Roblox Accused of Illegal Child Labor in Game-Building Model (2)

Online gaming platform provider Roblox Corp. exploits minors to provide game development work for little or no pay, violating US and California labor laws, a Roblox user’s parent alleges in a federal lawsuit.

The company’s game-building model and its on-platform jobs hub enable it to employ children for game development without paying them in real-world currency, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in US District Court for the Northern District of California. The practice violates the child labor and minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act along with California law, the plaintiff alleged.

The unnamed parent who brought the lawsuit said their 13-year-old son over the past two years provided “game design, development, and testing, including advanced Lua scripting, for one or more adult-led DevEx development teams, whose projects were hosted on Roblox and which generated revenue for Roblox.”

The child averaged more than 40 hours of work per week and received no monetary compensation, the complaint said.

The company’s marketing materials advertise the chance to “build your own games and make tons of money,” the plaintiff said.

Roblox originally launched as an educational platform where children and teens could learn basic software coding by building games. The company shifted in 2013 to a more profit-focused model, launching its DevEx program and encouraging developers to monetize their work by buying and selling on-platform products and services with the virtual currency Robux, according to the complaint.

Cashing out Robux for real-world currency is possible. But the conversion rate is so low that most developers receive little or no cash for their work, the plaintiff alleged. The majority of Roblox users are under 18, and nearly half of the 150 million daily active users are under 13.

The complaint says that though the “exploitation does not involve the once common hallmarks of child labor—dangerous machinery, visible injuries, or blackened hands from a day in the mines—it is in several ways more insidious” by dressing up child labor as a game “colorful, digital, and marketed to children as ‘fun.’”

A Roblox spokesperson denied the allegations, saying the platform offers “comprehensive parental controls” and that most people use Roblox to learn to code, interact with friends, or enjoy game-building.

The company’s Developer Exchange program is available for “the small minority of creators who choose to monetize their work,” the spokesperson said via email. “The DevEx program has clear and strict requirements and explicitly states that reaching the level of success required to earn money takes significant time and skill, and there is no guarantee of income.”

Attorneys form Sbaiti & Company represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Doe v. Roblox Corp., N.D. Cal., No. 3:26-cv-04405, 5/12/26.