Russian Children Are Threatening To Leave The Country Following The Roblox Ban
Jack Coleman (He/Him) is a News Editor from Ireland. This is his third full year in games media, having previously worked freelance for various outlets, including DualShockers and NME.
Previously, he’s interviewed breakout indie developers, broken big news stories, reviewed massive releases and recounted his time living as a humble woodsman in Oblivion.
A lifelong gamer, Jack is primarily interested in RPGs and narrative experiences. He’s also been playing League of Legends for a decade, unfortunately.
At the beginning of the month, Roblox was banned by Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor. The multiplayer platform wasn’t banned because of the plethora of well-publicised child safety issues, but rather because of the “repeated distribution of materials promoting and justifying extremist and terrorist activity, calls for violent crimes, and propaganda of LGBT themes.”
That’s quite the laundry list of accusations levelled against Roblox — how often do you get to promote LGBT themes while justifying terrorist activity; that’s an impressively rare combo. Regardless of Roskomnadzor’s reasons, the country’s youth isn’t pleased with the organisation’s decision.
Right to Roblox
According to reporting from The Moscow Times, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov admitted the Kremlin has received “many” letters from children regarding the ban.
Peskov’s response was prompted by comments from pro-Kremlin public figure Yekaterina Mizulina, who claims to have received 63,000 letters from children about the banning of Roblox. Mizulina claims that a substantial portion of these children also express a desire to leave Russia to circumvent the ban.
“They don’t write about leaving [Russia], but they do write about the game,” Peskov claims. It’s no surprise that the banning of Roblox has caused furore in Russia, as it was one of the country’s most downloaded games.
Though Roskomnadzor claims Roblox is full of “inappropriate content that can negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children,” the ban is likely politically motivated. Russia is increasingly becoming more disconnected from the global Internet ecosystem as domestic censorship continues to accelerate.
Roblox’s CEO has a surprisingly straighforward message for parents worried about what their kids might run into online.
Roblox joins Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn and more on a list of Western-controlled entities banned in Russia. Roblox Corporation is headquartered in California and is extremely popular among children around the world, which is why Roskomnadzor likely views the game as a potential threat to the country’s state-controlled messaging.
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Of course, there are plenty of other online games that originate in the West and are very popular in Russia. Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 are densely populated by Russian players, as are Grand Theft Auto 5 and EA Sports FC.
It seems like the pleas of Russian children will fall on deaf ears, as the administration has shown no indication that it is willing to reverse the Roblox ban.
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