Update:
Thanks to a spokesperson from Roblox, we’ve included three comments from the CEO in a recent BBC interview. We’ll include each statement provided below the original story so you have both views to avoid any misinterpreted comments.
Original Story…
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.
Supplied CEO Comments:
When asked what he would say to any parent worried about letting their kids play Roblox:
My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox. That sounds a little counterintuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decision. I would say at the same time, there are literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people having amazing experiences on our platform. There are tens and tens of parents who call me and say, look, my, my child was having a tough time, they were disconnected, they found connection on our platform and thank goodness they’re here today, they might not be with us if they had not found a connection at that moment in time. So it’s an amazing balance, really our responsibility on safety and civility.
The responsibility that he and the company feel on safety:
It’s a huge responsibility. We’re optimistic that we’re just getting better and better and better with our AI systems on voice, because we believe we have one of the best, if not the best voice civility models out there, so 20,000 people have started using it. We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident is one too many. But at the same time there are so many benefits on our platform. There’s tens and tens of millions of people on our platform every day, and they’re connecting, and they’re learning civility.
The rigour of Roblox’s approach compared to other platforms:
On almost every platform in the world right now, there’s the belief that if you’re 13 and up, you just do whatever you want, and you can connect with people, you can chat with them, you can text with them freely. We’re a bit different in that every piece of text on our platform goes through a filter. We analyze all of that communication, we watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter PII, so it’s not quite the same communication. And behind the scenes, the analysis of what’s going on goes all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.
