Merve Lapus’s 13-year-old daughter told her dad she was horrified: This month, whenever her teacher stepped out of the room, kids in the class used their devices to play a new online game called Five Nights at Epstein’s.
In the game, available via a web browser, players pretend to be sexual assault victims trapped on the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious island. Characters have to maneuver past security cameras and palm trees, navigate dimly lit rooms and ultimately avoid surprise attacks from the convicted sex offender. To win, they must survive five nights on the island without letting Epstein find and abuse them.
Five Nights at Epstein’s is sweeping through classrooms across the country — from Utah to North Carolina — supercharged by videos on social media that show young boys and girls playing in class. In some cases, videos on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have garnered millions of views, and some clips even teach students how to bypass school security systems, for campuses where it’s already blocked.
What troubled his teen most, Lapus said, was that her middle school classmates in Northern California seemed “disconnected to the reality that there were real victims.” They regularly talk and laugh about the game, in a way that was “almost dehumanizing to the victims,” he added.
While there are now several versions of the game available online, one web version that lets students play on their browsers without having to install or download an app drew nearly 200,000 visits in February, according to estimates from digital market intelligence company Similarweb.
A Meta spokesperson said the company has been blocking users from sharing links to the game. TikTok said its community guidelines do not allow sharing, showing, promoting or engaging in abuse or exploitation of youth. YouTube declined to comment.
Still, the social media platforms are surfacing the videos prominently in search or making it easier to download. Typing in the words “five nights” to an Instagram or TikTok search populates the title of the Epstein game, or misspelled versions of it, likely posted to evade detection by filters. On YouTube, some viral videos about the game promote links to download it in their captions.
A twist on the popular game Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Epstein-themed game emerged in recent months as the US Justice Department released thousands of pages of files from government investigations into the late financier, who for years sexually abused underage girls with little recourse. His crimes have taken on a unique cultural relevance across the world, in part because of Epstein’s network of prominent business and political leaders. The game follows the rise of Five Nights at Diddy’s, another Freddy’s parody that spread online after former hip-hop giant Combs was federally charged with sex trafficking and other offenses in 2024, and convicted and sentenced to prison the following year for prostitution-related offenses. Lawyers for Combs are appealing.
Turning Epstein’s sex crimes into a game is troubling parents and educators who fear that young people are not processing the severity of his behavior.
Through the games, kids are “becoming numb to really terrible stuff,” said Mary Rodee, a librarian at Canton Central School in upstate New York. Rodee’s fifteen-year-old son, Riley Basford, died by suicide in 2021 hours after being sextorted — or extorted after sending sexual pictures — on social media by a fake account posing as a teenage girl. She urged parents to recognize that what happens through a screen can be just as harmful as real-life experiences.
“That’s not kids being kids; that’s kids hiding from being sexually assaulted,” Rodee said. “Doesn’t that make you maybe a little more numb to sexually assaulting someone? I’ve got to believe it does.”
Educators have for years grappled with what to do about technology in schools, confronting a range of issues from cyberbullying to artificial intelligence as a homework-helper. Some of the same schools adopting “bell-to-bell” bans on smartphones are simultaneously issuing laptops, tablets and other educational tech devices to be used in class — which some parents and advocates argue just replaces one distraction with another.
Games like Five Nights at Epstein’s are adding to the strain. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the game originated, but what is perhaps the leading version appears to have been created by a grassroots group known as Evan Productions, which initially posted it to the online video game hub itch.io. The Evan account no longer exists. Game Jolt didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A developer with the account name @killlala1213 posted on fivenightsatepsteins.org that they are responsible for maintaining the playable web version of the game. In a blog post, they wrote, “this site doesn’t encourage anyone to bypass school rules, filters, or policies. If your school blocks games, please respect that and play only in a place where it’s allowed.” They also said they don’t verify ages, and that it’s “up to players and their families” to decide what content is appropriate for them.
In online reviews of the game, some commenters urge the developers to add Epstein’s former girlfriend and fixer Ghislane Maxwell as a character. Others beg for iterations that can easily be played at school. With each passing night on the island, “Epstein becomes more aggressive,” according to the website version of the game developed by Evan Productions. The description also warns of another “predator” stalking the facility: President Donald Trump. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The game has spread thanks to an internet meme culture bent on making light of current events and hot-button political, cultural and social issues. Every major social media platform has also loosened its rules under the Trump administration to allow more content to stay online, including satirical material of public figures.
The Carson City School District in Nevada is among those trying to crack down on the game in its classrooms, according to posts in a local community Facebook group. Dan Davis, a spokesperson for the district, declined to comment on the Epstein game specifically, but said the district is running content filtering and monitoring systems on school-issued devices to take action on inappropriate use cases or disruptive behavior. It’s also urging parents to speak with students about responsible technology use, both inside and outside the classroom.
Jill Murphy, a parent to 13- and 16-year-old girls, recently alerted their school in San Francisco after her seventh grader saw classmates playing the game. Murphy, the chief content officer of the children’s advocacy group Common Sense Media, said she is concerned about the damaging “domino effect” the game can have across the community. It’s already challenging enough navigating conversations about the Epstein files, and sexual violence more broadly, with young children, she said, especially girls.
“She knows what sexual violence is, she knows what rape is, she obviously knows the difference between right and wrong, what’s legal, what’s not,” Murphy said of her 13-year-old. But dealing with this “can’t just be something that’s the school’s responsibility, and it can’t just be something that’s put on the parents.”
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