Video game Roblox branded ‘paedophile hellscape’ for children

Billions wiped off company’s value after claims young users exposed to grooming, pornography and violence

A massively popular online children’s video game has been labelled a “paedophile hellscape” by a notorious US investment firm, wiping billions off the company’s value.
Hindenburg Research, one of Wall Street’s best known short sellers, claimed that users of Roblox were openly trading child abuse images and alleged it had found hundreds of accounts named after Jeffrey Epstein.
The investment firm claimed young users were exposed to grooming, pornography and violence, and that safety was being compromised in an attempt to boost profits.
It said there were no age controls on chat rooms dedicated to adult materials.
Bosses had turned down opportunities to improve safety, Hindenburg alleged.
“We found Roblox to be an X-rated paedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech – all of which is open to young children and all while Roblox has cut content moderation spending to appease Wall Street and boost earnings,” Hindenburg said.
Roblox rejected the report’s claims. A spokesman said the company had a “robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on our platform”.
Shares in the company fell by more than 9pc as trading opened in New York, wiping more than $2bn (£1.5bn) off the company’s value.
Roblox is one of the world’s most popular video games and the majority of its 80m daily users are 16 or under, with one in five under nine years old. The average user plays the game for 2.5 hours a day, according to Roblox’s own figures.
The open-world game allows users to socialise and play minigames together, with millions of user-created subgames and chat rooms. The game, which is free and widely available on smartphones, tablets and games consoles, brought in $2.8bn in revenue last year from optional extras such as equipment and outfits that users can buy within Roblox.
Hindenburg, which seeks to profit from companies’ falling share prices, has previously launched campaigns against the Indian industrial tycoon Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, and Nikola, the electric pickup truck maker.
The investment firm said it had found games such as “Escape to Epstein Island”, available to nine-year-old players, and hundreds of games based around Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper recently charged with sex trafficking.
It found more than 900 variations on usernames associated with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased paedophile financier, as well as other usernames based on convicted paedophiles.
“We think Roblox has adopted the Silicon Valley approach of ‘growth at all costs’, whether by misleading or outright lying to investors about its key metrics or by opening its platform to dangerous predators and illicit content unsuitable for children,” Hindenburg explained.
It also said it had spoken to multiple former employees who claimed that Roblox had declined to make investments in child safety in an attempt to boost growth and profitability.
“You can keep your players safe, but then it [sic] would be less of them on the platform,” one former employee was quoted as saying. “Or you just let them do what they want to do. And then the numbers all look good and investors will be happy.”
In addition to raising child safety concerns, Hindenburg said Roblox had inflated user numbers by failing to disclose how many duplicate or bot accounts were on the service. It claimed the company also exaggerated how much time its users spend on the game.
A Roblox spokesman said: “We totally reject the claims made in the report. Safety and civility have been foundational to Roblox since our inception nearly two decades ago, and we have invested heavily throughout our history in our trust and safety efforts.
“Every day, tens of millions of people of all ages have a safe and positive experience on Roblox, abiding by our community standards.
“We take any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by our standards extremely seriously and we have a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on our platform.”