Türkiye Bans Roblox Over Child Safety, Roblox Responds

Türkiye banned Roblox this week, announcing the decision on social media. According to a post on Twitter from Minister of Justice Yilmaz Tunç, the game platform and links in app stores were blocked by the Adana 6th Criminal Court of Peace, citing the “Law on Regulation of Publications Made in the Internet Environment and Combating Crimes Committed by Means of Such Publications”.

As one might assume, given Roblox’s reputation of being a kid-centric game – as well as the issues the company has had involving kids over the last few years, such as being accused of involving minors in content creation – the crux of the issue is protecting children. In fact, the decision to ban Roblox follows last month’s report on Bloomberg that Roblox had reported more than 13,000 incidents of child exploitation in 2023.

According to an article in Türkiye Today, issues that influenced the ban decision included “claims that Roblox hosted virtual parties promoting pedophilia and that ‘Robux’, the platform’s virtual currency, was being distributed by bot account to encourage children’s involvement in these activities”, among other things.

For their part, Roblox has disputed the claims, issuing a statement to GamesIndustry.biz that the company has “a number of features specifically designed to keep kids safe”. The statement went on to say that Roblox “invested in building tools to give parents visibility into their children’s activity.” Roblox also states that the company wants to work with Türkiye to ensure the game is reinstated there.