Satanic imagery featured in now-banned Roblox game inspired by Texas school shooting

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, has directed state lawmakers to study child safety risks on online gaming platforms like Roblox, which features violent content accessible to young users, including a first-person shooter game that includes satanic imagery.

Burrows issued a supplemental interim charge Monday to the House Committee on State Affairs that focuses on the proliferation of inappropriate virtual experiences for minors, such as violent or sexually explicit content, and enabling communication between children and adult strangers.

The charge further directs the committee to examine content moderation practices, enforcement gaps, parental controls, age verification, potential developer liability, and whether platforms prioritize user engagement over safety. 

The announcement follows concerns raised by Rep. Don McLaughlin, R-Uvalde, who alerted Burrows to the Roblox game recreating the Robb Elementary shooting in May 2022, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

Active Shooter Studio’s Roblox game “Robb” featured black-clad characters armed with rifles stalking through school hallways looking for victims. Screenshots of the game shared by Burrows' office also showed a pentagram — a known satanic symbol — surrounded by candles in what officials described as a “memorial dedicated to the Columbine school shooters.”

“Robb” is one of several first-person school shooter Roblox games created by Active Shooter Studio, including the title “Parkland,” named after the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

In a statement shared with The Christian Post, Burrows said the “safety of our children remains paramount for Texas lawmakers."

“Turning an unspeakable act of violence, whose scars remain across the Uvalde community, into entertainment is a profound moral failure. When directed at children, it goes beyond poor taste and crosses into dangerous territory,” said Burrows. “It reflects a platform that permits exploitation and shock value at the expense of basic human decency — risking further harm and the erosion of moral judgment at an impressionable age.”

According to Burrows, nearly 40% of the roughly 144 million daily users on Roblox are younger than 13. “The State of Texas demands accountability, not a system that profits from violence and provocation while exposing young minds to hateful content,” he added. “Lawmakers cannot stand by while a platform aimed at children enables and monetizes this kind of abuse.”

In response to the controversy, a Roblox spokesperson told The Christian Post that the company has removed the content referenced by Burrows: “Any glorification of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School deeply concerns us.  Behaviors that promote violent extremism and depictions of sensitive real-world events are against our policies, which we work tirelessly to enforce. The content referenced by the Texas Speaker of the House has been removed and any users who upload such content are immediately banned from our platform upon detection." 

The spokesperson also cited Roblox’s ongoing safety measures, including AI detection, 24/7 moderation, chat restrictions for younger users, as well as its newly-announced Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts for those under 16 to limit experiences to age-appropriate content.

In a separate matter announced Tuesday, Roblox agreed to pay Alabama a $12.2 million settlement over child safety concerns as the company faces multiple lawsuits in other states over its alleged failures to protect children from child predators.

In February, a parental advocacy group urged parents to remain vigilant, warning that children are being easily manipulated by an international child exploitation network through Roblox and other mobile apps.  

According to the American Parents Coalition, predators involved with the network target vulnerable minors through seemingly harmless gaming platforms like Roblox and Minecraft. After establishing trust with victims, the predators are said to encourage them to move their communications to messaging platforms such as Discord and Telegram in an effort to skirt safeguards and make it easier to gain access to sexually explicit images of the minors.