[Rotdhizon]

As someone in their early 20s who dabbles on Roblox with some frequency, this completely contradicts my own experience. Granted I only play games that show up in the popular games section on the homepage. I don't go out of my way to find the weird stuff. I suppose it is similar to the Elsagate stuff kids were getting into on Youtube, kids have a remarkable talent to go down rabbit holes you didn't know existed and find the disturbing content. Roblox also has a really bad problem with child/teen dating, so much so that they now have an in game report option specifically for dating behavior.

I imagine it is extremely difficult for the Roblox staff to moderate the disturbing content as they have their hands full around the clock. From people creating thousands of bot accounts to boost their games, security problems revolving around people getting their games/assets/money stolen, people constantly finding new ways to cheat in game, to the issues that you described. I'd also think that the people who engage in the behavior that you described are seasoned in what they do, knowing how to avoid the watchful eye of moderation and parents alike.

[Lendal]

Reminds me of GTA. I stayed far away from it because it had an awful reputation in the media. Finally when GTA5 came out I tried it for the first time and it was nothing like the stories. I was expecting terrible awful very bad things. But it wasn't anything like that when I tried it.

So I think the bad stories are more a reflection of the players playing it than the game. For whatever reason certain types of people will gravitate toward the cesspool hidden underneath the actual game and find a way to turn the whole experience into a monstrous tragedy.

[asdff]

Keep in mind early GTA was a different beast, especially in the eyes of the rampantly vocal suburban moms whose understanding of videogames consisted of frogger and tetris, if they were particularly savvy. How should they react when they see their 8 year old beat a policeman and a dozen civilians to death with a three foot purple dildo on the living room tv, then get head in an alley in a stolen car?

It really does seem outrageous on paper, but we know now that M games are no worse than a kid seeing an R rated movie.

[Faark]

"Protect the kids" reporting about an offline game hardly compares to the dangers from online communities. I don't behave like a 12 year old girl, thus I'll never be treated like one. Even if I wanted to experience it, I'd probably be unable to even imitate one. So its a bit more than just people finding it awesome that you can get your money back by killing the hooker.

[pastrami_panda]

I just wanted to point out that the main thing about Elsagate was how easily you'd get caught in an infested recommendation spiral without actively searching for it. The whole thing was especially disturbing due to the fact that you could watch a popular theme and the recommendation engine would quickly find more and more sinister videos.

[frgotmylogin]

You are spot on about the weird stuff being down rabbit holes of suggestions. There is also a lot of weird/disturbing stuff you can search up in their IDE/level editor app thing. The rules I put in place for my kid were:

-grown ups do any content searching in the level editor

-ask before you try new games

-no games that haven't been voted on much

-chat filter stays on