Roblox, a game and social platform, has sued a YouTube artist it barred from the platform for harassment and sexual content, alleging that he gathered a “mob” that forced the company’s October developers conference to be canceled. Benjamin Robert Simon, commonly known as Ruben Sim, was charged by the Roblox Corporation with violating its user contract and anti-hacking regulations. “Defendant Simon is the leader of a ‘cybermob’ that does and encourages unlawful acts aimed to injure Roblox and its users with malice, fraud, and oppression,” the suit says, demanding $1.65 million in damages. This morning, the existence of the California case was first announced. In it, Roblox claims that Simon was banned for attempting to submit a near-nude picture of himself, images of Adolf Hitler, and a “sex game,” all of which are prohibited on the kid-friendly site. Simon is also accused of harassing other Roblox users, using racial and homophobic slurs, and impersonating Roblox staff on the internet, among other things. According to the lawsuit, he continued to use phony accounts to access Roblox after the restriction, avoiding bans on his hardware and IP addresses while encouraging his roughly 760,000 YouTube followers to do the same.
The most serious consequences are said to have occurred during the Roblox Developers Conference in October 2021. Simon “engaged his followers on Discord, glamorizing April 3, 2018, active shooter and murder at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, and threatening / taunting a copycat act of terrorism at Roblox headquarters,” according to the lawsuit, telling followers to “wait until [someone] does it to Roblox.” During the conference, he then tweeted that local cops were looking for a bogus “notorious Islamic Extremist,” who had posted a video titled “Someone Blow Up Roblox Now!” Meanwhile, his supporters are accused of making phony active shooter threats and claiming to have poisoned the conference drinks. According to Roblox, the conference was momentarily shut down while police and private security examined the building, and the company spent $50,000 on security and investigation. Simon is accused of defrauding the public by fraudulently claiming the presence of a terrorist threat to scare people away from the event.
