


He told journalists his daughter had not understood what she was doing: “She thought she was playing with monopoly money – it didn’t seem real to her. A month later, he found over $5,000 had been charged to his account for thousands of in-app purchases.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/57979867/OW_Uprising_034.0.jpg)
He told ParentsTogether: “Over the course of two to three months there was an exponential process in both the frequency with which our daughter was buying currency and the amounts she was purchasing - it started at $1 here or there but by the time I realized what was going on she was buying Roblox currency in $120 denominations and had bought eight lots that very day. Richard Walters discovered his 10-year-old daughter had spent $7,200 on Roblox over two months during lockdown, despite setting a spending cap on her purchases when they set up the account. ParentsTogether calls on Roblox to 1) stop baiting children into outrageous spending and 2) put in place robust systems that truly protect kids and parents from financial exploitation.īelow are stories of impacted parents and an outline of some of the factors that make Roblox a financial and emotional minefield for kids: Testimonies
SPENT MONEY ON LOOT BOXES PASSWORD
ParentsTogether urges all parents of children on Roblox to immediately check settings on both the app and third-party services such as iTunes to ensure that in-app purchases are restricted or switched off, and a password required for all purchases. Scammers take advantage of the platform to target children, tricking them into handing over expensive items. Parents are now reporting cases of children being lured into casino-level spending sprees without parents’ knowledge, in some cases racking up bills of thousands of dollars in just days.ĭesire for these “rare” items often pushes children into outrageous spending, with some kids reporting being pressured to buy gifts for others on the platform.
SPENT MONEY ON LOOT BOXES FREE
Despite being aimed at young children and being advertised as free to join and download, the gaming platform allows excessive spending on in-app purchases, such as clothing and accessories for avatars, with each individual purchase costing up to hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars.
