Music Industry Giants Suing Roblox for $200 Million

Roblox, the little sandbox that could, has grown from an underestimated juggernaut to one of the biggest names in the games industry: with millions of players and billions of dollars rolling into their accounts, a game that was once dismissed as a Minecraft clone has managed to get attention around the world. Some of that attention has no doubt been good: other kinds, not so much, as now the National Music Publishers’ Association is trying to sue the developers for around 200 million bucks.
 

“[Roblox is making] hundreds of millions of dollars by requiring users to pay every time they upload music onto the platform — taking advantage of young people’s lack of understanding about copyright — and then they take virtually no action to prevent repeat infringement or alert users to the risks they are taking.”

Apparently, a lot of groups and singers are joining this particular lawsuit: Ariana Grande, Imagine Dragons, deadmau5, Ed Sheeran, the Rolling Stones, and more are all trying to sue for a slice of the Roblox pie, and also to “ensure songwriters are fully paid for their works on the platform and that Roblox takes seriously its obligations to those who have made its service so popular and profitable.”

In the same press release, the NMPA also called out Twitch for their failure to protect copyright, even thought many people believe the streaming site has been a little too ambitious with their current protection.

In any case, the folks behind Roblox have yet to respond to this accusation, but I can’t imagine they’d just sit back and agree to pay 200 million in damages. I also can’t imagine how they’d defend these accusations if they literally did charge people for the right to use copyrighted music, but… the right lawyer can twist anything, I guess.

We’ll see how this goes.