Attorney General Griffin Sues Roblox and Discord for Knowingly Profiting from Putting Children at Risk

LITTLE ROCK – Attorney General Tim Griffin has filed suit against Roblox Corporation and Discord Inc., two of the most-cited platforms in federal child exploitation prosecutions, for years of deliberate deception and reckless product design that transformed the internet’s most popular children’s gaming site into one of the most dangerous places online. Griffin issued the following statement:

“These companies didn’t stumble into a child safety problem. They engineered one. Roblox built a platform with no age verification, no meaningful parental consent, and an algorithm that routed children directly toward the spaces where predators were waiting. Discord built a platform that lets children override parental monitoring with a single tap and hands anonymous strangers direct access to kids. Both companies knew exactly what was happening on their platforms. Both companies chose profit over the safety of Arkansas children. Both companies told parents — repeatedly and falsely — that their platforms were safe. Roblox left the front door unlocked, and Discord handed predators a private room. Arkansas children paid the price. That stops now.”

Background

Roblox, which reports 144 million daily active users with about 40% under age 13, has for years assured parents that its platform is the “#1 safe gaming site for kids.” That is simply not true. Roblox deliberately withheld age-verification technology it already possessed, rejected employee proposals to warn children of grooming behavior because such warnings would reduce engagement metrics, suppressed safety costs as its revenue grew, and paid over $900 million annually to the developers who built the sexually explicit “experiences” that pervaded the platform. Roblox’s own mandatory reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children documented 675 instances of suspected child sexual exploitation in 2019 alone. By 2023, that number had climbed to more than 13,000 — a nearly twentyfold increase that Roblox’s alleged safety investments did nothing to reverse.

Discord, with over 200 million monthly active users and an average user age of 16, has served as the escalation platform in the predatory pipeline. Discord deliberately engineered its product in a way that exposes children: it designed its “Family Center” to put children, not parents, in control of whether any monitoring occurs at all; it set its default message-filtering settings to allow adult “friends” to send unscreened content directly to children; and it made “zero-tolerance” safety representations that it knew to be false. Discord’s own transparency reports document that child safety violations on its platform increased 150% in a single quarter.

Roblox and Discord function together as a two-stage predatory pipeline: Roblox serves as the point of first contact, where predators pose as children, build trust, and groom victims. Discord serves as the escalation environment, where predators solicit explicit images, conduct sextortion, and, in dozens of documented cases, arrange in-person meetings that resulted in rape and other violent sexual assault. Both companies are fully aware of this pipeline. Rather than stop it, they have created software that more fully integrates the two products: Roblox permits Discord server links in game pages, allows Discord usernames in user profiles, and Discord enables Roblox account linking. Roblox’s own 2017 developer communications acknowledged the danger of linking children to Discord, then reversed course and actively permitted the integration.

The lawsuit is brought under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, Arkansas’s public nuisance law, and common law unjust enrichment. The State seeks injunctive relief, monetary damages, and the return of each company’s wrongful profits derived from Arkansas consumers.

“I want to thank the men and women in Arkansas law enforcement who are fighting on the front lines every day to protect children from the kinds of behavior Roblox and Discord have facilitated,” Griffin added. “And I especially thank the staff of my Consumer Protection Division for their work on this case.”

To read the complaint, click here.

To download a PDF of this release, click here.

About Attorney General Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin was sworn in as the 57th Attorney General of Arkansas on January 10, 2023, having previously served as the state’s 20th Lieutenant Governor from 2015-2023. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District, where he served on the House Committee on Ways and Means, House Armed Services Committee, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, House Committee on Ethics and House Committee on the Judiciary while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority.

Griffin is currently an officer in the Arkansas Army National Guard and holds the rank of colonel. Griffin served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for more than 28 years. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Mosul, Iraq.

His previous assignments include serving as the Commander of the 2d Legal Operations Detachment in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and as a Senior Legislative Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Griffin earned a master’s degree in strategic studies as a Distinguished Honor Graduate from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

Griffin also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush; Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice; Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Arkansas; Senior Investigative Counsel, Government Reform and Oversight Committee, U.S. House of Representatives; and Associate Independent Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel David M. Barrett, In re: HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.

Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway, and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He attended graduate school at Oxford University. He is admitted to practice law in Arkansas (active) and Louisiana (inactive). Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.

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