The rise of not safe for work Among Us lobbies has enabled players to roleplay sexual situations with strangers online, causing concerns that this game could become a site for grooming and harassment.
Kotaku Australia reports that there are a lot of lobbies on the North American servers attempting to attract players into roleplay, titled things like “HornyRPOnly,” “SingleGirl,” or “Hrny Bakugo RP.” Then, users communicate through the in-game chat system to suss out who's who and what's what. Among Us does possess measures that stop young gamers from engaging with content that could be harmful, like Child Accounts, Quick Chat, and filters for words that fall into that lexicon. Those Child Accounts are of course only effective if the parent or guardian is aware of them and players are able to type words with misspellings or unnecessary punctuation to slip through the filter.
Be that as it may, the report states that those organising these lobbies are booting out anyone who doesn't have a specifically sexual username and other lobbies are only accessible with an invite. Lobbies are often two or three players strong and usually involve the chat shifting to a different social media platform like Snapchat once players have gotten to know each other a little more. Of those profiled by the report, the majority were between 14 and 17 years old, with only one out of 20 people claiming they were over 18.
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Developer Innersloth did not comment on the existence of these sexual roleplay lobbies but it is committed to ensuring that the game is safe for young gamers. "We’ve put in a ton of work to ensure we are COPPA and GDPR compliant," said community director Victoria Chan. "We have a constantly evolving reporting system and chat/word censor moderation that try to eliminate any harmful or derogatory language. Players can be reported for inappropriate names/chat, and we are proactively addressing anything that people do to try and bypass the filters."
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