Roblox is ‘exploiting’ users with deceptive advertising, watchdog group says

polygon.com:

Advertising in the metaverse is tricky.

Truth in Advertising, a nonprofit organization that aims to protect consumers from “false advertising and deceptive marketing,” filed a complaint Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Roblox has “completely shirked its responsibility” in following advertising laws on the kids gaming platform. The full complaint names several major U.S.-based corporations, including Netflix, Nike, Hasbro, and Mattel, as companies that have games on the platform that use deceptive marketing practices.

Roblox is a gaming and “metaverse” platform that primarily caters to children. Many of the games, which Roblox Corp. calls “experiences,” are made by users of the platform, not the company itself. However, over the past several years, more and more big-name companies have begun using Roblox games to advertise their products. Hasbro released a Nerf Gun shooter; Mattel released an open-world Hot Wheels game; and more recently, Sega of America partnered with a company to release a Sonic the Hedgehog game on the platform. In its complaint, Truth in Advertising says that “advertising is being surreptitiously pushed on millions of unsuspecting Roblox users” because a “public company has failed to establish any meaningful guardrails to ensure compliance with truth in advertising laws on its platform.”

The report goes into great depth to describe and list various problems with advertising practices on Roblox, but a lot of what it comes down to is unmarked or undisclosed advertising in different forms. (Disclosed advertising, for instance, is when an influencer uses #ad on TikTok, which that platform requires users to include if the post is a paid promotion so that they abide by FTC