A Disaster for a Generation of Gamers: Roblox Suddenly Shut Down in Russia 0 33

At the same time, in other countries, Roblox is criticized for different reasons: for possible exploitation of child labor and for the claim by critics that pedophiles can easily operate on the platform, contacting young players.

"Does this mean we will never play Roblox again?" wonders a girl of about ten.

"This is awful! Why did I donate there?" says her older sister, on the verge of tears.

"But how happy I am that you will now spend less time on your phones," says the mother filming the children off-camera.

Such videos have been recorded in recent days by both teenagers and their parents in Russia: on December 3, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the online platform Roblox.

Children in the published videos are crying, expressing outrage, and someone promises to "Roskomnadzor themselves" if the game is not returned (this is how suicide has been referred to on the internet after the RKN banned the dissemination of information about suicides). Some write angry comments directed at government agencies: "Hello, RKN, listen to the children and players!"

In the Telegram channel of the director of the "Safe Internet League" Ekaterina Mizulina, players wrote thousands of comments like: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN BLOCKED HELLO I SPENT 9 YEARS ON IT" or "is this really a free country? all decent apps are blocked."

What is Roblox?

Roblox is not just one game, but a whole universe with millions of games programmed by the users themselves. The audience for the online platform is gigantic: 151 million users log into Roblox daily. The majority of the audience is underage. About 40% of users have not yet reached the age of 13.

The formats of games on the platform are varied, and the choice is enormous: you can grow a garden, raise and develop pets, dress your avatar in different outfits for users to evaluate. There are "shooters" like the popular Counter Strike in a less realistic setting, games where you need to find your way out of a maze or escape from a monster, and detective games where the player solves a murder. As is usual in multiplayer games, users can communicate with each other, and their avatars can interact.

Using a simplified programming language that even a child can master, these games are created by the users themselves: in the same way that YouTube content is created by bloggers.

Former editor-in-chief of the Gaming.News portal Igor Belkin explained to the BBC that the level of popularity of these homemade games is "just insane." "The audience is larger than that of Dota 2, Counter Strike, Battlegrounds," Belkin lists the most popular video games among adults. "The things that happen inside Roblox make top Steam games look like some indie project [in terms of user numbers]."

According to a statement from Roskomnadzor, law enforcement found on the platform "materials promoting and justifying extremist and terrorist activities," as well as calls for "illegal violent actions" and additionally, LGBT propaganda (the non-existent "LGBT movement" in Russia is banned and declared an extremist organization).

This is despite the fact that Roblox has shown it is willing to cooperate with Russian authorities. In January 2025, the RKN had already made claims against the company regarding LGBT, and Roblox even removed content at its request.

Gaming journalist Igor Belkin insists that this ban is a truly serious loss for children.

"Among the generation that is currently 14 and younger, a huge number of children play this. For them, it is the same as all social networks combined are for us," he said in a conversation with the BBC. "They find friends there, a place for entertainment, they communicate, they live there. We come up with ways to bypass blocks for various Telegrams and Discords [and other messengers that are blocked by Russian authorities] to be close to loved ones, but children do not have that opportunity. Well, we all went through this, even as adults. You can imagine how bad it is for children."

Rumors about the impending ban on Roblox in Russia appeared in November: at that time, a high-profile murder occurred in St. Petersburg. A 13-year-old girl stabbed her mother and set the apartment on fire. She quickly confessed to the crime, and law enforcement, having studied her Roblox account, suggested that she was planning the murder or fantasizing about it by playing out scenarios on the online platform. Then, Deputy Oleg Matveychev stated that if the "American game" Roblox contributes to juvenile crime, it should be blocked.

But around the world, Roblox is criticized for another reason: children are not becoming criminals, but victims of crimes.

Belkin emphasizes that Roblox has "huge problems with ensuring the safety of its most vulnerable young users." Adults infiltrate the children's platform and gain the trust of children, which opens the door for immoral actions against minors.

Roblox is Unsafe, and Here’s Why

Bloomberg Businessweek calculated that since 2018, two dozen people in the U.S. have been accused of corrupting children they met through Roblox.

A typical situation looks something like in the lawsuit of a mother from South Carolina: an adult user befriended her 10-year-old daughter in the game, pretending to be a boy her age. The perpetrator persuaded the 10-year-old girl to send him explicit photos via chat in exchange for Robux, the virtual currency used in games to purchase additional features. By that time, Roblox had long been a regular part of the girl's life: she had been playing these online games since she was six, and her mother allowed her, assuming that "appropriate safety measures" were in place.

Often, criminals managed to take their relationships with children offline. In 2022, a 33-year-old man kidnapped a 13-year-old girl in Kansas: they met through Roblox, and soon the kidnapper convinced the child to run away from home, took her in his car, and raped her several times before he was caught.

Sometimes such stories ended in the death of minors. In 2024, a 15-year-old boy committed suicide. When he was 12, a pedophile met him in Roblox, lured him into sending intimate photos, and then blackmailed him, threatening to publish them. The lawsuit states that the teenager was "irreparably traumatized" and could not cope with these events.

A Texas YouTube blogger with the nickname Schlep decided to fight pedophilia on his own. In his teenage years, he admitted he himself had become a victim of grooming in Roblox. When he grew up, he began to catch pedophiles "in the act" and report on it in videos. This led to real results: six men were arrested for immoral actions. But the Roblox company banned the blogger on its platform and threatened him with a lawsuit if he continued to "take the law into his own hands."

A journalist from The Guardian created an account posing as an 8-year-old girl and played games for a week. She found that she could access content that was not suitable for children, despite the "parental control" feature being enabled. She did not encounter any pedophiles, but experienced the cruelty of other users firsthand: one user's avatar sat on her virtual face, while another threw poop at her.

Not only the parents of affected children are suing the company, but the state as well. The Attorney General of Texas filed a lawsuit against the company in November and stated: "We cannot allow platforms like Roblox to continue operating as online gaming venues for pedophiles, where the well-being of our children is sacrificed for corporate greed."

What is Being Done for Children's Safety?

In the West, the platform is not blocked. Currently, Roblox is blocked in several countries, such as China, Turkey, and Iraq. These countries, like Russia, are used to solving all problems with bans, believes Igor Belkin: "This is the modus operandi of the state: if they don’t like something, instead of solving the problem, they just block it."

Australia this year banned children under 16 from using any social media. It is from Australia that Roblox began to introduce its new feature: age verification through facial scanning, which must be done within the app. In Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, this will become mandatory in December, while in other countries it will be in January.

Thus, the company promised to block children's ability to chat with older strangers. Users will be divided into groups: under nine years old, from nine to 12, from 13 to 15, from 16 to 17, from 18 to 20, and 21 and older. Children will only be able to communicate with other children in their age group and those close in age. The selfie verification system will not allow an adult to pass themselves off as a child and start chatting with children.

In a world where a fake face can be generated using neural networks, this is all "a dead end" and doomed to fail, believes Igor Belkin. The process of verifying users' faces will be automated, and fooling one neural network with a photo generated in another is not a difficult task, he is convinced.

Children in Roblox are not only unprotected from pedophiles. Young players can fall prey to scammers who will extract money from them: for example, promising to sell something valuable and deceiving them or asking for photos of their parents' bank cards. The Robux currency is, of course, in-game, but quite real: real money must be deposited into the game. However, users can also earn money on Roblox, especially if they create their own game. But withdrawing money from the platform is certainly more difficult than depositing it, plus the platform takes a commission. Critics of the company have insisted that Roblox profits from child labor, albeit voluntary.

So, in criticizing Roblox, Russian deputies are mainly just repeating what is being said around the world.

There is a version that the RKN blocked Roblox because it is yet another way of communicating without censorship. In Russia, foreign messengers are regularly blocked — a day after Roblox, Snapchat was blocked in the country, and at the end of November, the blocking of WhatsApp — the most popular messenger in Russia — began. The authorities are trying to drive users into the state-controlled messenger Max.

Igor Belkin believes that in this sense, the blocking of Roblox changes nothing. Chat exists in every online game where players interact with real people, not just NPC characters. To get rid of them, Roskomnadzor would have to block all games on the internet. "The idea that the RKN is thus cleaning up uncontrolled chats seems too far-fetched to me," he told the BBC. "Without blocking everything that exists in the gaming market now, it is impossible."