expectations for how to behave on Roblox and define restricted experiences. We have both advanced AI models together with a large, expertly trained team with thousands of members dedicated to protecting our users and monitoring 24/7 for inappropriate content. 
  • For inappropriate content: Our Trust & Safety team takes swift action (typically within minutes) to address violative material and accounts are removed through AI scans, user flags, and proactive monitoring, with a dedicated team focused on enforcement and swift removal. For instance, Diddy experiences violate our Real World Sensitive Events policy and we have a dedicated team working on scrubbing that content from the platform.
  • In August we released our latest open-source model, Roblox Sentinel, an advanced AI-powered system designed to help detect child endangerment interactions early for faster intervention. Human experts continue to be essential for investigating and intervening in the cases Sentinel detects. Read more in this blog post.  
  • We are also founding members of organizations focused on the collective advancement of online safety practices and the online communities that rely on them including the Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) and the Tech Coalition’s Lantern project. 
• We know safety is critically important to families, and we strive to empower our community of parents and caregivers to help ensure a safe online experience for their children. This includes a suite of easy to use parental controls to provide parents with more control and clarity on what their kids and teens are doing on Roblox. Parents can: 
• Block or limit specific experiences based on content maturity ratings 
• Block or report people on their child’s friends list 
• See which experiences their child is spending the most time in 
• Set daily screen time and spending limits 
• Families and caregivers can find resources detailing our safety measures here. (See blog posts from November 2024 and April 2025, and new safety tools for teens.) 
• Roblox collaborates with law enforcement, government agencies, mental health organizations, and parental advocacy groups to create resources for parents and to keep users safe on the platform. Through vigorous global outreach, we’ve developed deep and lasting relationships with law enforcement at the international, federal, state, and local levels. For example, we maintain direct communication channels with organizations, such as the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), for immediate escalation of serious threats that we identify.  
  • We proactively report potentially harmful content to NCMEC, which is the designated reporting entity for the public and electronic service providers regarding instances of suspected child sexual exploitation. In 2024, we submitted 24,522 reports to NCMEC (0.12% of the 20.3 million total reports submitted to NCMEC).

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