Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson has filed a motion seeking to lead a federal class-action lawsuit against Roblox, accusing the San Mateo, California-based gaming platform of lying to investors about child safety failures that ultimately cost two of the state's public pension funds a combined $21.5 million. The motion, filed on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, was submitted on August 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
According to the Springfield News-Sun, the Ohio AG's office alleges Roblox marketed itself as a safe, family-friendly platform for kids while failing to implement basic protections against online predators, leaving children “vulnerable to rampant exploitation.” The two pension funds lost their combined $21.5 million on Roblox investments between October 2024 and April 2026, per the AG's office. Wilson is asking the court to consolidate two related securities class actions under lead counsel Grant & Eisenhofer, according to WTOL.
“I am taking action to recover millions in lost pension funds and hold technology companies accountable,” Wilson said in an August 10 press release cited by the Springfield News-Sun, adding that the lawsuit seeks to recover the money lost by Ohio's retirees. The suit names Roblox executives David Baszucki, Naveen Chopra and Michael Guthrie as defendants, per the report.
What Triggered the Stock Collapse
The financial damage traces back to April 30, when Roblox announced first-quarter 2026 results that slashed its full-year bookings growth guidance from a projected 22 to 26 percent down to just 8 to 12 percent. Shares plunged 18 percent in a single day, falling from $55.26 to $45.13 and wiping out $6 billion in market value, according to SueWallSt. New safety measures, including mandatory age verification and communication limits between adults and minors, also lowered Roblox's annual revenue projection by $1 billion and caused user growth to plummet, per the AG's office.
Regulatory pressure had already forced Roblox to impose those age-verification and communication restrictions before the stock drop. Roblox reported 151.5 million daily active users as of the third quarter of 2025 and 39.6 billion collective hours of playtime that year, though a more recent IGN report put daily active users at about 123 million. The core allegation in the securities case is that Roblox assured shareholders the safety rollout would proceed without impairing user growth, then revealed months later that the changes had crippled user communication, hurt app ratings, and forced the massive guidance cut.
A Widening Legal Front
Ohio's case does not stand alone. The federal securities litigation against Roblox expanded on July 13 when the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit filed a related lawsuit, pushing the proposed class period back to October 31, 2024, according to a Business Wire filing. Ohio's motion seeks to consolidate its case with that action under shared lead counsel.
Beyond the shareholder suits, Roblox faces child-safety lawsuits from at least 11 state attorneys general and is named in a federal multidistrict litigation docket, MDL No. 3166, encompassing more than 160 consolidated cases as of August, per Seeking Alpha. That docket grew out of the December consolidation in San Francisco. Roblox has already agreed to pay roughly $54 million across five state regulatory settlements, including a $12.2 million deal with Alabama in April, to resolve government claims over child-safety and predator-moderation failures, according to Get Out of Debt.
Neighboring States Have Sounded Similar Alarms
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman filed suit against Roblox in Madison Circuit Court in October 2025, alleging that nearly two-thirds of U.S. children ages 9 to 12 play games on the platform, where the suit claims online predators groom young victims, according to Kentucky's state government. In Georgia, Attorney General Chris Carr announced a joint investigation with the state House of Representatives this month into Roblox and other digital platforms over online child-safety risks, Seeking Alpha reports. Those actions echo cases Hoodline has tracked, including Oklahoma's suit against Roblox and L.A. County's litigation over similar allegations.
Roblox's user base has long included large numbers of children under 13, historically making up roughly half of its total users and subjecting the platform to mandatory compliance with the FTC's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, according to the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. That regulatory backdrop is central to why safety-related disclosures carry such financial weight for shareholders when they turn out to have been overstated.
Ohio's Pattern of Pension Litigation
This is not the first time Wilson's office has gone after a tech company on behalf of Ohio's pension systems. The AG's office filed a similar motion in March 2025 against Block Inc. over $12.6 million in OPERS losses, and sued ZoomInfo Technologies in November 2024 over $75.9 million in pension losses, patterns Hoodline has covered in its reporting on Ohio's Block Inc. lawsuit and its earlier ZoomInfo securities case. As of early 2025, OPERS held an investment portfolio of approximately $130 billion while STRS Ohio managed $96.3 billion, making the two systems among the largest state public pension funds in the country, according to the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund.
The Roblox securities case hinges on proving material misrepresentations, market inflation, and financial loss under federal securities law, separate from the child-safety allegations playing out in courts nationwide. Ohio's move to seek lead-plaintiff status alongside Detroit's pension fund reflects a broader effort by institutional investors to hold tech executives accountable for what they describe as concealed operational risk. The case remains pending before the Northern District of California.
