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RJust before last week’s newsletter came out, a short-selling firm called Hindenburg Research published a extremely critical report about Roblox. In it, they accused the publicly traded company of inflating its metrics (and therefore its valuation) and, more worryingly for the parents of the millions of children who use Roblox, also called it a “pedophile hellhole.” The report alleges some creepy discoveries within the game. Researchers found chat rooms of people purporting to exchange images and videos of children, and users claiming to be children and teenagers offering such material in exchange for Robux, the in-game currency. Roblox firmly rejects the statements Hindenburg made in his report.
Roblox, for those unfamiliar with the title, isn’t so much a game as it is a platform (or, as its corporate communications people would like you to think, a metaverse). It claims to have 80 million daily users (a figure Hindenburg says is inflated). You log in, customize your avatar, and from there you can jump into thousands of different “experiences” created by other users, from role-playing cities to pizza delivery mini-games to cops and robbers games and, unfortunately, much less. salty stuff like Public Bathroom Simulator (which the creator said they made when they were 12 “before I realized bad people existed”). Because games on Roblox are created by players, the site must be constantly moderated. The company’s moderation team faces a tsunami of content every day.
It’s important to recognize that Hindenburg has a vested interest in Roblox’s stock plummet: he has taken a short position in the company (meaning he will profit if the stock’s value declines). Various other companies have seen their shares fall after reports about them were published. But it is also possible to independently verify some of the claims made in the report. A very simple search on the platform reveals that these in-game chat groups that apparently request and exchange images exist and are active; and that accounts with disturbing usernames referencing child abuse and Jeffrey Epstein are real. The company removed some of the specific games and accounts referenced in Hindenburg’s report last week.
In its defense, Roblox said in a statement posted online: “Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe, positive experiences on Roblox and adhere to the company’s community standards. However, any security incident is horrible. We take very seriously any content or behavior on the platform that does not meet our standards.” The company added: “We continually evolve and improve our security approach to detect and prevent malicious or harmful activity. This includes text chat filters to block inappropriate words and phrases and disallow user-to-user image sharing on Roblox.” (Report in more detail in this article for The Guardian.)
This, of course, is not the first incendiary report about Roblox. In recent years, stories from CNN, The Observer, Wired, and many other publications have found a lot of inappropriate content on the platform, and there are also several proven cases of child predators using Roblox to groom their victims. Last July, Bloomberg detailed one such case, in which a man was sentenced to 15 years in prison after grooming a minor and transporting her across state lines for sex, as part of a much larger investigation into the platform’s obvious flaws. when it comes to moderation and child safety.
Many parents will wonder what to do. Even if the figure of almost 80 million daily users is inflated, as Hindenberg claims, Roblox is part of the daily online lives of millions of children. Anyone who has school-age children knows that it is used a lot. Is Roblox a danger to children? Should you stop them from playing immediately?
Despite everything presented in this Hindenburg report and others from the past few years, I believe it is entirely possible for children to play Roblox safely. It has decent parental controls that limit or eliminate the extent to which strangers can contact your child. when used correctly. If I had a kid playing Roblox, I’d check and double-check all of those settings, making sure the “friends list” feature is set to only include real-life friends. I would also be extremely reluctant to let younger children play this game unsupervised, to minimize the chance of children encountering (or even seeking out) the many inappropriate games that regularly seem to escape Roblox’s moderation efforts.
Basic online safety education is extremely important for any child who uses the Internet. Given the multiple convictions of child predators who have used Roblox to approach children, the presence of pedophiles on this platform is impossible to deny, but its scope is difficult to objectively assess. In my opinion, some of what Hindenburg highlights in her report is more likely to be the product of teenage masters than actual child predators. Roblox has a huge population of teenagers who have grown up with the game; When I see 900 variations of the username Jeffrey Epstein, I don’t necessarily see 900 active child molesters, but rather 900 14-year-old idiots trying to be funny.
Full disclosure: I haven’t let my kids play Roblox and I have no intention of starting. I don’t think any publicly traded company can be trusted to put the interests and safety of children before profits. Moderation is expensive and difficult, and no one in Big Tech has come close to creating a system that prevents harmful material from appearing on these types of open platforms, or that prevents people from abusing them for their own purposes. Justifiable safety concerns aside, there are simply hundreds of better games that better serve kids’ imaginations and curious minds, rather than trying to squeeze money out of them to pay for endless cosmetics and in-game “experiences.”
Only offline games completely eliminate the risk of children coming into contact with inappropriate content. One thing becomes very clear even after a few hours exploring Roblox: it’s not difficult to find things that are extremely worrying.
what to play
Nevaa game about a warrior and her wolf, took me by surprise. I’ve played so many beautiful-looking, artistic indie platformers that it’s hard for one to really make me feel anything. But there I was, crying horribly in front of my TV after a couple of nights with Neva. It takes place over four seasons: at first your wolf is a cub that you must protect, and then he becomes a magnificent antler-crowned creature who can protect you. Using a stylish combination of jumping, double jumping, running and punching, you explore an incredibly beautiful but horribly corrupt natural world, and try again and again to defeat the demons that are poisoning it. It’s worth a few hours of anyone’s life.
Available in: PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox
Approximate playing time: 3-4 hours
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what to read
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On Friday, a group of people who worked on the acclaimed psychological/political study RPG Disco Elysium announced that they are forming a new studio to work on a spiritual successor to the game. Then, confusingly, it announced a different new study. the same thingthis time with a trailer. And then, the same day, a third group announced other spiritual successor. like one viral tweet Put like this: “The splitting of Disco Elysium into three separate worker cooperatives, all claiming to be successors, is the biggest commentary on communism the game could ever hope to be.”
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A premium hybrid of a video game book and magazine, IN, launches today. Guardian Games correspondent Keith Stuart and I have articles in the first issue; naturally, yours is about a Sega arcade board and mine is about Nintendo deep cuts.
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game monsterPokémon developers have suffered an attack of almost unprecedented proportions– Details on unreleased Pokémon games and movie projects, employee information, source code, and details on the series’ development over the course of decades now they are out there.
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And to cap off a truly strange week of video game news, nintendo announced an alarm clock that watches over you while you sleep. It’s called Alarm, and it’ll wake you up to the not-so-soft sounds of Mario, Splatoon, or Zelda, synchronized with your groggy morning movements. Is available now for those willing to jump through some hoops (and pay £90).
What to click
Question Block
This week’s question is from the reader. Matthew:
A couple of games I’ve played recently have really stuck with me, because they prioritize intuition and deduction over skill: the Return of the Obra Dinn series and The Curse of the Golden Idol. But They don’t stand up to being repeated once you’ve solved them. Are there other games that, while brilliant, don’t work on a second playthrough?? And if you have recommendations for games that tickle the gray cells, that would be great!
Many puzzle games are like this, right? That wonderful feeling of “aha!” when you get a solution it just doesn’t happen the second time. I don’t remember the solution to all the puzzles, for example in The Witness, but I wouldn’t want to go through the agony of trying to solve them again either. The only exception to this second game rule in the puzzle pantheon is, for me, the old LucasArts point-and-click adventures. I’m playing them again for the jokes, not the puzzles.
As for recommendations: you probably already know this, but the next Golden Idol game, The rise of the golden idolIt comes out next month and there’s a demo available now as part of Steam Next Fest. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, from earlier this year, is also excellent. Baba is You is an old favorite that incorporates a bit of platforming logic with the puzzlement. I still sometimes think of The Talos Principle, which infuses its puzzles with much pontification about the nature of consciousness. Last year’s Cocoon is also mind-blowing, disturbing and challenging.
If you have a question for the ask block, or anything else to say about the newsletter, hit reply or email us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.