Keep kids off Roblox if you're worried, its CEO tells parents

Parents who are worried about their children being on Roblox should not let them use it, the chief executive of the gigantic gaming platform has said.

The site, which is the most popular in the UK among young gamers aged eight to 12, has been dogged by claims of some children being exposed to explicit or harmful content through its games, alongside multiple reported allegations of bullying and grooming.

But its co-founder and CEO Dave Baszucki insisted that the company is vigilant in protecting its s and pointed out that "tens of millions" of people have "amazing experiences" on the site.

When asked what his message is to parents who don't want their children on the platform, Mr Baszucki said: "My first message would be, if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox."

"That sounds a little counter-intuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions," he told BBC News in an exclusive interview.

Responding to the interview, Mumsnet boss Justine Roberts said parents on the forum had spoken of how they struggled to manage their children's use of Roblox.

"There are s, and our s would urge constant parental supervision," she told the BBC.

"But we all know that with the best will in the world life sometimes gets in the way.

"If you've got multiple children you're looking after and things happen, and you probably can't 24/7 watch everything they're doing, even if you've got all your s set."

Ellie Gibson - from the Scummy Mummies podcast - said Mr Baszucki's message risked sounding "a bit of a get out".

"It's much easier said than done, especially when all their friends are playing it," she told the BBC.

US-based Roblox is one of the world's largest games platforms, with more monthly s than Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation combined. In 2024 it averaged more than 80 million players per day – roughly 40% of them below the age of 13. Its vast empire includes some 40 million -generated games and experiences.

In the UK the Online Safety Act, which comes in to force in April, has strict laws for all tech firms specifically aimed at protecting children from online harms.

But Mr Baszucki says he remains confident in Roblox's safety tools and insists the firm goes above and beyond to keep its s safe.

"We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many," he says.

"We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement."

Players who choose not to display what he calls "civility" can face temporary time-outs and longer bans, and Roblox claims to analyse all communications that between on the platform, increasingly using more advanced AI systems and other tech to do so — and anything flagged is sent for further investigation.

In November last year, under 13s were banned from sending direct messages, and also from playing in "hangout experiences" which features chat between players.

However, the BBC was able to create two fake s, one aged 15 and one aged 27, on unlinked devices and exchange messages between the two.

While the filters caught our attempts to overtly move the conversation onto a different platform, we found easy ways to re-word requests to chat elsewhere and make suggestions about playing more adult games.

When we showed the Roblox boss these findings, he argued that our example highlighted the comparative safety of Roblox: that people felt they had to take content which might breach Roblox's rules to other platforms.

"We don't condone any type of image-sharing on our own platform, and you'll see us getting more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is on this type of behaviour," Mr Baszucki says.

He its there is a delicate balance between encouraging friendships between young people, and blocking opportunities for them come to harm, but says he is confident Roblox can manage both.

We also put to him some Roblox game titles that the BBC has discovered were recommended by the platform to an 11 year-old recently, including:

• 'Late Night Boys And Girls Club RP'
• 'Special Forces Simulator''
• 'Squid Game'
• 'Shoot down planes…because why not":[]}