Report claims black market Roblox gambling sites are targeting children

According to a new report, several unofficial sites are "aggressively targeting" young Roblox players, allowing them to gamble the game's paid, premium currency with little to no effort to verify its users.

The details:

• Journalist Cody Luongo claims in his esports and betting newsletter Sharpr that "a handful of black market casino sites [are] aggressively targeting the franchise's youthful audience and facilitating illegal gambling services." BloxFlip, RBXLWild, RBXFlip, and RBXGold allow players to sign into their Roblox accounts to deposit Robux, the platform's virtual currency, which can then be used to play a variety of "luck-based casino and head-to-head games," with the option to add funds directly via credit card, cryptocurrency, and store-bought Roblox gift cards.
• Unsurprisingly, 62% of Roblox's 200 million monthly users are under the age of 16, implying that a portion of the users of the aforementioned sites are almost certainly under the age of 18. This was demonstrated when Luongo visited the BloxFlip Discord server, where one member said "Bro, I'm not even 18 yet" while streaming themselves gambling on the site and asking others for more funds to bet with. The same server also gave those who spent one million Robux, or $12,500 USD, an exclusive "Whale" role to encourage further spending.
• Luongo was also able to speak with an anonymous owner of a Roblox trading site who claims that BloxFlip, in particular, intentionally targets underage players by sponsoring YouTubers, some of whom are also under 18. “Like 90 percent of the people promoting are underage, and it's not even difficult to figure that out just based on the type of content they put out,” the owner stated. “These gambling sites don't do any due diligence in asking for the age of the people they're promoting with.” DarkkHayden, a 14-year-old Roblox content creator, backed up this claim by sharing what is said to be an email from the site's marketing team offering them an affiliate code and a fixed rate payment based on views.
• Roblox responded to Sharpr's request for comment by stating that it is currently taking action against third-party gambling sites, but did not elaborate. “Bad actors make illegal use of Roblox’s intellectual property and branding to operate such sites in violation of our standards,” the spokesperson said. “Roblox has teams and processes in place to investigate these websites to protect our brand and platform, including, where possible, having the websites removed. In some cases, we engage with law enforcement as part of our efforts. Ensuring a safe and compliant online experience for users of Roblox is a core tenant of the company. Roblox will continue to be vigilant in combating entities who engage in practices that are in violation of our policies or endanger the safety of our community.”

More gaming news:

• Chinese technology company Tencent is acquiring a majority stake in Dying Light developer Techland for an undisclosed sum. Techland will continue to operate normally and will retain all rights to its intellectual property.
• Dolphin, a Wii and Gamecube emulator, is no longer releasing on Steam after Valve removed it from the store following discussions with Nintendo. Its use of a cryptographic key used to decrypt Wii games has pushed it into the gray area of what is acceptable to offer on the platform, with the development team declaring it "impossible" to obtain permission.