(NewsNation) — Iraq has joined several countries — including China, Turkey, Oman and Qatar — to ban U.S. user-generated video game platform Roblox over child safety.
The government says it was motivated by concerns the game allowed direct communication to users in a way that exposed children to attempts of exploitation or cyberextortion and was “incompatible with [their] social values and traditions,” according to Reuters.
Roblox Corp told Reuters that safety was its top priority and wanted to work with the government to restore access. A Roblox spokesperson said, “We strongly contest recent claims made by the Iraqi authorities, which we believe to be based on an outdated understanding of our platform.”
Earlier this year, Roblox temporarily suspended certain communication features like in-game chat and tightened moderation of content for users in Arabic-speaking countries like Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq, according to Reuters.
Iraq joins several in the Middle East who are cracking down on virtual worlds. However, there are others like the UAE that are aggressively exploring and investing in the video games industry.
This comes as Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a subpoena to Roblox on Monday, demanding information about how the platform sets age-verification requirements, moderates chat rooms and markets itself to children.
This is just the latest case as lawsuits mount against Roblox about this same issue. For example, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sued Roblox for enabling child exploitation and failing to safeguard minors from predators.
Earlier this month, Roblox said it was recruiting parents to help shape products and policies as a “key part of our vision to build the safest place on the internet and foster a positive environment for users of all ages.” They hope to bring up to 40 parents and caregivers together from the U.S., Canada, Mexico and all European countries with the goal of expanding to other regions in the future. They say this is just the latest step in the company’s civility efforts to empower families to use technology safely and responsibly.
Roblox also says they are planning to expand age estimation using facial age estimation technology, ID age verification and verified parental consent, providing a more accurate measure of a user’s age than simply relying on user-generated information.
Roblox launched in 2006 and boasts over a billion downloads, an average of more than 100 million users a day and a monthly average of 380 million unique users, according to Reuters.