Roblox

Roblox was created in 2004 by co-founders and software engineers David Baszucki and Erik Cassel. Before its creation, Baszucki and Cassel worked for Knowledge Revolution, a company that specialized in creating educational and physics simulation software. After Knowledge Revolution was acquired by MSC Software, the two left the company and Baszucki began investing in earlier social media sites like Friendster. Around this time, Baszucki came up with the idea of a physics sandbox with creation tools and a social networking aspect.

Baszucki and Cassel began development on Roblox shortly afterwards, modeled after Baszucki's vision, and also created the Roblox Corporation. Early in its development, Roblox was known as DynaBlocks. It was determined early on in development that the two would design Roblox to rely entirely on user-generated content, only providing the tools necessary for people to develop games, as well as the server hosting later in development.

Critical reception of Roblox has been generally positive. Common Sense Media rated Roblox 4 out of 5 stars, praising the website's variety of games and ability to encourage creativity in children while finding that the decentralized nature of the platform meant game quality varied, and recommended disabling chat functions for young players to prevent possibly harmful interactions. Patricia E. Vance of the Family Online Safety Institute advised parents to monitor their child's interactions on the platform but praised the platform for "...allowing kids to play, explore, socialize, create and learn in a self-directed way", and granting special praise to Roblox Studio for its ability to encourage children to experience game development. Trusted Reviews, in its overview of the platform, also praised Roblox Studio, stating that "for anyone seeking to develop their computer science skills, or create projects that will instantly receive feedback from a huge audience, the appeal is obvious".

Roblox has been criticized several times due to the content that is present on the platform, specifically the presence of sexual or politically extremist-related material. Similarly, its chat and game filtration system has been negatively received. Examples of sexual or politically extreme content that has appeared on the platform throughout its history include places themed around virtual sex clubs and nightclubs, all of which are generally referred to as "condo" games, and content related to far-right ideologies such as neo-fascism and neo-Nazism, such as games that allow players to roleplay as Nazis or recreate real world massacres such as the Christchurch mosque shootings, the Columbine High School massacre and the Uvalde school shooting. To combat the presence of this content, Roblox has over 1,600 people working to remove such material from the platform, and also offers privacy settings and parental controls; a 2020 investigation by Fast Company found that sexual content was very prevalent on Roblox and likened attempts to remove the material to whack-a-mole.