Roblox is a free-to-play video game platform that has become a staple in many childhoods, created back in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, before being released to the public on the 1st of September, 2006. It is a game whose accessibility and simplicity allowed it to thrive among other games of the time.
Two decades after Roblox’s launch, it has steadily become one of the most well known games in the entire world. With an average of 85 million or more players online every single day, it has successfully established itself as one of the games that are unlikely to ever die down. Not all is well however, as the community’s past efforts to better Roblox’s moderation have been largely ignored, negatively impacting their reputation, alongside recent controversies that have successfully sent the Roblox Empire into the ground. In this article, we aim to carefully document the cause and reason behind its decline.
The Story Behind #FREESCHELP
1. The Dangers Lurking in Roblox
To understand the dangers lurking in Roblox, we first need to understand how the platform works, and why it has become such an attractive game for children to play.
Roblox is accessible, it can be played through all kinds of electronic devices, making it available to all ages, including children who might not have any other options due to limitations of devices or financial barriers. Roblox has blocky, colourful graphics that, according to a journal done in 2024 titled “What Preschool Children Do with Technology?” are popular among children. Not only that, Roblox offers a variety of games to play on one platform, granting its players access to different experiences in one place, which does wonders in keeping its player base loyal as it is unlikely that they would grow bored. Roblox encourages children to utilize their imagination through customization of avatars and freedom to build and publish their own games, helping them develop their sense of self and identity from a young age. Last but not least, Roblox is primarily a game where its social interactions are what makes it most appealing. According to a study done in 2025 titled “Playing video games in community spaces and adolescent loneliness: a cross-sectional study”, participation in playing video games with a community since young decreases the sense of loneliness children develop in their adolescents, and grows up with a better perception of friendships. As a result, it does not come off much of a surprise that Roblox’s demographics’ ages are at an average of 13, with roughly 40% of the player base aged under 13.
Furthermore, Roblox runs on a “User-Generated Content (UGC)” model, meaning its players help regenerate new content for them by creating games. It is promoted as a way to give children or aspiring game developers an engine to work on their own ideas and projects with, transforming their players into creators themselves and follows their slogan of “Powering Imagination”.
Now that we’ve understood what makes Roblox so attractive, it must also be noted that online games and platforms, especially MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online) like Roblox, are often at risk of becoming a ground for predators that target children due to the ease and access and lack of maturity among children. It is also worth mentioning that before the most recent controversy, Roblox had already been under fire for years due to its lax moderation concerning child’s safety by: severely neglecting inappropriate games on the platform, slow or even unresponsive moderation that fail to address exploitative content long after the reports, alongside several children getting abducted through Roblox games, according to news articles such as, “California man accused of kidnapping 10-year-old he met on Roblox” on NBC news back in 23rd of April 2025, “Lawmakers help locate child abducted via Roblox” about a 13-year-old girl, posted on Arizona Capitol Times on the 17th of October 2025, and many more throughout the years. Roblox has made no actions to rectify or reinforce their rules and regulations until November 2025, after years of ignoring the public’s protests and pleas.
2. Introducing Schlep
Starting it all off, the story starts with Michael, also known as Schlep on Youtube, a 22-year-old Youtuber who first gained success on his channel through bringing inappropriate content and games on Roblox into light, before kicking off his career and skyrocketing his reputation among the community by starting a series called “To Catch A Robloxian”.
A Preview of Schlep’s “To Catch A Robloxian” Series
In this series, Schlep would create decoy Roblox accounts who appeared underage and documented whoever tried to initiate inappropriate conversations with them. Once enough information has been gathered, or whenever the predators tried to make a move on the decoy, he would then hand over all evidence to the authorities, allowing them to take matters into their own hands. It is worth noting that before seeking the authorities, Schlep always went to Roblox concerning these issues first, however, it was always brushed over, with Roblox refusing to ban players even after contacting them regarding felony arrest. Schlep had also sent proof of a voice chat with the perpetrator in the same game a 10-year-old girl was abducted through, only to be blocked by the company’s CEO, David Baszucki. Through the series, Schlep worked directly with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office by providing evidence that led to six arrests in just the past year. In CrimeCon 2025, he collaborated with Chris Hansen, known for his series “To Catch A Predator” that had inspired Schlep’s own, and conducted sting operations to catch online predators. Together, they brought the fact that Roblox’s safety systems’ failures to national attention.
2.1 Schlep’s Story
Before diving deeper, we wanted to share Schlep’s story and his true intentions behind his willingness to go out of his way ensuring the safety of Roblox’s millions of underaged players. 10 years ago, when Schlep first started playing roblox at 12 years old, he was contacted by a well-known game developer on the platform, who would then attempt to groom Schlep for the next 3 years. These attempts ranged from sending graphic violence and 18+ content to pushing him to engage in inappropriate conversations. After 3 years of the unrelenting mental abuse, Schlep ended up hospitalized.
When his mother tried to file a report for Roblox to hold the game developer accountable, it was all in vain, as Roblox would continue to ignore the reports until she threatened legal action. Even then, the perpetrator was waived of all responsibilities and crimes, as they claimed the rule-infringing actions were done on another platform, completely overlooking the fact that Roblox had been the platform where everything started, with the offender being directly contracted by Roblox itself. The person didn’t face any punishments for his damaging actions, as Roblox continued to keep them in hire for years until a female developer reported them for SA. Witnessing the lack of justice in Roblox’s corporation, Schlep decided to take things into his own hands through “To Catch A Robloxian”, in order to ensure no other childhoods could be ruined due to negligence of moderation and Roblox’s tendency to exempt problematic people.
2.2 What Led to #FREESCHLEP
On the 9th of August 2025, Schlep released a video on his YouTube channel titled “Roblox Is Threatening To Sue Me For Protecting Kids”. In the video, he explained being IP banned by Roblox, and every account he’s ever had was gone, including accounts actively in use to catch predators, and being threatened with legal action if he tried to work around the ban. The reasoning for such drastic measures from Roblox was highlighted in a cease and desist letter sent to Schlep, stating his actions were putting their player base at increased risk, highlighting 3 factors supporting their statement.
From the original letter shown in Schlep’s video, Roblox accused Schlep of “Directing users to move conversations off platform”. However, it had always been clear in Schlep’s videos of documentation that it had always been the predators initiating the change of platform to apps like Snapchat or Discord. More than that, Roblox claimed Schlep was engaging in simulated child endangerment conversations. This claim was also proven incorrect when Schlep’s videos showed the decoy accounts had never talked sexually with predators, always keeping the act of a naive child, since initiating such topics would be entrapment. It had always been the predators initiating sexual conversations. Lastly, Roblox stated Schlep had not used the right channels to report the incidents to Roblox beforehand, which was proven false again, as Schlep had reported them to Roblox, only to be ignored time and time again.
The video went viral immediately, reaching 4.5 million views in less than two weeks, now residing at 5.2 million views as of January 2026. More importantly, the video reached popular YouTubers all around the world, triggering a series of videos being made addressing the issue and bringing it to the public’s attention, reaching even people outside of Roblox’s community. Popular Roblox Youtubers “Flamingo” and “Kreekcraft”, alongside “penguinz0” also known as MoistCr1TiKaL making 3 viral videos, with the most popular reaching 6.7 million views. “Law By Mike”, famously known for his short-form education videos about legal action on TikTok, posted a video titled “We’re Suing Roblox”, now at 16 million views.
“We’re Suing Roblox” by Law By Mike reaching 16 million views
Hours after Schlep’s video was posted, the hashtag #FREESCHLEP started trending on social media. Internet users all around the world expressed support to Schlep, a top comment in Schlep’s video read, “the whole world is on your side homie”, with parents commenting their gratitude under the well as well.
3. Timeline of Events
In this section, we’ve compiled a comprehensive timeline of events up until December 2025. Starting from the timeline of Schlep’s exposing operations to what has transpired from the “#FREESCHLEP” campaign, including the outcomes. However, it should be mentioned that some details would be left out for the purpose of simplicity and reading clarity.
Early 2025: Schlep’s investigations lead to multiple arrests and mainstream media coverage of the “764” extremist groups operating on Roblox that target children and teenagers for grooming, sexual exploitation, and coercion into self harm, violence, and many more.
August 9 2025: Schlep’s video on Roblox’s permanent IP ban and cease and desist letter, accusing him of “vigilantism” and violating user privacy, all accusations stated in the letter have now been proven false.
August-September 2025: The “FREE SCHLEP” movement goes viral, with developers changing their game icons to “Free Schlep” in order to raise awareness and express support for Schlep. There were thousands of players protesting in-game, and on social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
September 5 2025: Roblox CEO David Baszucki stated on CNBC that he’d love Schlep’s inclusion in constructive conversations ensuring Roblox’s platform safety.
September 10 2025: In response to CEO David Baszucki, Schlep’s legal team called it a PR stunt as Schlep remained banned.
4. Direct Consequences after Schlep’s Ban on Roblox
On the 15th of August 2025, 6 days after Schlep’s initial video about Roblox, Louisiana, a US state filed a child protection lawsuit against Roblox, documented on US News in an article titled “Louisiana Sues Gaming Platform Roblox Over Alleged Harmful Content”.
Roblox lost 12.7 billion dollars in market capitalization in mere days since August 6th, first documented on the 27th of August. According to a Forbes article released on December 17 2025, Roblox’s stock has dropped by around 40%. It has continued to drop more than 10% in 2026, according to Yahoo!Finance’s article.
Chris Hansen, popular Internet personality known for catching Internet predators, worked on a documentary investigating Roblox’s handling of child safety issues, partnering with Schlep. The video has since been released, titled “Roblox, Take A Seat”, posted on Schlep’s YouTube channel.
The situation for Roblox spiraled for the worse when Roblox corporation’s executives published a video on their YouTube channel to their TechTalks series, titled “Update on Our Safety Initiatives”, where it was made clear to the public how out of touch with their own community they truly were. In the video, Roblox made statements regarding the “vigilantes” in their community exposing their users to increased risk, implying Schlep was one of them. Vigilantes, by definition, are people who enact enforcement of the law without proper authority, taking things into their own hands with their own definition of “justice”. Schlep never enacted any action even remotely close to what a vigilante would do, only handing over the information he had gathered through his decoy accounts to the authorities and never directly interfered with the situation after that, allowing the police force to decide the fate of the predators. The video only served to push the Internet into supporting Schlep even more.
5. Actions Roblox Has Taken
Initially, right after the “#FREESCHLEP” movement blew up, Roblox took action by banning several inappropriate games, and forcing popular games like Meep City to remove all inappropriate features including animations and outfits.
In November 2025, Roblox launched a new Safety Gold Standard that requires Facial Age Estimation or ID verification to access social features. This system assigns its users into assigned age brackets, for example, users under 9 years old, 9-12 years old, 13-15 years old, 16-17 years old, 18-20 years old, and users older than 21 years old. The age-grouping system limits users to only be able to chat with others in the same or adjacent age groups, unless they’re verified trusted connections. Users under 13 are also restricted from messaging anyone outside of a specific game, and unrated experiences are hidden from younger players by default.
These changes are met with a variety of responses, mostly critiques. According to an article posted on WIRED in January 2026, Roblox’s Facial Age Estimation powered by AI misidentifies users’ ages, putting them into age groups that do not reflect their real age, locking some out of chat functions. Moreover, many users have expressed frustrations on social media platforms like YouTube about being forced to stop interactions with long-term friends they’d met on Roblox, showing footage of chat messages lasting for years unavailable for viewing. Lastly, users platforms such as Reddit expressed discomfort and wariness towards the idea of using the system’s ID Verification.
Other than the Safety Gold Standard, Roblox also released its advanced Parental Dashboard that allows parents remote access to manage their children’s settings from their own devices, keep track of who their children are talking to, and set strict maturity levels for games to prevent them from finding inappropriate games. Despite sounding good on paper, the outcome from this implementation seemed to be lackluster. According to an article by Family Online Safety Institute released in 2025, it is speculated that the dashboard received low parental adoption.
6. Current Situation
As of December 2025, Roblox is taking lawsuits from Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana, with Attorneys General (AGs) calling the platform a hunting ground.
From September to December of 2025, Roblox had been hit with personal lawsuit after lawsuit filed by families.
Since July 2025, Roblox has made claims of investing “hundreds of millions into AI moderation each year to meet our safety mission”. The AI moderation includes moderating billions of chat messages, voice chats, user creations, and UGC (User-Generated Content) items daily.
A petition to remove David Baszucki as Roblox’s CEO has received 303,843 verified signatures as of January 2026.
“Remove David Baszucki” Petition with 303,843 verified signatures as of January 2026
On a more humorous note, during December of 2025, Schlep had a realization that Roblox’s staff team were stalking his twitter account, even though the official Roblox Twitter account had him blocked. Using it to his advantage, he started tweeting out the various inappropriate games that still remained unbanned on Roblox. Sure enough, the games were taken down from the site within minutes to hours after his tweets were posted.
Conclusion
Although it is unlikely for Roblox’s empire built steadily throughout the years to crumble down from this controversy, the hit to their reputation is lasting. With many parents finally seeing the truth about the company from news articles and videos online, it seemed Roblox’s users and their respective guardians have started to become more aware of the dangers that could be encountered on the platform, taking precautions towards it.
Sources
Roblox Wikipedia Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roblox
What Preschool Children Do with Technology?:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382029046_What_Preschool_Children_Do_with_Technology
Playing Video Games in Community Spaces and Adolescent Loneliness: A cross-sectional study:
California man accused of kidnapping 10-year-old he met on Roblox:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kidnapping-roblox-rcna201795
Lawmakers help locate child abducted via Roblox:
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2025/10/17/lawmakers-help-locate-child-abducted-via-roblox/
Florida Attorney General Uthmeier sues Roblox, claiming “serious failures” to protect children from sexual predators by CBS News’s Hunter Geisel:
Attorney General James Uthmeier Issues Criminal Subpoenas to Roblox to Protect Children from Predators by Office of the Attorney General State of Florida:
Attorney General Coleman Sues Roblox: Website of Choice for Child Predators:
https://www.kentucky.gov/Pages/Activity-stream.aspx?n=AttorneyGeneral&prId=1832
Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa Represents Plaintiffs in Newly Created Roblox Child Exploitation MDL:
‘It’s unfathomable’: YouTuber banned from Roblox warns parents after predator busts by KSL.com’s Nate Eaton:
Schlep and Chris Hansen: Exposing Roblox Predators (Full Session):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X7BrVxF1_4
The Deserved Downfall of Roblox (Schlep vs Roblox):
https://youtu.be/AxUJr0ddQZI?si=yLONdLbW11QfE788
Roblox Is Threatening To Sue Me For Protecting Kids:
https://youtu.be/hMqAw_NjHK8?si=c0qIS1VYkcEv4Bbz
Roblox Requires Age Check for Communication, Ushering in New Safety Standard:
https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2025/11/roblox-requires-age-checks-limits-minor-and-adult-chat
Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is A Complete Mess:
https://www.wired.com/story/robloxs-ai-powered-age-verification-is-a-complete-mess
Parental controls for Online Safety are Underutilized:
https://fosi.org/parental-controls-for-online-safety-are-underutilized-new-study-finds/
Driving Civility and Safety For All Users:
https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2024/07/driving-civility-and-safety-for-all-users
Petition to Remove David Baszucki:
https://www.change.org/p/remove-david-baszucki
Schlep became a Roblox Moderator:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Z244jN8c4n8?si=l50BdGxII6ZFZaI5
Written by: Chai Yu Xin & Tamoghna Pragass
Editor: Sarah Wong
