Roblox reported over 13,000 incidents to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023

Roblox reported over 13,000 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, with around 24 predators arrested for grooming and abusing victims on the hugely popular social game platform in the US.

That's up from 3,000 the year before.

Roblox serves around 77 million players every day, 40% of which are under the age of 13. And as it's available on PlayStation, PC, and a host of mobile devices, it's extraordinarily accessible for children, too.

According to Bloomberg, however, despite responding to 1,300 requests from law enforcement for details on predatory players, several prolific abusers were allegedly able to evade detection on the platform, including Arnold "DoctorRofatnik" Castillo, who ran the phenomenally successful Sonic Eclipse Online.

It was only after sending an Uber to pick up a 15-year-old girl 700 miles away, Castillo was eventually caught and sentenced to 15 years in prison for grooming and sexual abuse.

Roblox says it has spent "almost two decades making the platform one of the safest online environments for our users, particularly the youngest users", and said in a statement to our sister site Eurogamer that Bloomberg's report contained "glaring mischaracterisations about how [it] protects users of all ages" and "fails to reflect both the complexities of online child safety and the realities of the overwhelmingly positive experiences that tens of millions of people of all ages have on Roblox every day."

"As our platform evolves and scales, forging a new future for communication and connection, our investment in preventative safety measures remains fundamental," said Roblox's chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman, in a lengthy response to Bloomberg's findings.

"To be the best in the world at delivering safe and civil online experiences, this is essential. With each passing year, we implement new strategies and technology to achieve gains in speed and effectiveness of our safety and moderation systems.

Kaufman added that "only 0.0063% of [its] total content was flagged as violating our policies around issues such as bullying, hate speech and violent extremism via our detection and reporting systems."

"We continuously measure a wide range of internal metrics – using both automated and human systems – spanning everything from bullying to inappropriate language," Kaufman continued.

"This approach guides our work in fostering the most safe and civil interactions on the internet and, on the most basic level, means that we can say that safety issues are not widespread or systemic on Roblox. And a commitment to this work is critical – we are all part of families ourselves and know that even one incident involving the health or safety of children is horrible. We sympathise deeply with families and individuals who have been impacted.

"We will continue to work tirelessly to keep our users safe and be vigilant against bad actors who might attempt to circumvent our safety systems. And we recognise, too, that this critical work is never finished," he concluded.

"We commit to continually invest and adapt to address the evolving threat landscape to keep our community safe. We are already working on the next generation of safety tools and features as we seek to continue to lead on the future of safety and civility online."