Türkiye has officially decided to ban Roblox, a free-to-play game released in 2006. This decision comes as the government grew increasingly concerned that Roblox may be a way for child predators to access their victims, leading to child exploitation.
This isn’t the first time that Roblox has been in hot water for such things. Multiple reports have now suggested that Roblox isn’t safe for children to play on and that there isn’t enough safeguarding for those who do.
In July, Bloomberg wrote that Roblox had sent over 13,000 reports to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children in 2023 alone. A number like that suggests that there are no real safeguards for children in Roblox. It’s also a game where children can easily purchase Robux and other cosmetics using a parent or guardian’s credit card without them even realizing it. This has happened far too often and just adds to the hot water that Roblox currently sits in.
On August 7, Türkiye’s Minister of Justice made the decision to ban Roblox outright in the country, announcing this decision on X. They did this “due to content that could lead to the exploitation of children.”
While users can create content in-game and even earn money from it, there are no real rules and regulations regarding what pops up. As a result, there has been a significant increase in sexual content on Roblox, with reports in recent months only continuing to increase.
Contradictory to the reports, Roblox released a statement to Eurogamer claiming that it had spent the last two decades making the game “one of the safest online platforms” for its youngest players.” In addition to this, they responded to their plans moving forward with Türkiye and their lawmakers. “We respect the laws and regulations in countries where we operate and share local lawmakers’ commitment to children. We look forward to working together to ensure Roblox is back online in Türkiye as soon as possible.”
However, the reports released in the past year aren’t new information. In 2021, a report was released about the exploitation of young children making games to make a profit. This report was released by People Makes Games, and the Studio Head of Roblox responded by saying that they are giving children in the slums a job where they can sustain themselves by creating content in Roblox.
As this statement received a lot of backlash, Roblox had to make an official statement claiming most of the content creators were over 18 and that the company didn’t hire minors.
