Texas AG Declares Game Over For Roblox In Child Safety Lawsuit

• Texas AG Ken Paxton sued the Roblox Corporation, which operates a popular online gaming platform used predominantly by children and teens, alleging violations of state and federal consumer protection and online safety laws.
• The complaint alleges that Roblox, despite awareness that its platform enables the exploitation and abuse of minors, failed to take meaningful action to address documented safety risks and falsely represented and deceptively advertised its platform as safe for children. It also contends that Roblox prioritizes user engagement and revenue, allowing unmonitored communication with minor users, insufficient age-verification, and interactive features that adult predators can and have used exploit to identify and contact children. It further alleges that Roblox misrepresented the effectiveness of its safety tools, ignored repeated warnings about risks to young users, and profited from prolonged failure to remediate known dangers, including the circulation of child sexual abuse material.
• The complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, civil penalties, and attorneys' fees and costs, among other relief.
• AG Paxton's lawsuit is the latest development in child online safety, including last month's announcement by the bipartisan Attorney General Alliance of a "Partnership for Youth Online Safety," which aims to reduce online harms through the development and sharing of practical, collaborative, and measurable design-based safeguards, as well as best practices and tools for public and private partners to better protect children online.
• In addition, we have previously reported on efforts by AG Paxton to safeguard youth online, including his investigation into the chat platform Discord. We have also covered other AGs' efforts to protect young users on various digital platforms, including Louisiana AG Liz Murrill's lawsuit against Roblox and Florida AG's investigation of the company.

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