Roblox, a colourful online gaming platform popular with children, will be the focus of a new special from former To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen called Dangerous Games: Investigating Roblox.
This special comes at a time when the gaming platform, which hosts between 70 and 151 million daily users, is facing several lawsuits alleging that its chat function exposes children to people seeking to exploit and groom minors. Roblox rolled out stricter age verification protocols in 2025 amid accusations of abuse on the platform.
Hansen is best known for his work on the early 2000s hit To Catch a Predator, a show that exposed people for attempting to solicit sex from minors and ran on NBC from 2004 to 2007.
A trailer for Dangerous Games, released by Hansen, shows a woman saying a 10-year-old was exploited by a “monster.”
According to Los Angeles County officials, more than 40 percent of Roblox users are under the age of 13, and nearly 75 percent of 9 to 12-year-olds in the U.S. use the platform regularly.
Roblox’s legal team has been contacted for comment regarding Dangerous Games.
Hansen teamed up on Dangerous Games with YouTuber and Roblox safety advocate Michael Schlep. Schlep was removed from the platform and served with a cease-and-desist letter from Roblox in August, 2025.
The letter states that Schlep’s simulated child endangerment conversations were in violation of Roblox protocols and were, in part, impeding Roblox’s existing child safety measures.
Schlep uses his platform to raise awareness around child endangerment cases stemming from Roblox, such as a recent arrest in Louisiana, where a 24-year-old man was accused of soliciting nudes from a teenage girl on Roblox and attempting to convince her to take her own life.
While in Indiantown, Florida, two missing teenage sisters were discovered to be with a man they met on Roblox and then continued to talk to on Snapchat.
According to authorities, Hser Mu Lah Say, 19, of Omaha, Nebraska, had sent the girls gifts to their home and then drove to Florida, where he was located with the girls in his car six hours outside of Indiantown. He has now been arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of interfering with child custody.
“Our deputies that were on scene realized what we were dealing with. We were dealing with a type of abduction,” said Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek. “I know these girls went willingly, but their age suggested that they had been taken and were probably being removed from our area.”
Roblox has enhanced its child safety measures, added age-verification video software intended to improve who can enter private chats, and requires explicit parental permission for private chat functionality for children under 13.
However, the platform is still facing several major lawsuits, including one filed on February 19 in Los Angeles County. The county is accusing Roblox of having ineffective age verification tools and exposing children to predatory behaviour.
“Roblox has a responsibility to keep kids safe, but instead it has allowed its platform to become a place where children can be exposed to grooming and exploitation,” said L.A. County Board Chair and First District Supervisor Hilda L. Solis. “Los Angeles County is taking action to hold the company accountable and demand real safeguards.”
The platform is also being sued by the Louisiana Department of Justice over child safety concerns.
Attorney General Liz Murrill has said: “At the end of the day, Roblox must act as a responsible member of our community and do more to protect children.”
Hansen’s premiere show, To Catch a Predator, was taken off the air in 2007 after a Texas district attorney took his own life in connection with one of the show’s sting operations. Since its heyday, the programme has been criticised for creating scenarios that resemble entrapment and for not following legal protocols on air, such as reading people their rights.
