A seven-year-old girl was playing the online game Roblox a few weeks ago when her in-game character was assaulted by two other characters in the game. The girl’s mum, Amber Petersen, saw the incident unfolding on the iPad screen — two male characters sexually assaulting her daughter’s avatar as it was lying on the ground.

Yesterday, the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs voted to approve a controversial new copyright directive that, if made into law, could change the internet as we know it. Just one of the many potential terrible results of the directive, which tasks companies to monitor user-submitted content for copyright infringement, could be a radical alteration of games like Minecraft or Roblox.

Starting March 12, as a sponsored promotion for the Ready Player One movie, Roblox, a Minecraft-esque MMO that also allows players to create their own games, held their own Easter egg hunt of sorts. After a gruelling set of challenges, a player called R0cu was declared the winner of the event on April 3. However, other players are saying that they made it to the end of the Easter egg hunt first.

For decades, a Pokemon game where players can catch and train monsters, together and online, has been a distant fantasy for fans around the world. The camaraderie and competition so integral to the Pokemon story -- the tale of a young hopeful going out into the world to make friends and self-actualise -- has always felt a little lacking in Pokemon blockbuster single-player games. So, imagine: A free Pokemon game, accessible on PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Xbox, where you can do everything you do in an official Nintendo game, but with your friends.

After more than a decade of online creative play, massively multiplayer online game Roblox is expanding its user-created content into the real world, partnering with Jazwares for a line of collectible and customisable toys hitting stores in February.