Litigation

Roblox was designed to be a safe digital playground specifically tailored for children to create, collaborate, and interact in immersive environments. But for all its charm and novelty, there seems to be a troubling disconnect between the platform’s glossy child-friendly façade and dark interior.

With parents alleging that the platform is being used to help facilitate child sexual exploitation and grooming – and critics warning that it has become a breeding ground for predators – the platform finds itself at the centre of controversy, particularly following the Guardian’s bombshell report last week.

And amidst the controversy, a pertinent question is being revived – what legal responsibility do platforms have when harm occurs inside their virtual walls?

In Australia, where Roblox boasts millions of young players, regulators and lawmakers are beginning to ask that same question. The eSafety Commissioner has already identified immersive online environments as a “high-risk frontier” for grooming and abuse. But while technology evolves rapidly, the law ostensibly lags.

What is Roblox?

At the time of its launch in the early 2000s, Roblox promised to be the next frontier in education software. Unlike the complex and graphics-intensive games of other companies, Roblox conceived a world not too dissimilar from that of the school playground. Using simple coding language and building blocks, kids could design their own online enclaves and immerse themselves in the ultimate virtual universe.

With over 83 million daily active users last year, its popularity is undeniable. For young people of today, it has become a de facto social media. But unlike other mass-market social media apps, which seldom allow access for kids under 13, Roblox was made for children. According to the company, in 2020, the monthly player base included half of all American children under the age of 16, and as of 2024, around 40% of all players are under the age of 13. And with the market comes unique challenges and risks.

How Are Children Being Exploited?

Roblox is not a traditional publisher – it’s a vast user-generated platform where children design, play and chat. That architecture, along with its immense popularity, makes it a prime target for predators. No longer do they need complex tools to infiltrate the space. Instead, they use features already built into the platform to take advantage of the lacklustre safety measures. While Roblox has community guidelines and moderation tools, the sheer scale of its user base makes it nearly impossible to monitor every interaction. Common methods predators use include:

• Private messaging to build trust and guide the conversation to private messages or less moderated chat rooms.
• In role-play environments, boundaries are quickly blurred, and innocent interactions can mask scripts that slowly desensitise children to inappropriate behaviour.
• Using third-party apps such as Discord and Snapchat to continue contact in less monitored spaces.
• Creating or infiltrating private games constitutes inappropriate behaviour outside public view.
• Sharing or soliciting sexual content, sometimes coercing children to do so.

These tactics can escalate from online grooming to exploitation, trafficking, or real-world abuse. Even when abuse occurs entirely online, the trauma to victims is profound and lasting. In 2023 alone, Roblox was referenced in 13,316 reports of child exploitation made by electronic service providers to the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. It now ranks among the top platforms linked to reports of child sexual abuse material, despite being explicitly marketed to children under 13.

Emerging Litigation

The structure of Roblox blurs traditional legal boundaries, obfuscating questions of liability. On one hand, it can be viewed as a publisher, responsible for what appears on its server, but on the other is merely a platform, like a neutral intermediary.

Whilst Australian law is yet to squarely confront this question, a wave of litigation emerging from the U.S. may provide some clarity in due time. Across multiple states, Roblox has been named in actions alleging failure to protect minors from sexual exploitation and harmful content. These claims are grounded in negligence and are highly complex and fact-specific, requiring deep investigation and expert testimony.

Elsewhere, regulators have started imposing statutory duties of care. The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 requires digital platforms to take “proportionate measures” to reduce the risk of harm to children, including grooming and exposure to pornography. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) similarly obliges platforms to implement risk assessments, transparency reports, and rapid takedown mechanisms.

Australia’s Framework

Australia’s current framework for child safety online rests primarily on two pillars – the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) and the powers of the eSafety Commissioner. The Act gives the Commissioner authority to issue removal notices for harmful content, mandate takedown procedures, and enforce compliance through civil penalties.

While the Act doesn’t create direct civil liability between the platform and the victim, it does establish baseline duties of care. Platforms must maintain systems to detect and remove child-sexual abuse material, violent content and cyber-bullying. Failure to comply can result in enforcement action, reputational damage, and increasingly, public scrutiny.

At the same time, the federal government’s Privacy Act review proposes introducing a Children’s Online Privacy Code, aligning Australia more closely with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. This would require parental consent for data collection from minors and behavioural profiling.

Perhaps most significantly, Australian negligence law – though cautious in extending duties to digital intermediaries – already recognises that entities may owe a duty of care where their systems create a foreseeable risk of harm. In Modbury Triangle Shopping Centre v Anzil (2000) the High Court emphasises that foreseeability alone is insufficient though subsequent jurisprudence shows courts willing to consider relational proximity and vulnerability. A platform designed for children, profiting from their participation, arguably creates that precise relationship.

Social Media Ban

The debate around Roblox is especially pertinent, given that the under-16 social media ban is due to commence soon.  From 10 December 2025, age-restricted social media platforms must take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from creating or keeping an account, with enforcement led by eSafety and Communications. The government is urging targeted, proportionate age checks and has warned platforms against blanket re-verification of all users on privacy grounds.

Whether Roblox will be included in the scope of the ban is not yet clear. In Australia, the eSafety Commissioner has publicly said that including Roblox in the under-16 ban list is “tricky,” because its significant or sole purpose might not be “online social interaction” (a threshold for the ban). So while media reporting indicates that Roblox is on notice to possibly be included, as of now, it is not yet designated as an age-restricted social-media platform under the regime.

The exclusion of Roblox from the ban gives rise to several regulatory and legal issues. Importantly, it does not mean that Roblox is free of all relevant obligations. It remains subject to Australia’s online-safety regime (via the Online Safety Act and various industry codes), and will face regulatory pressure to adopt robust safeguards for children.

The fact that eSafety has “taken Roblox to task” over evidence of children’s exposure to child-sex-abuse material (CSAM), extremist content and grooming vectors on the platform suggests that Roblox’s compliance baseline will be heightened in Australia.  If Roblox markets itself to children, and children are exposed to harmful content, the platform may face claims founded on negligence, breach of statutory duty, misleading/unconscionable conduct, or consumer-law misrepresentations.

Even if Roblox avoids the ban, the regulatory expectation is moving towards “safety by design” for child-users: age-appropriate defaults, chat-restrictions for younger users, parental controls, proactive moderation, and assurance that monetised features (such as virtual currency) do not amplify child-harm risk. In Australia, Roblox has announced age-based safety enhancements, including default private settings, parental consent for adult-child contact, disabled voice/direct chat for younger users, etc.

Looking Ahead

If anything, the controversy around Roblox reflects the fact that the law is steadily treating large digital platforms as institutions when they attract children at scale. Whilst Roblox’s own DSA disclosures and safety messaging reflect this new reality, legal and regulatory efforts are still lagging behind.

If you or anyone you know has been impacted by child sexual abuse, mistreatment or harassment, we can offer trauma-informed legal advice for free and in confidence, to help assess your best next steps.

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