Public relations isn’t something we often talk about on this site, and for a simple reason: it usually has nothing to do with video games. However, as you all know, when a company does something really bad or arguably illegal, all they think about is PR. After all, as recent events have shown, if people don’t trust a company or whoever’s in charge of it, then they’ll boycott the place or company and show them what happens when they do wrong. That doesn’t happen too often in the gaming space, but you do occasionally see companies like Roblox doing “PR tours” to ensure that “people see them in a positive light.”
Case in point, the official Twitter page for the company revealed that some of its team members went to Turkey the other day for “National Sovereignty and Children’s Day.” You can see the post below and the reasons that they were there on that day:
So, yeah, there’s plenty to break down there, including that they went to Turkey for this “grand gesture.” We’ll leave global politics to the side for this one and stick to the Roblox team specifically.
For example, one of the things they noted in the tweet was that the team was discussing “online safety,” which they were doing on “Children’s Day.” Many of you will understand the irony of those things being together. Recently, the game and its dev team have been called out for the “lack” of child safety within the title. Specifically, there have been multiple reports recently of children being tricked into the game by adults due to the safety features being woefully inadequate, which even led to a child kidnapping not too long ago.
A study was even published recently showing how easy it was to circumvent some of the safety features, including the age restriction features and others that are controlled by an AI. It got so bad that even the Attorney General of Florida has subpoenaed the company to learn what it’s truly doing to ensure that children on the platform are safe.
As for “developer training,” while the dev team has been doing a lot of quality-of-life improvements within the game to ensure creators have more freedom in making whatever they want, there have been callouts on this front by both developers and analysts. In short, the dev team takes a lot from these teams, including a lot of their revenue, and doesn’t always “play nice” with them so that they can profit off the game.
