Roblox is the latest game to come under fire for facilitating children to spend money in unlicensed casinos, but the issue of gambling in children’s games is as old as the MMO genre itself.

When the news broke this week that illegal casinos had been uncovered in Roblox, it triggered investigations into the game to discover how this could’ve happened. Surely with all of the safeguarding measures available in technology, this sort of thing would’ve been easy to spot early on, right?

It’s a children’s game, so how could a casino be operating in it without anyone noticing?

Well, black markets and underground casinos have been present in online kid's games since the early 2000s. In fact, some of the most iconic children's games from this era were caught up in high-profile gambling scandals, so these two industries have been embroiled for at least two decades already.

Some games include casinos (like Pokemon Sapphire) and there's little risk in doing so. 

In the case of Roblox, these casinos aren't just in the game but are now developing into real-cash gambling sites which encourage children to log in using their Roblox accounts. These aren’t well hidden either - they simply rely on children not fully understanding the consequences of playing in them.

As we discuss the various massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) which have tackled gambling issues in the past, it’s important to remember that the games and developers are not at fault for user-made content. In most of these examples, the casinos are player-made and player-ran, which makes regulating them difficult.

Instead, the main point should be identifying the kind of environments unregulated, user-made casinos thrive in, how they draw people in and perhaps most importantly - keeping bank card details out of the reach of children.

Roblox

Roblox is a children’s game which acts almost like a white-label platform. There’s a creative element to the game, which means that users can ‘create’ worlds and experiences for others to play on. There are some innovative ones, such as parkour maps or story-driven adventure quests.

However, as users can make ‘anything’, this means that kids can access a lot of dupes of modern games. For example, the Roblox game Jailbreak is similar to the Grand Theft Auto series (PEGI 18+), Notoriety is strongly inspired by Payday 2 (PEGI 18+) and Phantom Forces has been compared to Call of Duty, Battlefield and Counter-Strike (all PEGI 18+).

That’s not to say that all games on Roblox are veiled adult content. That’s far from the truth. The creative nature of Roblox has led to some incredible games for kids, like Dress to Impress which is a simple dressing-up game; or even Piggy, a horror game which is suitable for all ages without feeling too muted.

However, being able to make anything has naturally led creators to make casino worlds on the site. These casinos are sometimes hidden behind fun-fair style games of skill, rather than straight-up roulette tables, which can make it difficult for children to understand that they’re playing in a casino setting rather than a fair.

Then you get to the actual casino worlds, such as Casinoville. In Roblox circles, this one is notorious for presenting like a real-world casino, along with croupiers, slot machines and table games.

Most of these ‘casino worlds’ use fluff credit, or currency with no actual value. This becomes a problem when children come across Roblox-style casinos which do allow wagers using Robux, the in-game currency valued at 100 Robux per £1 ($1.27).

The main demographic for Roblox is children aged 9-16 years old, which means that most of these have very little education when it comes to gambling, casinos and the risks they come with. Many children this young will be fooled by the premise of ‘come and make money’.

VRChat

It’s not just Roblox, though. VRChat has a long history of allowing children into casinos too.

VRChat is a free-to-play game that can be played with a VR headset or simply on a PC. It’s a first-person experience, meaning that players can walk around in virtual environments as if they’re really there. Many worlds in VRChat are in bars or bar-like areas, where users can socialise and talk with one another.

Similar to Roblox, users can create worlds for others to hang out in, meaning that there are some truly stunning and innovative areas in the game. However, there’s also a large adult population in VRChat, meaning there’s a demand for adult-only areas, including casinos.

These VRChat casinos almost always have people acting as virtual bouncers standing outside of them, and you have to ‘verify’ your age to get in. There’s no verification system in the game, so this is often limited to simply ‘sounding’ like an adult to get in, or saying your date of birth. As you can imagine, both of these are easy to fake. It’s not just casinos which are rampant in VRChat either, but adult-themed dancing clubs and other more intimate spaces.

Habbo Hotel

Perhaps one of the most iconic online games aimed at children in the 2000s and 2010s, Habbo Hotel had one of the highest-profile gambling scandals of its time.

The gameplay was simple, players would walk around an isometric world and interact with other users, play games and simply ‘hang out’. This style of massively multiplayer online game (MMO) was very popular in the 2000s and the genre also includes titles such as World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV.

Habbo Hotel users had managed to implement casinos into the game through different items. You could create a room and fill it with Dicemasters, Wheels of Fortune and Fortune Tellers - each of which could be gambled on by giving items to a Housemaster to hold onto. If you won, he’d hand you more items back; but if you lost, then your items (and their real-world value) were gone. These random number generators could be used to recreate poker, blackjack or other casino-style games with ease.

In 2012, the developer of the game, Sulake, was under pressure by the Danish Ministry of Taxation to ban gambling on the site, so they implemented rules to ban casinos in-game. Unbeknownst to many, the entire game’s economy was only held up by these casinos.

There was an entire black market connected to furniture (known as furni) in the game. You could gamble in the casinos, gain a lot of currency or furni, then trade these on third-party websites for real cash.

Some of the items in the game were worth $1,000+, including Lava Lamps and Dragon Eggs, meaning that when Habbo Hotel banned gambling - and the ability to move real-world money through the site - most of the players left and the site subsequently closed a few years later.

In the most recent investigation into Roblox, there are already third-party sites operating peripherally to Roblox in a similar way as Habbo Hotel.

Players can sign into these illegal casinos using their Roblox accounts and then wager their Robux at the casinos through cryptocurrency conversions.

Since the investigation has gone public, many of these sites such as BloxFlip, Bloxmoon and RBLXWild have "permanently" closed operations.

It seems like if a game has online elements and ‘status symbols’, such as furniture in Habbo Hotel or clothing in Roblox, there will always be a motivation to gain more wealth in-game, through legal or illegal means. With little regulation, adult-only spaces in VRChat will always exist and will always be accessible to children. If there are ways to create worlds for other users, then there’s the risk that unlicensed casinos will be built.

Even if none of these are present, there’s still a chance that illegal casinos will form around the community of the game. Sometimes that manifests in black market sites linked to the game, or skin gambling with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Younger viewers were enticed to wager on loot boxes which might contain skins worth thousands of dollars and were encouraged to do so by famous celebrities in the industry.

What can we do to stop kids from accessing illegal casinos?

Young people will always love exploring online games, and 99% of the time, these will be safe and positive experiences.

However, if a game has MMO elements, then there’s always a risk that gambling will exist in some form in the game. These aren’t always created with malicious intent to prey upon children. A lot of the time, they’re pushed by adults who simply want a way to gamble on events in-game (like with fighting arenas in Runescape), a way to spend time and in-game currency (like in Habbo Hotel) or even live vicariously in spaces they might feel uncomfortable visiting in-person (like VRChat).

However, as soon as this environment is established, there will always be people who know that children don’t understand the threats of gambling and introduce them to casinos with the explicit intention of exploiting them. This is the problem with third-party gambling websites, which use the game to market towards children and encourage them to sign up.

According to the investigation against Roblox, users as young as 12 have been betting up to $200,000 on third-party sites, simply because they don’t understand the consequences of their actions.

Of course, there’s an immediate question as to how they were able to access their parent's money to this degree, but that’s outside of this argument for now.

If unregulated gambling is always going to be present in games accessible by children, perhaps the best defence against it is education (along with not giving them access to bank accounts!).

It might seem strange to educate a child about the potential threats of gambling, but if we feel comfortable talking to them about stranger danger and how to be cautious about interacting with strangers online, then it should be a natural progression to warn them about other things to be wary of when playing on the internet.

Gambling and recklessly spending money shouldn’t be a taboo topic to discuss with children, especially when we’re seeing the consequences of not doing so already. Gambling shouldn’t be in children’s games - that much is obvious - but user-made content can be difficult to monitor so it’s better to give children the tools to navigate these spaces safely.

If you're concerned about your child being exposed to online gambling and would like to learn about the different tools available to you, it's advised to reach out to your local Gambling Commission or Authority and ask them what is available in your state.