Roblox bans have been given out over a heinous act committed by a group of players against a seven-year-old girl’s avatar. Roblox is best known as being ‘the number one gaming site for kids’, taking on a cartoon-like style and allowing players to craft in a way that is similar to Minecraft. It’s a popular app and as a quick search on YouTube will tell you, it has a dedicated fanbase that grows by the day. To say it’s got an audience is an understatement.
Yet the game is now under fire, after the incident mentioned above caught the attention of mother Amber Peterson. Peterson posted only a few days ago on Facebook that her daughter had been playing Roblox on her iPad while she read to her, however had stopped to show her an incident that Peterson describes as ‘haunting’. She then went on to describe how two male avatars had raped her daughter’s avatar, one avatar having crafted a virtual penis for his character, by ‘pretending’ to rape her avatar. A female avatar joined in later on.
According to GamesIndustry, a Roblox spokesperson confirmed that it had banned the player responsible and added that they were “outraged” that the game’s code of conduct had been violated in such a way. They went on further to state that they “have zero tolerance for this behavior. Our work to ensure a safe platform is always evolving and remains a top priority for us.”
This seems like a poor excuse from where we’re standing, and while there is the possibility that Peterson, despite saying she had put the game’s security settings at its highest level, may have actually not maximised the security settings by accident, it doesn’t change the fact that a young individual has suffered because of a terrible act that absolutely nobody deserves to be put through.
