Roblox has spoken out in condemnation of a recent incident that saw a seven-year-old girl ‘gang-raped’ by abusive players.

Late last month, mother Amber Petersen warned parents on Facebook to stay away from the Roblox platform, after her daughter’s character was assaulted by players who had crafted digital genitals onto their own avatars. Petersen’s post included screenshots, confirming the crude addition.

Roblox later explained that the exploit involved the offending player hacking through protection systems to create custom animations. The developer is currently in the process of moving user-generated content to a more secure system, but games that had yet to be moved were vulnerable to similar exploits.

The company has since released a full statement reaffirming its commitment to safety and security in Roblox.

"Roblox's mission is to inspire imagination and it is our responsibility to provide a safe and civil platform for play," said Roblox, in a statement to TechCrunch. "As safety is our top priority - we have robust systems in place to protect our platform and users.”

"The incident involved one bad actor that was able to subvert our protective systems and exploit one instance of a game running on a single server. We have zero tolerance for this behaviour and we took immediate action to identify how this individual created the offending action and put safeguards in place to prevent it from happening again.

"In addition, the offender was identified and permanently banned from the platform. Our work on safety is never-ending and we are committed to ensuring that one individual does not get in the way of the millions of children who come to Roblox to play.”