[nick_m]

Hey Roblox Engineers on here - a brilliant article, by the way - and I want to chip in here, I'm a senior engineer and understand how tech works all the way down. NAND gates, flip-flops and I/O schedulers, and networks? No problem.

I have two young children, a boy and a girl. They both love playing Roblox, and I play along with them too, and their friends join in as well. Yes, they both always want more Robux, but let's look at this from a different perspective:

They create their own worlds - often amazing, it's not like they can run out of LEGO pieces, their creativity is their only barrier. In COVID lockdown, they could carry on playing with their friends, despite not being physically together. Humans still monitor and care for the "game", yes, some bad actors might get through occasionally, but on the whole, it's a safe and well-controlled, fun place to be. I used the concept of a Roblox Avatar to gently explain to my children, that people online might not be all they pretend to be - after all, in some games, I'm a super weight-lifter with a six-pack, and I have wings too :-O We all laughed. It's already taught both my children some genuine life-lessons - working in a pizza shop and doing deliveries, earning money, deciding how to lay out their dream houses (and Theme Parks!), and so on - plus, the importance of locking the door to keep the "bad guys" out.

All this, whilst having fun. Roblox is a force for good - if you pay the odd time for some credits, then so what, developers and us creatives also have to keep the roof over our heads.

[yurishimo]

I don’t think anyone has anything against Roblox as a sandbox game, but your glossing over of the predatory monetization is the real issue most people have with the game.

For tech literate parents, setting a spending limit is easy enough and we understand how these games are engineered to be addicting. But for the normies, they don’t know how it works and how to set appropriate limits. Personally, I think kids games with such heavy monetization should be outlawed. The pseudo-gambling aspects of these games is also highly problematic and we see this playing out now as sports gambling and crypto speculation are off the charts in our society with young adults.

[paulryanrogers]

It is amazing how gambling has so thoroughly infiltrated the US. When my older brother was young the cartoons could not have (or consist of) toy commercials, and often included at least a token moral lesson. Now my kids see games and YouTube channels that are filled with thinly veiled gambling tricks. MrBeast has shamelessly built an empire on it. (His charity washing not withstanding.)

[edwcross]

Hello, sir!

Since you are so nice, would you please reimburse my daughter for the 300€ she spent without authorization? I mean, the Robux were bought at 11 PM, all in a burst, as a typical addiction pattern. She didn't even get to use them, since I got a notification about the money being used via the phone company (of course, she never had to steal a credit card, she found one of the infinite ways of siphoning money for bullshit virtual money; but no, it's the parents' fault for not realizing there is yet another backdoor allowing kids to spend money they don't have; and don't worry, the phone company hides them well enough that even if you try to enable all sorts of parent controls, there's always an extra option allowing them to be overridden, and in the most discreet way possible).

(By the way, I already tried to ask for reimbursement, but then Roblox says it's Google Play's fault; Google says it's the phone company's fault; and the phone company says it's the parents' fault for not disabling the hidden "allow spending 20 times the monthly bill on bullshit" checkbox that's locked with the "allow EU roaming"; so if your kid ever needs to cross the border, and can still call you for free thanks to EU rules, you'll still need to let them enable "spend 300€ out of bundle" because the law forgot about this loophole, so of course the phone company used it.)

Oh, wait, maybe this is part of the genuine life lessons Roblox is supposed to teach children?

[jokab]

> NAND gates, flip-flops and I/O schedulers, and networks? No problem.

That's kind of a weird flex.