A disturbing online game centered on Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes is spreading rapidly through American middle and high school classrooms, alarming parents and educators from coast to coast.
The game, called “Five Nights at Epstein’s,” tasks players with surviving five nights on Epstein’s private island while evading the convicted sex offender.
Players navigate darkened rooms, avoid surveillance cameras, and maneuver through palm trees.
The objective is simple: do not let Epstein find and abuse the player’s character.
Players take on the role of a sexual assault victim trapped on the island.
The game grows more difficult as each night passes, with Epstein described on the game’s website as becoming “more aggressive” with each successive round.
The game is accessible directly through a web browser, requiring no download or app installation.
One web-based version drew nearly 200,000 visits in February 2025 alone, according to data from digital market intelligence firm Similarweb.
Students across the country have been caught playing the game during school hours.
Reports of in-class play have surfaced in states including Utah and North Carolina.
In many instances, classmates play while a teacher has stepped out of the room.
Videos capturing students playing the game have gone viral on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, with some clips accumulating millions of views.
Several of those videos include instructions on how to bypass school content filters, specifically aimed at campuses where the game has already been blocked.
Merve Lapus, a parent in Northern California, said his 13-year-old daughter was disturbed after watching classmates regularly joke about the game.
Lapus said her middle school peers appeared “disconnected to the reality that there were real victims,” and that their behavior around the game was “almost dehumanizing to the victims,” according to reporting from Bloomberg.
Meta said it has been actively blocking users from sharing links to the game.
TikTok stated that its community guidelines prohibit sharing, showing, promoting, or engaging in abuse or exploitation of youth.
Despite those policies, the platforms continue to surface related content prominently.
Searching “five nights” in Instagram or TikTok search bars populates the game’s name or intentionally misspelled variations of it — likely posted to avoid algorithmic detection. On YouTube, some widely viewed videos include direct download links in their captions.
The game is modeled after the popular horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s. Its rise follows that of a similar parody, Five Nights at Diddy’s, which spread online after music executive Sean Combs was federally charged with sex trafficking and other offenses in 2024.
Combs was later convicted and sentenced to prison for prostitution-related offenses. His attorneys are appealing that verdict.
Mary Rodee, a school librarian at Canton Central School in upstate New York, warned that content like this contributes to children becoming “numb to really terrible stuff.”
Bloomberg reported that Rodee’s 15-year-old son, Riley Basford, died by suicide in 2021 after being sextorted on social media by a fraudulent account posing as a teenage girl.
“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.”
The Carson City School District in Nevada has moved to restrict access to the game, according to local community posts.
District spokesperson Dan Davis said content filtering and monitoring systems are in place on school-issued devices, and that families are being urged to speak with students about responsible technology use.
