ROBLOX’S stock price dropped by almost 10% following an investigation by Hindenburg Research.
The report included claims that Roblox overinflates the number of players and how much time they spend playing.
It also concludes that despite the young playerbase, Roblox doesn’t do enough to moderate the platform, and that there are concerns with child safety calling it a “pedophile hellscape”.
The drop in stocks means that Roblox is at its lowest price since early August, and the company has fallen by 15% so far this year.
Hindenburg Research is a short seller, meaning that it researches various companies and bets that they will collapse.
The report claims that while Roblox states that around 80million users log in to its game daily, that the figure is overinflated.
Hindenburg claims that as many users have multiple accounts, including bot accounts to farm resources, the number of accounts does not equal the number of players.
The report includes images of players claiming that they have up to 400 ‘alt’ accounts that they keep logged into the game.
As Roblox allows bot accounts to remain in the game 24 hours a day, Hindenburg believes that the reported average player time is also far lower than what Roblox claims.
Hindenburg hired technical consultants who studied more than 7k of the most played games on the platform.
The consultants claim that only around 30million people play Roblox daily, with an average of 22 minutes of playtime per user.
However, the most disturbing claims Hindenburg made about Roblox were concerning child safety.
Since 2018, Police in the US have arrested more than 20 people accused of abducting or abusing minors they’ve met or groomed on Roblox.
Hindenburg’s report suggests that Roblox as a platform creates an environment that allows predators to “efficiently target hundreds of children”.
Creating different accounts on the platform, the report shows in-game images and videos including racial and homophobic slurs as well as Nazi iconography in popular games without age restrictions.
There are also screenshots of accounts claiming to be 14 and under, that say they will trade photos or videos of themselves for the in-game currency Robux.
The report also claims to have found and shows screenshots from 38 groups with over 100k members combined, where accounts openly ask for child exploitation images.
A Roblox spokesperson has responded to the report stating: “We totally reject the claims made in the report.
“The authors are, admittedly short sellers (and have an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox’s business model and results).
“We firmly believe that Roblox is a safe and secure platform and in the financial metrics we report.”
Parents who allow their children to use Roblox are again reminded to strictly monitor their children’s activity on the platform.
If you want to read more on the topic, check out how Roblox reported 13k instances of child exploitation last year.
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