Roblox CEO Comments Ignite Passionate Debate Amongst Parents and Players

Where do you draw the line?

Have you ever said something that you felt was “brutally honest but needed to be said” and then thought the conversation was over? If you did, and then people started to “bite back” at your comments, you’d likely regret the words that started the whole thing. For a certain Roblox CEO, he got to experience that the hard way when, not too long ago, he made the statement that parents who didn’t want their kids playing his game…should just not let their kids play the game. That “brutally honest” statement immediately sent shockwaves throughout the community, with many unhappy at what he said.

For proof of this, you need only look at this BBC article. Roblox is huge in the UK among kids under 13, and that means that there are plenty of parents within the UK that have seen the “various sides of the game” and how it affects their kids. Many parents called the BBC to let their stories be known, and you might be stunned at how wide the range of stories they got were.

For example, one parent of a 15-year-old said that their “boy was addicted to the game” and that they couldn’t get him off it. In fact, even when this player has gotten bans, the teen was able to figure ways around those bans so he could keep playing it!

Another parent noted how their child, a young girl, was approached by someone on the platform who asked her for very inappropriate things. Thankfully, the daughter didn’t do it, but the interaction was enough to bring the mother to tears. Yet, when she reported it to the game’s support team…she never heard back from them.

Now, to be fair, the BBC also has stories about parents who have had positive tales about what the game did for their children, and that’s to be expected when you have so many people playing this massively expansive title. There will be those who are able to have “pure” experiences without anything being ruined.

However, on the flip side, there will also be tales of those who have been hurt by the game or are addicted to it. The problem here isn’t that these bad tales happen, per se, but that they happen in great numbers, and that the dev team’s response is to “just not let the kid play the game.”

In today’s day and age, kids and teens often know their tech better than their parents, so that’s an easy “pitfall” to get around.