The online gaming site Roblox has been forced to implement a ratings system after children under 13 were exposed to digital sex parties and racial slurs.
Users will be matched with age-appropriate content and parents will be able to tailor their children’s experiences, under the new plans, CBS reports.
The California-based company allows users to create blocky Lego-esque avatars and program their own games or play games created by other users.
More than half its 30 million users are under the age of 13. Usage has surged as kids stuck at home during the pandemic spent more time on the platform, fueling an 85% year-on-year jump in daily active users in 2020 and a surge in monthly in-app sales.
Players had already been banned from using a lot of explicit language and content and it is not clear exactly how the rating system will operate.
But in August last year the site came under fire for a seedy ‘red light district’ made by hackers that exposed kids to graphic images, and racist messages.
Players had hacked the system to create ‘Condo’ parties where users simulate sex and are exposed to naked imagery.
Roblox has been forced to make ratings system after children under 13 were exposed to digital sex parties and racial slurs
Users will be matched with age-appropriate content and parents will be able to tailor their children’s experiences, under the new plans
In August last year the site came under fire for a seedy ‘red light district’ made by hackers that exposed kids to graphic images, and racist messages. Players had hacked the system to create ‘Condo’ parties where users simulate sex and are exposed to naked imagery
In one case an eight-year-old boy was exposed to a picture of a woman in her underwear, the word sex and racist song lyrics, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In a Roblox game entitled ‘Haha ~~ ;)’ a party house created by a group known as The Cons created a sex den that showcased an array of sex toys, private rooms upstairs furnished only with beds, and in the basement a torch-lit sex dungeon.
Avatars would go naked and could choose among more than 25 different body positions and movements simulating sex acts.
Louisiana mom Deranda Bordelon was playing a Roblox game called ‘Adopt Me!’ with her eight-year-old daughter when someone grabbed the mother’s character and whisked it off to a bed to simulate a sex act.
‘She snatched me back up, and now she’s doin’ stuff to me,’ Bordelon said.
‘All of a sudden she brought me to this other room and took her clothes off and was asking me to take my clothes off and just all kind of, you know, adult stuff that shouldn’t be for kids,’ she added.
More than half its 30 million users are under the age of 13. Usage has surged as kids stuck at home during the pandemic spent more time on the platform, fueling an 85% year-on-year jump in daily active users in 2020 and a surge in monthly in-app sales
Remy Malan, vice president of trust and safety for Roblox and its chief privacy officer, told the WSJ: ‘Roblox was designed for kids and teens, and we have a responsibility to make sure our players can learn, create and play safely.
‘We work relentlessly to create a safe and civil community and have no tolerance for content or behavior that violates our rules.’
It is not known when the rating system will be implemented.
A number of games are already labeled as suitable for those over 13. Parents must turn on a feature stopping younger children those pages.
Roblox has said: ‘While we have dedicated technology and trained human moderator staff that can detect and remove sexual content involving children, there have been instances where such content has been uploaded.’
DailyMail.com has contacted Roblox for comment.
Roblox made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in March
‘Roblox has no tolerance for inappropriate content or behavior. It is our responsibility to keep our platform safe, and we work relentlessly to create a safe, civil, and diverse community,’ Roblox said to DailyMail.com in a statement last August.
‘As with any community, there are a small number of bad actors who attempt to undermine the rules, and we continue to evolve our platform and policies to combat this challenge,’ the spokesperson added.
It was founded in 2004 by David Baszucki, pictured, and Erik Cassel
Roblox made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in March.
It was founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, although its journey began in 1989 when Baszucki and Cassel programmed a 2D simulated physics lab Knowledge Revolution that would later lay the groundwork for the company.
After the sale of Knowledge Revolution in 1998, the duo began work on Roblox. Cassel died in 2013 after battling cancer for three years.
Baszucki joined the tech billionaire’s club after the site was valued at nearly $30 billion in a funding deal late last year.
An average 37.1 million people globally log on to Roblox daily to connect with friends and play popular games like ‘Jailbreak’, ‘Adopt Me!’ and ‘Speed Run 4’.
‘We want COVID to end as quickly as possible. At the same time, what we’ve seen in the midst of COVID is Roblox has been used to bring people together,’ Baszucki said.
The company is expanding into other countries and is also making inroads with older users, passing the phase where more people over the age of 13 will be on the platform than under 13, Baszucki said.
