A parent has been left horrified after her daughter gained access to a “sex room” while she was playing Roblox.
The girl, aged six, entered the virtual room after she was invited by a ‘friend’ she had made on the game.
The room was called “sex room” and depicted characters performing sexual acts on one another.
The girl’s mother told Kidspot:
“Luckily I was sitting next to her and noticed out of the corner of my eyes that one of the characters had breasts so it made me look closer.
“She had absolutely no idea what she was looking at, but I would hate to think about what would have been said to her.”
Roblox is a game that’s popular with children that allows users to design and build a virtual 3D world.
The game encourages user-generated content allowing users to create their own world, adventures, and interact with one another.
A spokesperson for Roblox said that they were “outraged” to discover that the game was being used to generate such explicit content.
They said:
“We were outraged to learn that Roblox’s community policies and review process were subverted to publish inappropriate content.
“Roblox games, which can be built from millions of building blocks, can be vast. While we can’t review everything that has been built within the game, our moderation team reviews all content uploaded into each game – such as photos, videos, and sound files – before it is published.”
They also said that in this case, the game in question was removed.
There has been much debate online as to whether children should be allowed on Roblox unsupervised.
However, until now, the game has largely been said to be safe enough when parental controls are used.
“Like all multi player online games with user generated content,” writes child cyber safety blogger the Internet Safety Lady, “there is a risk of stranger danger and adult content.”
The game has a three-star rating on internet safety forum Common Sense Media, which recommends a minimum age of 10 for players.
Roblox also toughened its child safety features last year, including adding parental controls. You can find out more about them here.
