The child-oriented gaming platform Roblox needs no introduction. Roblox allows all players, young and old, experienced or not, to create all different types of games, publishing them on their platform. Recently, however, Roblox has been in hot water, and all over the banning of one player: Schlep.
Schlep, real name Michael, is a victim of grooming by a game creator on Roblox. No matter how many reports Michael and his mother would send to Roblox about this creator, they were ignored, and Michael’s groomer would not be banned until years later. This means that Michael’s groomer most likely went on to groom and manipulate other children who were Michael’s age; trauma that could’ve been prevented if Roblox would’ve properly handle the reports. Now, it was obvious to Michael that Roblox did not care about his safety, nor the safety of the other victims of this groomer. This would push Michael to become a “pedophile hunter,” finding creeps and groomers on Roblox, and with police help, having them properly arrested
With this information, why was Schlep banned? On August 13, 2025, Roblox announced on a blog post that they have now decided any predator catchers or groups that conduct themselves without being on the Roblox safety team will be permanently banned. However, Schlep was banned on August 9, 2025, before this rule went into effect. This means he was not given a warning, or a heads up, to why his behavior was inappropriate for the platform. So, Schlep never broke Roblox’s rules when he was still on the platform.
But what is inappropriate about Schlep and other vigilante groups behavior? If Roblox’s report system proves time and time again to not work to protect children, and Schlep is getting these predators arrested, then why is Roblox so insistent on ridding him? Well, most are now theorizing, based off the countless times of misconduct, that Roblox doesn’t want the bad press surrounding predators being on their platform, and if they moderated based off the reports they get, banning the mass population of pedophiles will affect their income. Most predators spend their real-life cash on the in-game currency known as robux, either to gift to their victims, or to spend on their avatar to make themselves look more appealable to potential victims. Roblox’s report system is notoriously awful, and once online predators discovered this, they quickly formed their own communities, abusing the system. This issue got so bad that it is now being speculated that a lot of Roblox’s income started to rely on the money predators would spend, and so in an act of neglections, Roblox would sweep the predator issue under the rug. Additionally, because a lot of conversation and grooming between the minor and adult players would happen off platform on apps such as Discord and Snapchat, it gave leeway to Roblox to say none of the grooming happened on their platform, rendering them innocent, and allowing the predator to walk free on Roblox.
After Schlep came out with his ban notice, the news only spread, until eventually, the issue came back to bite Roblox. Once the public began to unravel the reasoning behind Schlep’s ban and the years of misconduct on Roblox’s part, players and non-players alike were not happy. Protests and demands for Roblox to do better sparked, and Roblox’s stock began dropping, losing $12 billion in only 9 days. This would all come to head on September 2, 2025, when famous youtuber and lawyer Law by Mike announced that in collaboration with Schlep, Mike and his team would be suing Roblox. The team is not suing over any specific event, instead the lawsuit is about “pushing tech companies to take accountability, especially when their platforms are hurting younger players,” said Mike.
