The Roblox Developers Conference is going on this week, with the massive user-generated-content platform announcing a number of initiatives to get its games in front of more players and supercharge user engagement and growth. But last night, during a keynote address by company co-founder and CEO David Baszucki, all eyes were temporarily on a Roblox YouTuber called Emathiio, who stormed the stage to make a statement about child safety.
A clip shared on X by a Roblox user called BearPuppyRBX showed the CEO walking out on stage to lights and applause, only for Emathiio to appear moments later, running behind him, shouting “we deserve better.” He’s quickly tackled by what appears to be a member of security and two people working the stage.
Baszucki tried to remain calm and play Emathiio’s stunt off with a joke. “Thank you so much for being here,” he said. “We all get a little excited as RDC comes along, as you just saw.”
just got kicked out #rdc26 💔 https://t.co/2NFEK4FAqQ pic.twitter.com/ysxOBM3uzc
— Matt (Emathi) (@Emathiio) September 11, 2026
Emathiio later made a YouTube video to explain his actions, claiming he wanted to give a voice to all the children affected by the platform who don’t get to talk about it on stage at events like RDC. “Everybody’s saying they don’t want AI. Everybody’s saying that they don’t want these faces messed up. Everybody wants better child safety. Nobody wants them to appeal to these investors. But every single slow year of progress is just another year where children are actually affected.”
He addressed his critics later on in the video, “Y’all can call it clout chasing if y’all want. I’m honestly okay with that. And I’m not expecting people to agree or endorse what I did. I wasn’t trying to shut down RDC. I wasn’t trying to ruin the fun for anybody. I wanted to give a message that everybody’s been thinking for years and speak it out loud.”
While Emathiio didn’t specify which part of Roblox’s approach to child safety he was protesting, the company is currently under investigation by the U.S. Senate over the protections it offers to minors on the platform and what it is or isn’t doing to prevent people from using Roblox to prey on or exploit children. The company has instituted stricter parent controls and age-locks to address the concerns. Still, litigation from some parents and several states has kept the child safety issue in the public eye.
Roblox hasn’t helped matters with a series of train wreck interviews. Baszucki sounded dismissive of child safety criticisms back in a 2025 conversation with The New York Times Hard Fork podcast, and even seemed to take seriously the idea of introducing gambling markets into Roblox, calling the idea “brilliant.” Then there was an interview Roblox’s parent advocate, Dr. Elizabeth Milovidov, had with Vulture earlier this year in which she seemed to emphasize the need for parents to shoulder more responsibility for preventing their kids from meeting predators in Roblox.
Finally, there’s the matter of an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit over a 13-year-old on the platform who later died by suicide. Roblox has sought to compel the case to go to arbitration rather than a full trial, claiming that “by creating her Roblox account, by accepting updates to Roblox’s Terms (six times), by using and redeeming Roblox gift cards (twice), and by purchasing Roblox’s virtual currency on Roblox (19 times).”
It’s not controversial to say that kids deserve better. I don’t think it should be controversial to say they deserve to maintain their rights to a full trial, even in death, even after agreeing to Roblox’s terms of service, which currently claim otherwise.