Karen Kasler
/
Statehouse News Bureau
Ohio’s attorney general is hoping to lead a class action lawsuit against Roblox, an online gaming platform featuring virtual worlds created by other users.
The lawsuit filed by Ohio on Friday accuses Roblox of marketing itself as a safe space for kids and misleading investors about the age safety measures it was using before making a change this past spring. It claims Roblox lied to investors and failed to protect kids from predators and sexual content.
“The internet is the wild wild west,” said Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson. “And when companies fail to take action that they need to take to protect our kids, then they need to be held accountable for that. That’s part of this lawsuit.”
The other part of the lawsuit is recovering $21.5 million that Wilson said two pension funds from October 2024 till this past April. That was when Roblox started rolling out mandatory age verification, separate age-based accounts for kids under 16 and communications limits between adults and minors, which the company says brought a sudden stop to user growth, triggering an 18% drop in stock value and leading Roblox to slash its revenue projections by $1 billion. Wilson filed on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.
Roblox is already facing lawsuits from nearly a dozen states, and has settled with five states for nearly $54 million.
