Many parents have seen their children enjoy playing video games on online gaming platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite.
It is usually harmless fun, but there has always been a dark shadow looming over these interactions. Roblox has been in the eye of the storm recently.
For a few years now, people have been worried about sexual predators using the game platform to lure children.
This year, Roblox banned a Youtuber dubbed Schlep, a 22-year-old YouTuber based in Texas who boasts more than 800,000 followers and has been pretending to be a young player on Roblox to catch sexual predators who prey on children.
He and his group use fake accounts that look like child players in Roblox games.
They reply to older users who try to talk to them, and they say these adults start making harmful comments on their own.
Then, the group sets up face-to-face meetings, where police arrest the person.
Born Andrew, the content creator claimed his efforts has led to at least six arrests. He has also worked together with reporter Chris Hansen, who is known for the TV show To Catch a Predator.
However, the gaming company stood by their decision accusing the content creator for simulated child endangerment conversations, sharing or soliciting personally identifiable information, and encouraging users to move conversations off-platform.
Even though many stated that the YouTuber was doing good by exposing the sexual predators, Roblox issued a cease and desist letter accusing him of multiple violations of its Terms of Use and Community Standards in an official statement.
In accordance with ABC, the content creator said Roblox shut down every account he had since he was eight years old.
This included the accounts he used to talk to the people he suspected were perpetrators.
Andrew even gave instances where he alleged that Roblox didn’t take action on serious reports.
The YouTuber also said that most of the chat records were gathered on Discord, not Roblox.
The connection between Discord and Roblox is primarily through account linking, which allows users to display their Roblox status on their Discord profile and enables community engagement through a shared platform.
He also argued that sharing information he collected with the police should not be considered a rule break. Andrew said the reason he did this work was because he was once a victim.
The 22-year-old said he had an early and traumatic encounter with a groomer on Roblox that led to a suicide attempt. Andrew revealed how frustrated he and his family were after Roblox failed to respond at the time.
He claimed that the platform banned the perpetrator years later, only after he was blacklisted by another platform.
The ban of the digital creator’s platform brewed a torrent of backlash from people on social media.
They began campaigns such as #BoycottRoblox and #FreeSchlep. They accused the company of trying to silence someone who was trying to expose wrongdoing.
The gaming platform maintained that catching people secretly was undermining police investigations and all users should report harmful and inappropriate activity using its official reporting channels.
There was a petition brought forth by US representative Rohit Khanna that required the platform to “do more to protect children, provide more support to parents, and strengthen law enforcement protocols that help bring predators to justice” in accordance to MSBC news.
Even Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murill filed a lawsuit against the gaming online platform claiming that Roblox was intentionally or recklessly designed without efficient ways to check a user’s real age.
Due to this, she said the platform allowed adults to exploit the children. Nonetheless, Roblox strongly denied these allegations. According to their website, they introduced an Age Verification feature.
“It will allow users to access innovative social capabilities and age-appropriate content such as experiences for people 17 and up while also ensuring the safety of our community,” the website read.
Aside from the paedophiles, another challenge was grooming children to commit suicide.
Mother to 15-year-old Ethan Dallas, Rebecca Dallas, filed the lawsuit against Roblox and Discord over her son’s death.
Rebecca said her son was groomed and coerced to send explicit and inappropriate pictures on the online gaming platform. The lawsuit accused the platforms of running their business carelessly and dishonestly resulting in the sexual abuse and suicide of the young boy.
“Ethan was a bright, imaginative boy who loved gaming, streaming and interacting with friends online. He started playing on the online gaming platform Roblox around the age of 9, with his parents’ approval and with parental controls in place. When he was 12, he was targeted by “an adult sex predator” who posed as a child on Roblox and befriended Ethan,” Rebecca Dallas’ lawyers stated in a statement on NBC News.
The lawsuit asserted that it all started as a simple conversation and gradually moved to sexual and explicit topics and transactions.
The lawyers claimed that, after some time, the man told Ethan to switch off his parental limits and move their chats over to Discord.
There, he “increasingly demanded explicit photographs and videos” and threatened the 15-year-old Ethan that he would share the images on the internet. Fearful and desperate, Ethan complied leading up to his death.
“Tragically, Ethan was permanently harmed and haunted by these experiences, and he died by suicide at the age of 15,” the complaint said. He died in April 2024 according to the outlet. NBC reported that the lawsuit accused the companies of wrongful death, fraudulent concealment and misrepresentations, negligent misrepresentation and strict liability.
It added that if Roblox and Discord had checked their users before letting them onto the apps, or had used ways to confirm age and identity along with other safety rules, this might not have happened.
Rebecca Dallas thought her son was safe and using the platforms to communicate with friends and play video games.
Following Ethan’s demise, his family found out from the police that the man who prepared him for abuse and suicide had been arrested in Florida. The reason for the arrest was that he had sexually exploited other children using the companies’ apps.
Roblox’s current basic settings do not let older users send private messages to children under 13 years old. However, the complaint by Dallas’ attorney’s pointed out that children can still easily make accounts using false birth dates. When they do this, they get complete access to all the private messaging features.
Not long aago, Jamie Njenga, a Kenyan form Two student had been playing the online game ‘Blue Whale Challenge’ whose last challenge, the 50th, demands that one commits suicide. H
Playing the bizarre game on his smartphone, Jamie became the a casualty of the online game said to have claimed more than 200 lives.
Blue Whale Challenge, which was said to be brainwashing young gamers into killing themselves, was one of the most popular online games in 2017.
After a gamer signed up for the game, he or she was assigned an administrator who provided them with a daily task to complete for 50 days, of which they must send photographic proof of completion.
These tasks were initially simple enough, such as watching a horror movie or waking up at odd times but eventually they were told to inflict harm upon themselves.
However on the 50th and final day, they were asked to kill themselves. Those who got cold feet were threatened that the administrator possessed all their information and would bring harm to them or their loved ones.
According to investigation reports, before his death, Jamie even went online to search for articles on how to commit suicide, reports one of his cousins confirmed to journalists.
“After going through his phone history we found that he had ‘Googled’ how to tie a rope for committing suicide,” said a cousin who did not want to be named.
“When police came to the scene, they found the body hanging from a rope on the balcony of the family house. There was no suicide note but we were informed that he was influenced by some online game. The body was then taken to the mortuary,” said the then Nairobi police boss Japheth Koome.