According to Reuters, Roskomnadzor, a Russian communications regulatory agency, announced a formal ban on Roblox, a giant game platform. In its statement, the regulator explained that this was due to the platform’s “inappropriate content that could have a negative impact on the moral development of the child”.
As one of the largest game platforms in the world, Roblox has over 151.1 million active users, carrying virtual experiences created by countless players — even more players than any game on the Steam platform, such as Grow a Garden, Steal a Brainrot. It is not clear what specific content is on the Roblox platform to provoke Russia, although, according to the Russian media Tas, Roblox has become a channel for extremist and LGBTQ+ content. In recent years, the Russian Federation has introduced increasingly stringent controls on content relating to the subject of LGBT: the Law on Protection of Children against Information Denying Traditional Family Values, enacted in 2013, defines LGBT content as contrary to Russian traditional values.
In his e-mail to Reuters, speaker Roblox stated: “We respect the laws and regulations of the countries where we operate and believe that Roblox provides a positive space for learning, creating and building meaningful links for all. We attach great importance to security protection and have put in place a sound security system covering proactive prevention and monitoring, with the aim of detecting and deterring harmful elements on the platform.” Russia was not the first country to ban Roblox, and Iraq, Turkey and others had previously blocked the platform on the grounds of children ‘ s safety. With the proliferation of users (predominant users are young people under 18 years of age), Roblox has over the past year introduced a number of functions aimed at improving the safety of its users, following a succession of cases in which underage users have been in contact with adults.
For a long time, Roblox has suffered from a long history of user safety problems. Last month the platform announced plans to implement facial age verification for all chat functions to limit communication between minors and adult users. Shortly before, the US Attorney General of Texas initiated a new suit against Roblox for “deception of parents” and “public disregard” of child safety codes. Recently, the Chief Executive Officer of Roblox, Dave Bazuski, was interviewed by the New York Times journalist, Hard Frok, who was anxious to be questioned about the lack of supervision in child protection.