Roblox Settlement Payout of $12.5M Will Fund Child Online Safety Campaign

New safety measures to include giving parents control of their children’s list of adult friends and the creation of a law enforcement liaison position.

Roblox and the state of Nevada have reached a $12 million deal designed to force the gaming platform to better protect child users from sexual predators, and to compensate the state for failing to do so in the past.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced the Roblox settlement agreement in a press release on April 15, indicating that the deal will resolve state allegations by involving both financial and injunctive relief. However, the operational changes required under the agreement are expected to extend far beyond Nevada’s borders.

The interactive gaming platform Roblox was first launched in 2006 and has been marketed to parents as a safe platform for children. It includes video game construction sets and features that allow users to build their own games, create customized avatars, explore player-created worlds and make in-game purchases. Roblox typically has 40 million concurrent players at any time, with an estimated 111 million users per day.

However, for years Roblox Corporation has been the subject of strong criticism for its failure to protect child users from sexual predators, and now faces hundreds of Roblox child exploitation lawsuits brought by parents and young survivors. Each complaint contains similar allegations that lax security and child protections allows sexual predators to target, groom, manipulate and sometimes physically assault children using the platform.

These assailants frequently disguise themselves as children, approaching other minors as peers and enticing them to send explicit photos and videos, and even arrange meetings that have led to sexual assaults, kidnappings and child sex trafficking.

In addition to lawsuits by individuals, the platform also faces claims by some states, who say they often have to foot the bill for the traumatic results of children’s interactions with these sexual predators, and also note that they have a duty to protect their citizens.

In response to increasing pressure, Roblox began rolling out facial recognition software late last year, saying the technology can verify users’ ages and restrict adults from contacting children without parental consent.

The agreement with Nevada doubles down on the age verification requirements by adding behavioral monitoring to identify individuals who the new facial recognition may have classified incorrectly. It will also give parents more control, letting them decide which individuals minors can communicate with and what games their children can access.

The deal also will include a “trusted friend” limit, meaning adult users will not be allowed to chat with users under 16 unless they are a “trusted friend” on the platform. Adding someone to the trusted friend list requires parental consent for those under 13, and parents have the option of requiring trusted friends to get parental approval for children between the ages of 13 and 15.

In addition, Roblox will prevent any communications involving minors from being encrypted, which will allow law enforcement easy access to the data if needed.

Monetarily, Roblox Corporation has agreed to pay $1 million over the next two years on an online safety campaign for minors and will pay $1.5 million to create a law enforcement liaison position within the company. Finally, the company will put $10 million into a campaign to educate children on both platform safety and to promote their use of non-digital programs.

These changes will affect how the company operates nationwide, not just in Nevada.

“The agreement we have announced today will protect Nevada’s children from would-be predators in virtual spaces. The injunctive relief that Roblox has agreed to will give parents the tools they need to protect their children on the platform; institute default protections to block predators from engaging with children; and ensure that messages involving minors are not encrypted.”

– Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford

Roblox Child Sexual Exploitation Lawsuits

While this lawsuit was filed by a state at the state level, the majority of Roblox child sexual exploitation lawsuits are consolidated in the Northern District of California as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) before U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg.

Charged with leading the litigation through coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings, the judge is expected to call on the parties to select a small group of representative federal cases to serve as potential bellwether trials. These early test cases will allow the parties to gauge how juries are likely to respond to evidence and testimony that would be repeated throughout the litigation.

However, if the parties fail to reach a Roblox lawsuit settlement agreement or other resolution once those bellwether trials and pretrial proceedings are completed, Judge Seeborg will likely begin remanding cases back to their originating districts for individual trial dates.