Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki has sparked a heated debate after claiming it would be a “brilliant idea” to put prediction markets inside the gaming platform.
Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms on the internet, acting as both a social network and a place for users to create, publish, and play games with each other.
The site is available for all ages and is especially popular with children. Over the last few years, Roblox has faced multiple lawsuits and subpoenas from states like Texas and Louisiana over child safety concerns, even facing a full ban in Qatar for the same reasons.
Roblox’s responses to these concerns have garnered criticism; for example, the site banned investigative YouTuber Schlep for creating videos showing himself exposing multiple predators using the platform to target minors.
Now, the site’s CEO is facing backlash for another reason related to child safety after he expressed enthusiasm at the idea of potentially introducing prediction markets for its users.
Roblox CEO open to adding prediction market to platform
Roblox CEO and co-founder David Baszucki was featured as a special guest on the New York Times’s ‘Hard Fork’ podcast on November 21.
Near the end of the episode, the discussion turned toward prediction markets, leading co-host and NYT journalist Kevin Roose to hypothetically ask Baszucki’s opinion on putting such markets inside Roblox.
“Would you ever put a prediction market inside Roblox — like, let kids bet with their Robux and say, ‘I bet he’s gonna steal a Tung Tung Tung Sahur?’” Roose asked, referencing the platform’s top game ‘Steal a Brainrot.’
“We would — I think we would have to do that — once again, I’ll share some of the complexity. Every single country in the world has different legislation around loot boxes and kid gambling. And so we would have to be — it sounds very fun and obvious. Like, I love that,” Baszucki replied.
Roose clarified his stance on the subject, interrupting Baszucki to say he thought it was a “terrible idea,” but the Roblox CEO doubled down.
“I actually think it’s a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that’s legal,” he continued. “Imagine no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called ‘The Dress to Impress Predictor,’ where it’s not like trying to get kids’ money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it.”
Prediction markets are online platforms where people trade bets and make predictions about the outcomes of future events, such as political elections, sports games, etc. It’s essentially a stock market, but for forecasting events outside of Wall Street.
Despite Roose’s obvious concerns about the ethics of putting such a market on a platform boasts so many users under 18 years old, Baszucki assured him that the website is completely safe and that he is making changes to improve it.
“I’m going to go more out of the box than that,” he told Roose. “Roblox is an amazing platform right now for your kid. And I’m happy to go deep with you, possibly nondisclose you, show you metrics, all of that, to do whatever it takes to get you over the hump.”
Recently, Roblox announced plans to introduce AI-powered facial recognition in certain countries to verify users’ age and keep kids safe, effectively blocking them from interacting with anyone outside of their respective age group.
