Image via Roblox Corporation
People Make Games, an independent YouTube channel focused on games journalism, has come out with a video accusing Roblox of enabling child abuse and exploitation on the platform. Not only that, but the company also allegedly allowed some game creators responsible to retain their income from the games they made after getting banned.
Quintin Smith from People Make Games and Shut Up and Sit Down released the video after Roblox players and creators got in touch with him with stories about the abuse and exploitation they experienced on the supposedly child-friendly game site after his previous video discussing Roblox hit four months ago. The latest video, which you can see below, came after Roblox pressured them to delete the other video in question, which remains on the channel as of this writing.
In the video, Smith interviewed Sarah (not her real name), who was 12 years old when she met Sonic fan game creator Doc, then 24, in a Discord server that went from talks of a collaboration for a fan game called Sonic Eclipse Online to sexting. Sarah said it took years and a few concerned friends to figure out that what Doc was doing to her was extremely inappropriate. When she publicly came out with her abuse allegations against him, numerous people in the fan game’s community attacked her for accusing him of being a pedophile.
Doc denied the allegations of pedophilia in a response video, saying that while he wouldn’t defend himself for the explicit comments he made, he believed that the comments he made weren’t genuine nor filled with intent. Roblox eventually banned Doc from the platform thanks to the evidence Sarah and her friends provided, but he managed to retain monetization and full creative control over his fan game.
Smith also interviewed Jordan, a game developer who created one of Roblox’s most popular games. They said that they were reduced from a partner who made a reasonable share of the profits from their game’s revenue to an employee for a corporation that forced them to work longer hours to make the same amount of money as before. Instead of fighting for fair pay and treatment, they quit that company to avoid retaliation for speaking out.
Because of these stories, People Make Games concluded that Roblox is a platform that values profits over the safety and well-being of children, saying that it’s difficult to get parents and politicians to understand its business model. To date, Roblox has racked up a net worth of over $38 billion.
