Ban Evasion Tactics in Roblox: Cracks in the Safety Net

Roblox login page - photo from Unsplash

Roblox is one of the most popular and recognizable children's games on the market, with a global user base of nearly 98 million daily active users. Players can exercise creative freedom, including the ability to upload their own games, called “experiences,” for free. After paying a small fee, users can also create and sell custom clothing and/or accessories, called “user-generated content” (UGC). The platform enables players to create communities that promote their experiences, clothing, and UGCs, thus fostering communication between players around the globe. 

While most of these communications are game-related and innocuous, it’s not difficult to skirt Roblox’s Terms of Service using a variety of tactics. For instance, players can implement ban-evading tactics like using abbreviations to circumvent the chat filter, layering clothing, substituting letters in words, and placing holder accounts — accounts that are only used for group ownership and can be accessed by multiple people — in charge of their money-making communities. Automated moderation with limited human intervention leaves room for non-compliant and potentially dangerous users to interact with other players – including children. 

Players

Roblox gives players control over character creation, provided they adhere to the Terms of Service. The game’s chat filter replaces banned words with hashtags to prevent people from using them in their screenname or UGCs. However, adding spaces or characters between letters allows users to bypass the filter, and use banned words unnoticed. Players can also bypass the filter by using abbreviations or dogwhistles. For example, user @1l0vecak33122’s display name is the word “Ehre,” referring to “Blut und Ehre,” a German phrase meaning “Blood and Honor” and popularized by the Nazi party.

Username “Ehre,” referring to “Blut und Ehre.”

Likewise, the conspiratorial nature of username @ObamaCaused9_11 places it in violation of the Roblox Terms of Service — however, the automated filter is only equipped to recognize specific words, not concepts, allowing the user to proceed unflagged. Furthermore, the display name “StraightFromAgartha” refers to the conspiracy theory that the Earth is hollow, with the kingdom of Agartha residing just beneath the Earth’s crust. Agartha is described as a lush paradise full of advanced races of humans, aliens, giants, and perhaps even the hiding place of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis who escaped persecution after World War II. Conspiracy theorists have also connected Agartha to the kingdom of Hyperborea, a place depicted as the original Garden of Eden, the birthplace of mankind, or referred to by esoteric neo-Nazis to be the Aryan homeland. 

Roblox username referring to a popular esoteric Neo-Nazi conspiracy theory.

Shirts & T-Shirts

Players can avoid being banned for offensive material by embedding their message in layered clothes. While Roblox character creation has been fast advancing to fill the Marketplace with expensive 3D clothing, it is still relatively cheap to upload the “Classic” Shirts that simply apply a material mesh over a character’s block body. Classic T-shirts can be layered over Classic Shirts, with the design of each layer remaining visible, rather than being concealed by the outermost shirt. A fee of 10 Robux (the game’s internal currency) is required to upload Classic Shirts or Classic Pants, but Classic T-shirts can be uploaded for free, provided they are not posted to the game’s Marketplace. The Roblox website states that Classic Shirts, once uploaded, undergo screening and moderation before they appear in the creator’s inventory or can be uploaded to the Marketplace. Despite this claim, once a player pays 10 Robux, the shirt is immediately added to their inventory, and once it is uploaded to the Marketplace, it becomes available for purchase. 

The shirts’ layerability enables players to bypass the moderation system by splitting a design between the Classic Shirt and Classic T-shirt that, when combined, reveal a banned word, phrase, or symbol. Each article of uploaded clothing is moderated individually, rendering the layered messaging undiscernible. For example, user @ObamaCaused9_11 uploaded a Classic Shirt titled “Agartha’s top guy” with the phrase “Rap Mode: On” written in green across the front.

Example of layering as a ban evasion tactic.

This phrase easily passed the automated screening. However, the user also uploaded a Classic T-shirt titled “Sultanate of E,” which adds a green letter “E” to the front of an avatar. These shirts layered on top of one another spell out the phrase “Rape Mode: On.” 

Example of layering as a ban evasion tactic.

In another example of layering shirts, the user @menel_wojtas uploaded a combination of a Classic Shirt and a Classic T-shirt. The Classic Shirt was titled “weird s letter tshirt,” and features a large black ‘s’ symbol.

Example of layering as a ban evasion tactic.

The Classic T-shirt, titled “weird tshirt idk lol,” features another strange black symbol. Combined, both shirts form a swastika. Each of these designs was able to pass through the moderation system, as they appear innocuous enough individually.

Example of layering as a ban evasion tactic.

Furthermore, while uploading a T-shirt for personal use is free, each of these combinations contains one Classic Shirt, which costs 10 Robux to upload – meaning Roblox earned money from the shirts designed by both of these users. 

Communities

The most egregious example of ban evasion is how certain communities utilize a combination of name manipulation and layering to hide within a collective. Players can create their own groups, called “communities,” to play with friends or amass a following related to a pre-existing group, a favorite activity or franchise, a clothing/UGC store, and more. The community costs 100 Robux to create, and each additional role costs 25 Robux. Though communities are meant for creators to share updates on their games with fans or to sell clothing and UGCs, communities can be exploited to profit from selling Classic Shirts and T-shirts that can be layered for ban evasion purposes. One example of this is the group “Party Apparel.”

A Roblox “community” used as a ban evasion tactic.

They sell Classic Shirts individually priced at 5 Robux each, sporting words or phrases that attempt to ban-evade, such as the “ESL Ped Shirt” which has a large circular strike through the acronym for “English as a Second Language.” The classic shirt also has a transgender flag pin on it. The “Ped” in the title stands for “Pedophile,” suggesting that both ESL and trans individuals are pedophiles. The user who created this community and these clothes, @buildabvll, was banned; however, the group remains accessible, and players can still purchase these shirts. No player receives the money from the sale of these products, meaning 100% of the proceeds from these shirts go directly to Roblox. 

Holder Accounts

Another group, “Nordlandia,” implemented a form of ban evasion to avoid having their funds locked behind a banned user, such as Party Apparel. Instead of a singular player having leadership of the community, the user @Nordlandia_Holder was used to create the group itself. This holder account is likely owned by multiple people, each with access to the password. If one of the community leaders is banned, other leaders will not be locked out; another user can simply log in to the holder account and continue the community business as usual. Holder accounts are typically default avatars that do not join experiences or chat with players, making it easy to avoid detection and subsequent bans. 

The use of holder accounts is not always linked to avoiding repercussions; many developers utilize these as a way to declutter their main account and/or safeguard against their groups from getting hacked or receiving false bans, which large games with many users must account for. However, wariness around holder accounts within the Roblox developer community has arisen, due to the accounts’ being frequently used for ban evasion. Many developers are met with suspicion when they create holder accounts. As user @Soundmoji 13_5G asserts, “Your [sic] basically asking if you should ban evade”.

Conclusion

While Roblox was named the 21st Most Trusted Company in America in 2022 and has excelled in consumer ratings, investor trust, customer trust, and employee trust in 2025, we believe the moderation systems currently in place at platforms such as Roblox are inadequate in tackling the complex challenges posed by users who employ strategic ban evasion tactics in order to promote transgressive and hateful materials on the platform.

At Revontulet, we specialize in detecting and dismantling the exact types of evasion tactics and behaviors this insight documents. Across clients and projects we have built extensive experience, expertise, and tooling to detect and monitor ban evasion strategies, including cross-platform posting, the use of hidden signals and symbols such as the use of dogwhistles in usernames, detecting layered visual content and visual cues, and tracking coordinated abuse via networks of users and holder accounts. To achieve this, we leverage proprietary ideological mapping tools and open-source intelligence capabilities to identify harmful patterns at scale. 

Roblox has been cultivating its makerspace for years and is largely considered a safe platform for its reported 97.8 million daily active users. However, some users are still able to evade warnings and bans, and finding examples of such abuse was shockingly straightforward. Putting in place systems, establishing partnerships with trusted experts, and improving moderation tooling and processing are crucial steps in ensuring that all players, communities, and clothing items adhere to Roblox’s Terms of Service, further cementing Roblox’s reputation as a safe platform while preventing harmful behaviors and their consequences.