ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Roblox suing content creator for leading "cybermob"

Roblox suing content creator for leading "cybermob"

Game platform Roblox is taking content creator Benjamin Robert Simon – aka Ruben Sim – for apparently leading a "cybermob" to terrorise its staff and developers.

That's according to Polygon, which reports that the case has been filed in a California court with Roblox seeking $1.6 million in damages. The company alleges that Simon “commits and encourages unlawful acts designed to injure Roblox and its users" and posts evidence of this to his Patreon and YouTube channel. 

Roblox says that Simon has been banned from the platform for many years, having initially been given the boot for harassing users, homophobia, racism and sexual harassment. Despite this, he still continues to use the service via hacking or getting other people to create accounts for him.

What spurred Roblox to take him to court, however, was Simon posting "terrorist threats" designed to shut down the Roblox Developers Conference in San Francisco this October past. In the end, the event was held up due to Simon and a "cybermob" of followers posting on social media that San Francisco police were looking for "notorious Islamist Extremist" at the event. Police and security searched the venue for any threats, resulting in $50,000 in costs to Roblox.

Roblox boasts around 47.3 million daily active users, as per its most recent financials.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.