For children, the gaming platform Roblox in 2021 is somewhat like the new Minecraft. Investors and shareholders have pushed the company’s value behind Roblox to over 44 billion US dollars. However, the creativity allowed by the game is taking on disturbing forms as people suddenly recreate massacres in Roblox, like the one in Christchurch.
What is Roblox? Roblox is less of a game and more of an online gaming platform where users can create and play their own video games.
The platform has been around since 2006 for PC, then came to mobile, and most recently to Xbox. Roblox has gained immense traction in the last five years and is now a huge deal, especially for many children and their parents, who are constantly asked for Robux, the real-money currency of the game.
The stock market listing on March 10, 2021, provided an additional boost. The company has achieved an extremely high market valuation of over 44 billion US dollars: Investors believe in the future of the company.
“And this on a platform for very young children”
This is now a problem: A researcher from the Anti-Defamation League has approached the US magazine The Verge and revealed that in Roblox, scenes of terrible massacres are recreated. Every time he searches for them in Roblox, he finds them:
- In January 2020
- In May 2021
- and most recently on August 13, 2021, he found such scenes in Roblox:
“I just want to search for Christchurch in Roblox and not see a new recreation of the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre on a gaming platform for very young children.”
The US site The Verge confirms the researcher’s findings. It states: A simple text search led to the discovery of two of these recreations in the game, both rooms had been visited by more than two hundred people.
This is how Roblox responds: When asked, they said they immediately removed the rooms and expelled the creators. They do not tolerate racism, discrimination, or references to tragic events. They have a rigorous system in place to monitor this.
But apparently, Roblox still allows this to slip through. They cannot simply ban “Christchurch,” after all, it is a real city in New Zealand. Therefore, it is important that not everything is automated, but that people are also involved in the moderation process.
What is the problem? Roblox seems to have grown so large and so fast that moderation cannot keep up with the speed at which users bring new content into the game.
For Roblox, whether they can grow their infrastructure with the influx of players will be a crucial factor in the coming years. Specifically, the ability to provide a safe platform for all was identified as a risk factor even at the time of the IPO.
Roblox has 100 million players per month, even more than Minecraft – but why?
