The United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism has opened a formal investigation into the popular online platform Roblox, alleging that the service appears to place greater weight on revenue generation and user engagement metrics than on protecting its youngest users. In a letter addressed to Roblox chief executive David Baszucki—first reported by Kotaku—Senators Josh Hawley and Dick Durbin warned that the "alleged criminal activity on Roblox warrants congressional scrutiny." The senators’ correspondence highlighted a stark contrast between Roblox’s public positioning and the emerging record of incidents involving minors. "You promote Roblox as a safe digital playground for children as young as five," the lawmakers wrote, "but the public record raises serious questions about this promise of safety." Roblox’s response came swiftly.
In a statement to PC Gamer, the company’s chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman, emphasized that the platform is "built on the foundation of safety" and that the company "does not compromise on that commitment." He added that Roblox looks forward to "sharing the facts about how we work to protect children on the platform," signaling a willingness to cooperate with the Senate inquiry. As part of the investigation, Roblox has been ordered to turn over a substantial body of documentation concerning child safety, including records of sexual or physical abuse, bullying, and financial exploitation. The deadline for submission is set for August 31, 2026.
The Senate committee has requested nearly thirty distinct categories of data. Among the items sought are the total number of reports received in 2023, 2024, and 2025 that involve "sexual exploitation, predation, or abuse of users under 18," the internal processes Roblox employs to handle those reports, and the outcomes of each case, such as account bans or other disciplinary actions.
The request also asks for a breakdown of how many of those allegations were reviewed by human moderators versus automated systems, the proportion of reported accounts that were ultimately banned, and specific statistics on bullying reports involving minors across the three years. Additionally, the committee wants to know the investigation and ban rates associated with those bullying incidents. The senators underscored the seriousness of the issue by noting that over the past decade law enforcement agencies have arrested numerous individuals who used Roblox to facilitate violent and abusive conduct against children.
The letter cites instances of grooming, sexual abuse, kidnapping, rape, and even murder that were allegedly coordinated through the platform. These examples are used to illustrate the potential for online environments to become conduits for real‑world harm.
Further emphasizing the scale of the problem, the committee highlighted that Roblox reported more than 65,000 suspected child‑exploitation cases to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2025—more than double the figure reported in 2024. The senators described the platform as being leveraged for the distribution of child sexual abuse material, participation in sexually explicit (and sometimes violent) virtual experiences, coercion of minors into creating explicit content, and the orchestration of in‑person meetings that put children at risk.
"It is heartbreaking," the letter reads, "and Congress will not look the other way." Roblox is not the only entity facing legal pressure. Several U.S. states, including Louisiana, and local jurisdictions such as Los Angeles County, have filed lawsuits alleging that the company fails to adequately protect children from danger. Internationally, the Australian government has voiced comparable concerns, describing the situation as "of deep concern to many Australian parents and carers." In response to mounting criticism, Roblox has introduced a series of safety enhancements over the past few years.
These measures include restricting direct messaging for users under the age of 13, deploying global facial‑recognition checks to verify user identities, adding a "sensitive issues" tag to flag potentially harmful experiences, and tightening moderation policies with more aggressive enforcement actions. While these steps represent progress, the Senate investigation suggests that regulators and lawmakers believe further action is required to ensure that child safety is not compromised in the pursuit of growth and engagement. The upcoming months will likely see intense scrutiny of Roblox’s internal processes, data handling practices, and the effectiveness of its safety tools. Stakeholders—including parents, child‑advocacy groups, and investors—are watching closely to see whether the company can demonstrate that its protective framework is robust enough to meet both public expectations and legal standards.
The outcome of the Senate inquiry could set a precedent for how digital platforms that cater to minors are regulated in the United States and possibly influence policy discussions worldwide.