Meep City, a social gaming experience on Roblox, once echoed the immersive worlds of Club Penguin and Toontown, offering a space for players to socialize, personalize their digital homes, and live out their virtual lives. While intended as a lighthearted escape, Meep City unfortunately garnered a reputation as a digital rendezvous point, frequented by underage users often represented by suggestive avatars. However, a substantial shift occurred in late August when the game’s developers eliminated several core elements that previously facilitated this inappropriate activity. Consequently, Meep City‘s popularity plummeted from its peak as Roblox’s most popular game in 2018 to a shadow of its former self, barely registering a few hundred concurrent players in 2025.
Prior to the update, Meep City gave players the freedom to create custom biographies and personalize their avatars to a high degree. These features, innocent in concept, were often exploited by users to engage in undesirable behavior. Older recordings of the game show users openly stating their age alongside provocative messages designed to attract other players. Examples from 2024 include bios that read, “I’m a boy but a sweetheart…f4 m3 and you’ll get the milk,” and avatars displaying messages like “aye turn me up am tryni f4.” Many users also shared their ages and contact information for other social media platforms in their bios.
Although Roblox’s characters are inherently blocky, users found creative ways to push the boundaries within those limitations. Some players chose to flaunt their avatars with excessive digital skin or donned wedding dresses to signal a desire for romantic interactions. At the extreme end, players entered the game with explicit depictions of genitalia visibly attached to their avatars.
A few years after its 2016 launch, Meep City introduced a “party” feature, allowing users to invite others to their digital homes. Predictably, this feature quickly devolved into digital gatherings involving highly inappropriate activity. This phenomenon gained attention from major news outlets, prompting Roblox to take action. Meep City was temporarily removed from the platform before being reinstated without the party feature. This marked the first significant drop in Meep City‘s user base.
More recently, Roblox has faced substantial criticism following a series of legal challenges, including actions initiated by government entities. These challenges allege that Roblox’s virtual environments fail to adequately protect children. In response, Roblox pledged to enhance safety measures across the platform. In a video released on August 15, discussing the company’s content moderation policies, Roblox founder and CEO Dave Baszucki acknowledged the frequent calls to remove games like Meep City. However, Baszucki indicated that permanently removing a game is considered an extreme measure.
Eliza Jacobs, a member of Roblox’s safety team, stated that they would prefer to collaborate with developers and offer them the opportunity to adjust the game’s design to discourage negative behavior. Removing a game due to user misconduct would, in her opinion, “open up an abuse vector” by allowing players to target and remove games or creators they disliked.
Jacobs stated, “That doesn’t seem fair at all.”
Following this announcement, several Roblox games will likely be removed. Developers have reported receiving a questionnaire to ensure their games comply with Roblox’s guidelines. Failure to complete the questionnaire by September 30 may render the game unplayable.
Shortly after Roblox outlined its moderation policies, significant changes were implemented in Meep City. The game eliminated custom biographies and avatars, the very features that had enabled the prominence of NSFW behavior. In the weeks following, the game’s player base has sharply declined. According to ROMonitor, Meep City‘s concurrent player count has plummeted from a peak of over 24,000 to only a few hundred users at any given time. On average, fewer than 150 players are active in Meep City at any moment. ROMonitor’s data also shows a decrease in average playtime for those still engaged in the game.
Interestingly, the reasons behind these changes remain unclear. Neither Roblox nor Alex Newtron, the creator of Meep City, responded to requests for comment. Roblox has not publicly acknowledged working with or pressuring Meep City to eliminate the controversial features, and Newtron has not released any statements to the game’s community. However, considering the timing of these changes, along with Roblox’s expressed awareness of Meep City‘s reputation and willingness to collaborate with developers, it could be inferred that the two events are related. It’s also possible that Newtron independently decided to rework the game in response to recent events.
Regardless of the cause, the Meep City community was caught off guard by the changes, as evidenced by screenshots of confused players circulating online in the aftermath of the custom feature removal.
While this is a move in the right direction, Roblox continues to face substantial pressure regarding child safety. Beyond the government lawsuits, Roblox also faces criticism for banning a user named Schlepp, known for identifying suspected predators on the platform. This action has sparked widespread anger, with protestors visible among the few remaining Meep City players, using usernames expressing support for Schlepp. While Roblox has implemented new measures, such as real-time game moderation technology, they are unlikely to eliminate vigilante behavior entirely. The increased public scrutiny has fueled fan-led initiatives to identify potentially problematic users on Roblox.
Meep City‘s association with questionable content has arguably altered the game’s trajectory and legacy. In 2018, when it was rapidly gaining popularity and attracting millions of users, Meep City was compared to mainstream successes like Pokémon Go and Candy Crush in terms of cultural impact. The game’s popularity led Roblox to release Meep City action figures. Its current state is a significant departure from its peak, when its popularity required the implementation of a queue system to manage the influx of players.
“I grew up with meep city 😭this is so sad 😞,” wrote one Redditor in a discussion about Meep City’s decline. “Honestly I find it more fun,” commented another. “The smaller community makes it way better because it’s mostly normal people.”