Roblox has become a flashpoint in Southeast Asia’s debate over child safety online, as officials scrutinise whether young users are being exposed to harmful subcultures on the gaming platform. But analysts warn that it might just be a convenient scapegoat for wider failures in how children are protected online and offline.
Most recently, Roblox has been linked to the August 18 school shooting in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga, where a Grade 9 student brought two firearms to a private school, live-streamed the attack and killed one schoolmate before taking his own life.
Authorities were quick to identify the cause.
The suspect was a “Roblox fanatic”, Zamboanga Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso said.
Characterising the attack as a “case of desensitisation to violence” linked to the games children play online, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla called for a total Roblox ban on August 20.
Remulla had said a day earlier that authorities had a “great degree of confidence” that Roblox had influenced the shooter’s actions, even as they had yet to conduct a forensic examination of his devices. “Roblox in itself is not a dangerous game. It is the chat group … that is where the coaxing happens, where the radicalisation takes place.”
