Roblox has been on a constant downward trend. They’ve been doing some pretty awful stuff, including exploitation of children developers [0], unregulated market which encourages kids to gamble, lackluster moderation allowing kids to be harassed or worse, [both 1] and allowing manipulative and predatory games on their site [2].
That's a pretty extreme interpretation. Anyone who downloads the IDE can create and publish a game. If kids are using the tool, making fun games, and sharing them with other people, than I think that's a good thing.
Roblox is making money off various sorts of in-app purchases, but you can make an account for free, you can play games for free, and you can create games for free. It's not much of a nefarious plot.
I do agree that “exploitation” is a bit of an extreme take, but it isn’t an innocent business either. Hosting and profiting from a platform/marketplace for social content creation has, and will, trend toward preferences for viral, controversy-generating, and addictive content. Profit-sharing incentives to creators are meager but drive incredible lock-in behavior.
Children are wielding powerful content creation tools on TikTok and YouTube as well. And for every feel-good story about self-made young creators, there are thousands more telling of addiction, depression and anxiety for those caught in these spiraling for-profit walled gardens.
I’m all for teaching kids to be coders and makers, but I’m not sure Roblox is the poster child for it.
The ability to do many things for free does not excuse the exploitation any time sales are involved.
You gloss over it as "making money off various sorts of in-app purchases", but roblox taxes a massive cut of transactions between users (more than half), on top of large upfront fees, and then pays out robux at 28-35% of what it costs to buy them.
> That's a pretty extreme interpretation. Anyone who downloads the IDE can create and publish a game. If kids are using the tool, making fun games, and sharing them with other people, than I think that's a good thing.
as someone that grew up on roblox (i.e. has been playing semi-consistently for ~11 years, since elementary school), insofar as any of that is true, none of it is new.
If anything, the robux -> profit conversion rate was much worse back in the day (iirc engaging in it at all necessitated purchasing the highest subscription level, the now-defunct `Outrageous Builders Club'), and it was far more common for kids to waste their parents' money on `limiteds'.
the most widely-implemented roblox cheat feature (short of actual lua execution) was a button that would reskin you and another player to naked tones, then teleport their model to a doggystyle position. we used to sit around during sleepovers and scroll the catalog looking for games titled [18+ s3x rp] to mess around in.
on the flip side, fiddling with .rblx studio taught me lua and rudimentary 3D modeling at a ludicrously young age, and I made similar online acquaintances who went on to do very well with their learned skills.
They got the userbase and importantly took a massive amount of money at a multibillion dollar valuation, but now have to monetize so the product will get worse until the userbase goes away. It really is a Ponzi scheme all the way down
That's a pretty extreme interpretation. Anyone who downloads the IDE can create and publish a game. If kids are using the tool, making fun games, and sharing them with other people, than I think that's a good thing.
Roblox is making money off various sorts of in-app purchases, but you can make an account for free, you can play games for free, and you can create games for free. It's not much of a nefarious plot.