Parents, Survivors Seek Roblox Settlement Talks Early in Child Sex Exploitation MDL

Lawyers for families pursuing Roblox child sex exploitation lawsuits have asked the Court to appoint a special mediator, to help promote settlement talks and avoid the emotional toll on victims from lengthy litigation.

Plaintiffs involved in Roblox child sexual exploitation lawsuits are asking the U.S. District Judge recently appointed to preside over the federal litigation to name a special master to assist with settlement negotiations, in hopes of establishing an early framework for resolving cases without the need for prolonged litigation, which will just compound the harm experienced by minors involved in the claims.

More than 100 families have already filed lawsuits against Roblox, alleging that children have suffered severe trauma after being exposed to sexual predators through the gaming platform. However, it is widely expected that several thousand claims will be brought in the coming weeks and months.

Roblox was first launched in 2006, and widely promoted as a safe platform for children, which allows users to build custom games, interact with other players, communicate through chat features and explore virtual worlds created by others.

It has grown to include millions of regular users worldwide, with heavy use by children and teens. However, the lawsuits indicate that Roblox failed to include critical safety features, which allowed sexual predators to prey on young children, often posing as other minors to gain their trust.

Once the relationship is established, the predators often take the conversation to another chat app, like Discord or Snapchat, where the sexual exploitation is escalated to include video and picture exchanges, and in some cases face-to-face meetings that end in sexual assault, rape, kidnapping or human trafficking.

Amid mounting pressure, Roblox began rolling out facial recognition software late last year that it says can help identify the age of users and prevent adults from communicating with children without parental permission. However, families indicate that these safeguards come far too late for many children.

As the number of claims being brought throughout the federal court system grew at a rapid pace, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) consolidated all Roblox child exploitation lawsuits before U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in December 2025. The claims were centralized in the Northern District of California as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

In the Roblox MDL, it is expected that Judge Seeborg will move toward selecting a small group of representative cases to prepare for a bellwether process, allowing the parties to conduct case specific discovery and schedule a handful of claims for early trial dates.

However, lawyers representing families involved in the litigation are asking the Court to seek a quicker, less grueling process to explore the potential for a settlement early in the litigation.

According to a status report (PDF) submitted late last week, in advance of a case management conference scheduled for February 27, plaintiffs have asked Judge Seeborg to appoint a special master or mediator to assist the parties in early Roblox settlement talks.

“Given that the plaintiffs in this MDL are minors who have suffered severe trauma, prolonged litigation carries a significant risk of compounding that harm. Accordingly, establishing an early and proactive resolution framework is critically important.”

– Plaintiffs’ Status Report

Plaintiffs propose that the settlement master should be given the power to order the parties into face-to-face, serious negotiations and construct an efficient procedure to do so.

Lawyers for Roblox, on the other hand, issued their own status report (PDF) the same day, objecting to the appointment of a special master at this early stage of the litigation, indicating that none of the required conditions have yet been met to justify the appointment, and that it is too early in the discovery process. Despite the objection, defendants indicate they have exchanged a list of potential mediators with the plaintiffs.

If the Court agrees that early Roblox settlement talks should be held, it may avoid the need for a lengthy pretrial discovery process and preparation for a series of “bellwether” trials, which are typically used to gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout the claims.

Following the MDL process, if the parties are unable to reach any global settlement for the Roblox lawsuits, Judge Seeborg may be forced to later remand each individual claim back to the U.S. District Court where it originated for separate trials in the future, which will likely take many years.

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