Roblox investor plays hardball over 'weak' parental controls Online games platform Roblox is the subject of a proposed class action by an investor claiming the company wasn't forthcoming about alleged flaws in its parental restrictions. According to the DeKalb County Pension Fund, when the company began to roll out enhanced user controls in late 2021, this "inevitably caused Roblox's …
What are you doing investing in game companies ?
You're a pension fund. Go invest in oil or something else that lasts a long time. Gaming is one of the most volatile markets there is without you idiots throwing a monkey wrench into the mix. You have nothing doing there in the interest of your pensioners.
Go buy some Capita stock. They never seem to lose.
It's not necessarily rich people. It's a pension fund. I'm not familiar with DeKalb County but I doubt the County employees are rich. It's like Pascal said, they made the wrong type of investment for a pension fund and, assuming they're still holding the stock, are now doubling down by suing themselves. Any time you see these reports of stockholders suing a company just remember that the company is the company of stockholders. Its money is their money. All they can get is their own money and they'll have to pay both sets of lawyers for their days in court.
... it looks to me like the folks filing are bitching about not being given an equal opportunity to make money off the backs of children('s parents).
What this brings up is how the hell was Roblox managing to make money WITHOUT parents being in the loop? Last time I checked, here in the United States a child is not legally allowed to enter into a contract without the consent of a parent or guardian. Shirley each and every so-called "micro transaction" is a new and separate contract requiring explicit consent from the parent?
Probably by hoping that parents would ignore small enough transactions made by their children, assume that they didn't have those rights, or assume that actually collecting refunds based on those rights would be prohibitively difficult. And, apparently, it worked out for a while. It unfortunately turns out that scamming people makes money successfully. I'm a little surprised that parents gave their children access to accounts that had active payment methods and the codes to use them, as it's not that hard to have either an Apple or Google account without a payment method or one that requires a separate password to spend any money, and either should remove the child's ability to pay without the parent's knowledge.
I can't tell if the investors are mad that the company didn't tell them they were scamming people and would eventually have to stop, mad that they aren't scamming people now*, or just want them to have included a statement in the IPO documentation along the lines of "Notice to investors: some of our business model relies on scamming people, so if anyone does something about that, we may make less money". Their lawyer's statement doesn't sound like option 1, but I'm really hoping that's a lawyer writing it badly because that's the only acceptable option.
* Not scamming anymore, some terms and conditions apply, do your own investigation to determine the extent to which this claim holds.
Lemme get this straight:
Kiddies could spend too much money on Roblox and use it to buy tix, or whatever.
Someone makes loud noises that children spending should be moderated.
Roblox complies, leading the LESS SPENDING BY THE CHILDREN.
Investors, who apparently got blindsided by this "giving less money to those who spend it means less revenue" concept, now sue Roblox for drop in revenue.
<facepalm>
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
