This platform is a disgrace, and regulators need to act. I'm 44 years old, and my first-ever PC was my dad's hand-me-down ZX Spectrum. I'm not sure of the first game I played, but the first one I remember is Horace Goes Skiing. The humble Speccy kicked off the hobby of a lifetime: my habits may have changed over the years, but gaming has been a constant joy in my life. So much so that in my 20s I became a games journalist. I've worked for almost every outlet you've heard of over the last 20 years, as well as writing a full history of the medium, and I never tire of learning new things about games. Now that I have children, I delight in watching them explore and fall in love with these wonderful virtual worlds. All of which is my lead-in to saying that I know an awful lot about videogames. And in recent times Roblox has come to my special attention: both because I didn't want my son on it and then, when I finally caved, I couldn't believe what this platform is actually doing to its users. I often think that Nintendo is the company that shows other videogame developers how to do almost everything right, in terms of delighting and surprising the player. Its inverse is Roblox Corporation, a company that has created a platform that specialises in exploiting and frustrating players. My son is seven years old. Until now he's been quite happy on his Switch, with the Mario games and Minecraft particular favourites. But several months ago he started going on about Roblox. Luckily I was able to tell him it's not on Switch, because I didn't want him playing on there. But on and on went the chatter about Roblox, and in particular the games Steal a Brainrot and 99 Nights in the Forest. It seemed like all of his mates were on there, and nearly every day after school he'd be excitedly telling me about what could happen in one or the other game. I knew 99 Nights was a horror game of some sort, so tried it myself: and yeah it was a little scary the first time I saw the deer-thin