Facepalm: Congratulations to Benjamin Simon for receiving the harshest punishment ever imposed on a trolling gamer: a court-ordered ban from playing the game, talking about the game in a negative light, and going near the game developer’s offices.
Simon, better known by his YouTube handle Ruben Sim, was first banned from playing Roblox several years ago. His evasion of that ban, documented on his YouTube channel, and his public encouragement of trolling in the game, resulted in a lawsuit being filed against him by Roblox late last year.
It concluded last week when he settled with Roblox. Per their agreement—signed by a judge and legally enforceable—Simon has to pay the company $150,000 in damages and leave it alone afterward. Roblox’s initial lawsuit asked for $1.6 million in damages.
In October last year, Simon tweeted a terrorist threat against the Roblox Developer Conference. The tweet linked to one of his now-deleted videos titled “Someone blow up Roblox now.” Roblox had to put the event into a temporary lockdown, and this disruption allegedly cost them a large sum.
In addition, Roblox claims that they’ve spent over $100,000 to “investigate and block” Simon’s attempts to evade his account(s) and IP bans over the past year or so and to prevent his “cybermobs” from causing harm to the game.
According to the suit, Roblox initially banned Simon for posting inappropriate content. He allegedly used homophobic and racist slurs and harassed individuals. Simon has disputed these claims. Roblox declined to include the content as evidence in the suit.
The suit also did not include Simon’s social media posts that Roblox claims contained “libelous” and “false” statements about Roblox’s CEO David Baszucki. Despite that, Roblox referenced them when it argued that Simon was engaged in a defamation campaign against the creators of the game.
Roblox initially called for Simon to delete his social media presence altogether. In the final order, Simon’s agreed to delete any of his social media posts that insulted the game, its developers, or promoted violations of its terms of service.
However, the ruling has not totally deterred Simon. He said he plans on posting a video response to the suit within a few months.