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Well yeah, streaming services also suck for creators. That doesn't excuse the practices of Roblox. However, the comparison isn't entirely fair for several reasons. First off, those platforms don't restrict releasing the content on other platforms. If I'm unhappy with Spotify, I can move my music to Soundcloud, Bandcamp, or even my own website. This isn't ideal, and doesn't excuse bad practices, but it is possible. Roblox games only work in Roblox, and if I want to move my games elsewhere, I have to rebuild it entirely from scratch. Secondly, all of these services have various tools that enable discoverability, without requiring any payment. These tools are obviously not ideal, but I can become successful on Youtube without giving Google a single cent, and without advertising outside of the site. It's unlikely, but it's possible. Roblox requires you to spend money for any chance at discoverability, and even then there are no guarantees. Roblox doesn't even let you cash out unless you have an active subscription. Finally, all of these other services pay me in actual money, not their own fun bucks. The conversion rate is also ridiculously bad for creators. According to the video linked in the article, you can only cash out when you have $1000 worth of Robux, which then only returns $350 back to you. Combine this terrible conversion rate with the fact that Roblox takes an additional cut of basically every transaction, and the actual percentage of money going to creators is potentially as low as 17%, which is way worse then any other service I know of. So yeah, I would say this is more exploitative then someone trying to make it big on other platforms. And we should call out these bad practices specifically when we see them, instead of brushing it off under "all platforms are bad too." |