Next month, the Roblox Corporation must respond to the Philippine government regarding concerns about the risks posed to children by their online game platform. The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center placed Roblox on notice last Wednesday, giving it 15 days to discuss why the platform should not be restricted or banned.
The reactions to this threat have largely been mixed. In a Facebook post, Cebu Daily News Digital, a partner publication of the Inquirer, asked readers for their views on a possible ban. The sentiments varied, with many saying that parents should take a more active role in managing online behavior, noting that inappropriate content and online predators are not exclusive to the Roblox platform.
As someone with a relatively libertarian attitude towards issues regarding games and entertainment, I would ordinarily agree. But Roblox is unique in that it has not proven to deserve the benefit of the doubt. I argue that Roblox’s history as a platform is enough to say that it is not incumbent upon our government to allow them to simply operate in good faith.
Maybe I’d feel differently if the platform was rated M for Mature, which is to say, an online experience intended only for adults. In such a scenario, it would be absolutely clear that children who are exposed to inappropriate content and experiences on Roblox are the result of poorly supervised entertainment habits. But children are Roblox’s intended audience, and therefore it is their responsibility to keep the platform cleaner than it currently is.
Some argue that protection measures such as parental controls and age verification are sufficient deterrents. They point to Roblox’s most recent safety update, in which users are required to submit a selfie to its AI-based age verification in order to gain access to in-game chat features.
That system has largely proven to be a failure, with many users being placed in the wrong age categories and verified accounts being sold online to would-be predators. Recent headlines about data leaks from platform holders also makes a database of children’s selfies a massive privacy risk.
I’ve also seen arguments that any ban on Roblox would simply drive users from it to another platform. The prevailing logic here is one of futility, that kids will always find a place to be online and there will always be a developer to provide that platform. “Better that kids be on Roblox than another platform,” one user opined. It’s a kind of “the devil you know” logic that doesn’t really hold up.
My point being that when Roblox is the bad platform, then yes, children should play elsewhere online. Such a ridiculous argument suggests that there’s no point to regulating or banning anything. But the point of a Roblox ban wouldn’t be to eliminate online activity of Filipino children, but to wall off a platform that has failed to protect its users many, many times.
Various international experiences in Roblox
A 2025 report from Aftermath said six people were arrested in connection to grooming on the platform from the beginning of that year till June.
In 2021, People Make Games spoke to a person who received sexually explicit texts when she was 12 from a man who would later be arrested for trying to transport a minor for sex via Uber. In Indonesia last year, police arrested a 20-year-old man from the city of Balikpapan for acquiring sexually explicit images of a teenager and using them for blackmail. Journalists at the Brazilian outlet Núcleo Jornalismo investigated Roblox and found it to be a poorly moderated environment where its users engage in simulated sex acts to earn the in-game currency Robux. And that’s to say nothing of the many concerns regarding the platform’s microtransactions, games with lootboxes and labor abuse happening in its game development scene.
I could enumerate all the worst behavior happening on Roblox and the many ways in which it has failed to moderate or curtail these, but if I did this piece would be several thousand words long. But ultimately, my point is this: Roblox does not deserve the assumption of good faith. A long record stands before it of failing to protect children, and it needs to take real actions, not promises before it can be allowed to operate in the Philippines.