I'm fairly convinced that some of the Roblox controversy is a witch hunt. I have no knowledge of whether there have been legitimate issues, but the outcry I've seen on social media discussing Roblox and child safety often looks like a concocted story, and last month my social feeds were flooded with parents encouraging you to spread the word that Momo[0] is now spreading through Roblox and causing large groups of kids to kill themselves.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/momo-...

Watch both People Make Games video about Roblox and try to argue that the company should not deserve all the public controversy it is getting. They are actively stalling any moderation and protection because their profit margin would be severely diminished. Children's safety versus money, the choice is oh so simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

Yes, highly recommend these videos. If anything the heat on Roblox is not turned up nearly high enough.

What if they ran official Microsoft servers with moderated chat, but also let you join custom servers after showing a scary warning message (and maybe checked your account birthday or something too). Would that not be enough to free them of liability?

Why the assumption that they care only about liability? Minecraft is now a multi-decade game and they want to keep it as the #1 king of it's domain to sell copies for many more decades.

That will be hard if parents see headlines about "Minecraft" (no, the specific server host won't matter) being used to exploit or otherwise prey upon children and stop buying it.

> if parents see headlines about "Minecraft" (no, the specific server host won't matter) being used to exploit or otherwise prey upon children and stop buying it

You make it sound like it's an alien concept that only us techies understand, but it is actually quite a mainstream understanding that once you legally buy a thing then whatever illegal stuff you do with it is a responsibility of law enforcement and not whoever made and sold you that thing. What is alien here is this belief that intentional remote crippling of a product with no court order or anything is somehow even legal

Anyway. If you follow the money real threat to MS bottom line is not losing a 30 bucks one time per household but having people prefer the more moddable, unlockable OG version that the cool kids are playing (JE) over recurring revenue cash cow (bedrock).

Liability? Has a game developer ever been held legally liable for not policing their community hard enough?

That's already what they did before this update.

They tried that in 2020, but it didn't seem to work effectively enough.

That controversy is kept only inside certain circles. I think that "mired in controversy" is too strong expression for what is going on there. And also, roblox is actually banning people right and left too.