The mother of a teenager who died by suicide is suing Roblox, accusing the company of worrying more about its investors than the children in its audience. The complaint, filed this month, claims Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz, who’ve collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the gaming company, fostered a platform that monetizes children at the cost of their safety.
Attorneys for Jaimee Seitz filed the lawsuit in the eastern district of Kentucky. Seitz is the mother of Audree Heine, a teen girl who committed suicide just after her 13th birthday in 2024. When detectives investigated Heine’s death they found she had a vast online social life that centered around groups in Discord and Roblox that idolized school shooters like Dylan Kleebold. Since Heine’s death, Seitz has been outspoken about the unique dangers of Roblox.
Heine’s family claims she would never have died had Roblox done a better job of moderating its platform. “Audree was pushed to suicide by an online community dedicated to glorifying violence and emulating notorious mass shooters, a community that can thrive and prey upon young children like Audree only because of Defendants’ egregiously tortious conduct,” the complaint said.
Seitz’s lawyers filed the 89 page lawsuit on October 20 and in it attempted to make the case that Roblox’s problems all stem from cause: corporate greed. “The reason that Roblox is overrun with harmful content and predators is simple: Roblox prioritizes user growth, revenue, and eventual profits over child safety,” it said. “For years, Roblox has knowingly prioritized these numbers over the safety of children through the actions it has taken and decisions it has made to increase and monetize users regardless of the consequences.”
According to the lawsuit, Roblox’s earning potential attracted big investors which encouraged it to abandon safety for quick cash. “Roblox’s business model allowed the company to attract significant venture capital funding from big-name investors like Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz, putting enormous pressure on the company to prioritize growing and monetizing its users.”
Andreessen Horowitz, known as a16z is a venture capital firm whose previous investments include Civitai—a company that made money from noncensual AI porn—an “uncensored” AI project that offered users advice on how to commit suicide, and startup that’s selling access to thousands of “synthetic influencers” for use in manipulating public opinion.
In 2020, a16z led a round of funding that raised $150 million for Roblox. “Roblox is one of those rare platform companies with massive traction and an organic, high-growth business model that will advance the company, and push the industry forward for many years to come,” David George, a general partner at the investment firm, said in a press release at the time.
The lawsuit claims Roblox knows that kids are easy marks for low effort monetization efforts common in online video games. “Recognizing that children have more free time, underdeveloped cognitive functioning, and diminished impulse control, Roblox has exploited their vulnerability to lure them to its app,” it said.
The lawsuit notes that Roblox did not require age verification for years, nor did it restrict communication between children and adults and didn’t require an adult to set up an account for a child. Roblox rolled out age verification and age-based communications systems in July, a feature that uses AI to scan the faces of its users to check their age.
These kinds of basic safety features, however, have taken years to implement. According to the lawsuit, there’s a reason Roblox has been slow on safety. “In pursuit of growth, Roblox deprioritized safety measures even further so that it could report strong numbers to Wall Street,” it said. “For instance, Roblox executives rejected employee proposals for parental approval requirements that would protect children on the platform. Employees also reported feeling explicit pressure to avoid any changes that could reduce platform engagement, even when those changes would protect children from harmful interactions on the platform.”
Roblox is now the subject of multiple investigative reports that have exposed the safety problems on its platforms. It’s also the subject of multiple lawsuits, Seitz’s is the 12th such case filed by Anapol Weiss, the law firm representing her.
According to Seitz’s interviews with the press and the lawsuit, her daughter got caught up in a subculture on Roblox and Discord called The True Crime Community (TCC). “Through Roblox, Audree was exposed to emotional manipulation and social pressure by other users, including TCC members, who claimed to revere the Columbine shooters, depicted them as misunderstood outcasts who took revenge on their bullies, and encouraged violence against oneself and others,” the lawsuit said.
404 Media searched through Roblox’s game servers after the lawsuit was filed and found multiple instances of games named for the Columbine massacre. One server used pictures from Parkland, Florida and another was advertised using the CCTV picture of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris from the Columbine shooting.
