Roblox CEO Has A Solution For Parents Who Are Worried About Their Kids Using The Platform, Don’t Let Them On

Parents who are worried about who and what their kids might be interacting with in one of the many games available on Roblox will probably be surprised by the advice co-founder and CEO Dave Baszucki has for them. It’s rather simple, but more than that, it flies in the face of what you’d expect the head of a company to say in regard to their product.

The advice? According to a report by the BBC, when asked about parents being uncomfortable about their kids being on Roblox, he stated, “My first message would be, if you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox.”

He went on to note that while that might sound “counter-intuitive,” he “would always trust parents to make their own decisions”. He’s not exactly wrong. If parents aren’t sure that their kids are safe doing something, they should probably keep them from doing it. That said, it’s difficult to do when every kid has their own device and children aren’t under their parent’s direct supervision all of the time. Some though his message came off as fairly dismissive, or as one podcaster put it, the message could sound “a bit of get out”.

That being said, the game does offer parental controls, which the company has beefed up over time after facing compounding scrutiny. Still, as anyone who has been playing video games or has just been generally active online for any significant amount of time will tell you, if people want to be creepy, they’re going to find a way. That includes finding ways to circumvent systems put in by developers to try and stop them.

The BBC tested this theory by creating a couple of fake accounts, one adult age and the other underage. They then tested the filters, and while messages that directly asked the minor account to move to another platform were caught, they found it easy enough to reword things and get around them. The BBC did take their results, along with other things they discovered such as questionably named games suggested to minors, to Baszucki. His response was that the test emphasized the safety of the platform, showing that people had to move to other platforms in order to actively do anything questionable. As for the games, he reiterated his faith in the age rating systems. The full report can be read on the BBC site.