12 ms·

Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

297 points by turbohz 5y ago

phone8675309 5y ago
These allegations, if true, are terrible, and Roblox should address them. That said, maybe if these young developers learn first hand why digital sharecropping is bad at an early age they can avoid being chewed up and spit out by the "AAA" game development machine and instead focus on creating and promoting games on a platform they have control over.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  I think it is a terrible waste if even one kid with a bright future developing (for example) indie games is traumatized by this stuff and ends up pushing spreadsheets or designing webpages at an ad firm instead.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    On the other hand it may turn a child onto development when they would have normally defaulted into some kind of boring pencil pushing position. Or it may encourage the kids to go into open source if they're not getting paid anyway.
Shadonototro 5y ago
some people are jealous they didn't buy the IPO when it was cheap, some FOMO in hopes they can buy some now lol i am omniscient
forgotpwd16 5y ago
Not sure what Roblox is in first place. An integrated game engine and hosting site?
- TinkersW 5y ago
  A really messy and ugly game that lets people make & distribute mods for it, somehow popular with children, despite being a complete mess.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I haven't played roblox and know relatively little about it, but my guess would be that it is popular with children because it has a low barrier to entry. Sort of like what Flash did for young animators.
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    I played Dreams on the PS4 before I had heard of Roblox, and when I first heard about it I thought "oh wow it's probably like Dreams but for PC!" I was sorely disappointed - I'm as perplexed as you are how they became so successful. It is indeed a total mess.
    - wvenable 5y ago
      Kids love the total mess! As an adult I don't see the appeal but I can understand why kids like it. Most of the complaints here about Roblox and revenue sharing, etc, completely miss the point: Roblox is not Steam; it's a playground.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    in my experience kids tend to gravitate towards chaos, and roblox has a LOT of it
- duxup 5y ago
  Think Steam. But you can jump from game to game quickly. Many of the games are similar-ish to popular games but the barrier to entry is low, share assets, games are easy to jump in and out of together with your friends.
- djrogers 5y ago
  That's precisely what it is. The game animations are fairly simple, but you can build a world and write fairly sophisticated game elements/rules/etc with Lua, and the kids actually seem to like the cartoonish models. Once you write a game or create a world, you can click and publish it for anyone to join.
tyleo 5y ago
I read the article but have not watched the video so I may be missing some context. It really depends on how you define “exploiting”. It doesn’t seem like you _need_ to buy the ads. A kid could make a game on any platform and would encounter similar barriers. Would it be better if the kid played Call of Duty rather than creating something? Even if the chance to profit is low does the kid get something else out of Roblox? To my knowledge kids aren’t dropping out of high school with hopes of being a Roblox millionaire. They may dream about it but I don’t think they act on it. I dreamed about being a pro eSports gamer in high school and I’d argue my time was much worse spent doing that.
- Ashanmaril 5y ago
  It sounds like Roblox does want there to be dedicated Roblox developers. I saw a clip from one of their conventions with someone, possibly the CEO, saying they envision companies of 100 people doing Roblox development
  - dexwiz 5y ago
    There are already studios like this, such as Uplift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Games
    - lupire 5y ago
      That's 1 company, the biggest, saying they want to do that. Roblox makes a fortune off of everyone *failing" to reach that goal.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Roblox takes their 75% cut out of each sale then if you ever manage to accumulate the 100,000 Robux needed to cash out ($1000 worth for what Roblox sells it for) you only get $350. They're double dipping their cut. You should really watch the video it lays out the case very well. If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would have better ways to surface new applications instead of only showing the top N that already have to have over a thousand users.
dreyfan 5y ago
This is no more exploitative than someone trying to make it big on Youtube, Twitch, or Spotify and gaining zero traction. If the content someone creates on these platforms doesn't capture an audience, the hosting platform doesn't generate any revenue and neither does the creator. It's completely free to produce the content (minus your time) and the platform hosts it for free, even though 99% of it never receives any views/plays/listens. At the end of the day I think the only worthy argument is whether or not the revenue sharing arrangement is fair.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  For adults, I agree. But this is squarely aimed at kids and they haven't got the life experience to see these problems coming or deal with them appropriately. If it were aimed at adults, but kids wanted to try, too, like Youtube... I don't have as much problem with that. But the target audience of Roblox ads is kids and always has been. It doesn't seem at all fair to trap kids into this ecosystem, sell them the things they need to get rich and famous, and then also give them a worse cut on their games than Steam, Apple, Google, etc.
  - duxup 5y ago
    What then? Just don't let them make money on the platform?
    - trs8080 5y ago
      uh, yes? if your business model relies on exploiting children, you shouldn't be allowed to operate as a business. or maybe don't pay kids whose work attracts people to your platform in your in-game digital currency. pay them, like, actual money that they've earned.
      - duxup 5y ago
        I feel like we'd then have the same article: "Adults can make money but they don't let kids who create content make any money!"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
duxup 5y ago
My son makes some games on Roblox and plays a lot. He has a great time, he's not chasing $, he just wants to have fun. It works great for that. As soon as you try to stand out and chase money, yeah it gets HARD. Just like streaming on YouTube... or just getting noticed online for your blog. But what's the alternative here? That's a question of scale. Just not let kids even have a chance to make money?
- jnwatson 5y ago
  The main complaint is they encourage kids to create games by emphasizing the revenue sharing aspect, without making clear how hard it is to derive any revenue at all from it.
  - duxup 5y ago
    Honestly I think it is a good learning experience. I talked about it with my son. "Yup there's lots of people making games, it's hard to make games as elaborate as everyone else." And then you just make them for fun ... The fact that kids try and fail at this is not a bad thing IMO. If kids out there can't control themselves (they're kids...) I gotta wonder what if any parental involvement there is. Let's say they ban kids from creating content ... kid who can't control him/herself will just go make an 'adult' account too and do the same thing. Roblox can only do so much.
    - lupire 5y ago
      I don't need to pay a third party to scam my children to teach them a lesson. I can do it myself.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > they encourage kids to create games by emphasizing the revenue sharing aspect I disagree completely here - they encourage kids to create games by giving them an easy platform to create games and letting them play games other kids have created. A kid who sees that other kids their age are able to actually make a video game is far more likely to want to learn to do that themselves.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
>Second, there’s the matter of how extensively Robux (Roblox’s in-app currency) are used to navigate the creator economy. Roblox creators are paid first by receiving a cut of Robux that comes from the sale, which they can use to purchase other Roblox experiences, in-game assets, cosmetics, etc. That means once a developer enters the Robux economy, their money is all spent inside the Roblox system until they’re able to withdraw it. ... But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux. This part seems pretty indefensible. Like yeah to a certain extent all online content platforms have a gate like this, but I've never heard of one that high. YouTube e will pay you as soon as you make something like $20 iirc. And the fact that they pay you in their gated currency which they then allow you to spend but only within their system seems like am obvious self-serving money grab.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  There’s probably a long tail where a tiny fraction of devs make more than that. Free labor!
  - duxup 5y ago
    Most of these kids are just sharing games with their friends... like posting a video to youtube. Free content maybe, but not free labor exactly IMO.
    - kevingadd 5y ago
      It's labor regardless of how much money you make off of it, though I think maybe you mean that they're little games that aren't the result of much effort?
      - duxup 5y ago
        Is YouTube getting free labor when I upload a video? I feel like the exchange there is not about labor...
        5y ago
alexgmcm 5y ago
I have no experience of Roblox development, but if it teaches transferable skills to 'real' programming then it's still probably a net good.
- duxup 5y ago
  The scripting under the hood teaches some real skills. They use Lua. Very handy.
- bink 5y ago
  It does. The development environment is pretty bloated, but it's relatively easy to use and does require actual Lua code to do anything complicated.
djrogers 5y ago
My kids (and I) certainly don't see it as exploitation - they love learning to create games, and would be happy to do it even without any chance of payout. I don't think the $1k minimum payout is crazy either, as the overhead of paying 10s of thousands of kids $11.32 would kill margins (leading to Robux having to take a higher %age). I'd have to think most kids are in the same boat as mine - if their games ever earn them any Robux, they'll turn around and spend those Robux in another game, because that's what they want to do with it anyway.
- bink 5y ago
  Same with me. My kid makes Roblox games for her and her friends. It didn't take her long to realize that the odds of her making any money at all were very slim. In the meantime she gets to learn programming skills in a way that she finds fun. I do feel a bit bad for the older kids that put real effort into it, but I don't see how it's much worse than trying to start a youtube or twitch channel and failing. At least with coding they're getting some valuable experience. All that said, the way they sell "Robux" is absolutely predatory. We've had to have several talks about what is reasonable to spend money on. They even let you pay with Amazon. Payments via Amazon are on by default for Amazon accounts and don't require re-authentication, so a kid who clicks on a link in Roblox on a computer that has already authenticated with Amazon can drain their parent's account.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  It looks worse when that $1k becomes $350 because Roblox cashes out Robux at a 65% discount for itself after taking nearly 75% of every transaction.
  - BigJono 5y ago
    So, to make $350 you need to sell $4000 worth of mtx? That's ludicrous.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
djrogers 5y ago
Upon further reflection, I think I've figured out why my kids and I don't see this as exploitative - they're not trying to get rich or famous. I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, but if you look at all of the complaints through the filter of someone who wants to a) learn to make a video game, b) learn some programming, and c) make a cool game to share with his friends, then Roblox is a really fun, free, and easy way to do all of the above. If your filter is a kid who a) wants to make a game that goes viral and earn a bunch of money off of it, then yeah - some of these are legit complaints.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  i mean, roblox still makes money off of the kid's effort and labor and work, and engineered the system such that they take large amount of cuts for that work. I highly doubt the amount they take as a cut is necessary.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Can’t you fix most of this problem by just buying the blox off market. Though discord and other backdoor channels?
- ace_of_spades 5y ago
  I am really surprised by this attitude. I think most of the negative comments here are fueld by a perception of unfairness in general and not any drive to become famous or anything. You basically seem to advocate for a world where it is ok for platform developers to double maybe tripple dip on transactions that only exist because of the hard work of others. I for myself don’t want to live in a world where this is par for the course. It should be called out and people should be made aware of injustice. It’s not about becoming rich or famous yourself but just realizing unfairness if you see it and ideally taking action on it so that the world may become a better place for all.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ace_of_spades 5y ago
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Wonder what the IRS would think of these earnings. If someone earns $5,000 worth of Robux but spends it all in Roblox rather than ever converting it to currency, is that taxable income? Or would it be like S&H Green Stamps? While there likely aren't many who make games that earn that much or whatever the IRS's threshold is, this is the kind of edge case that ends up making headlines when (if) the IRS comes sniffing around.
csours 5y ago
A lot of people seem to be missing the point - Roblox is motivated to make money from kids. In pursuit of making money they are likely to ignore harms associated to their business model. Yes, this is how business works, but this is also why child labor laws exist. Roblox is treading a fine line between game development for fun and game development for work.
MaxfordAndSons 5y ago
Sort of orthogonal, but a perhaps culturally telling anecdote: a few months ago I was actively looking for a new job, and got a cold email from a technical recruiter from Roblox (via linkedin). I was curious, so set up a time to call, he asked for me to submit my cv (which is 90% things you could see on my linkedin, but sure, whatever) through a upload page on some recruiting site of their. Within minutes of submitting the cv, I got a rejection email from them, even though I had already scheduled the call. I figured it was an error, but nope, crickets when the time for the call came around.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sierpinsky 5y ago
What I find most disturbing about this is the possibility to use real money to promote the games. Due to the misrepresentation of the chances of success this turns the platform into a gambling den for ten year olds.
fridif 5y ago
It's all fun and games till people start talking about money and exploitation. Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.
- rnd0 5y ago
  >Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate. Back in your day, ID etc weren't profiting off of the mods you made. They were shared freely in other fan spaces. Apples, oranges.
  - fridif 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that Valve made quite the pretty penny off of just user made maps alone for CS Source? "Dude check out this crazy game, you can SURF around, kill people, and level up your character for crazy new powers" was the reason I bought CS Source after seeing it at a friends house...
RistrettoMike 5y ago
I'm with others here in that this - while an extreme example - is just another version of common revenue-sharing that happens on pretty much all online creation platforms where the user isn't responsible for hosting the content themselves. I think it's a bit ludicrous that the company is pushing that as a marketing point towards children, that the payout-threshold is so high, and that they take multiple cuts of that payout, but at the end of the day; aren't all monetized products aimed at children kind of a scam built on exploiting people who can't recognize they're being exploited? Kind of egregious, but also just the same principle as many other platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Spotify, Medium, Google, etc.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
See Carmack's rebuttal: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1428483898896535562 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1428483898896535562 > I have been impressed by the number of real world economic and business issues that Roblox is exposing my younger son to, both in the experiences and the larger ecosystem. There is a lot of thinking in terms of effort, reward, and risk. "You seem to be ignoring the thesis of the video. For the vast majority of their creators, their is very little reward, and mostly a lot of exploitative business preying on children." > I am disagreeing with the thesis of the video. Roblox provides opportunities previously unavailable; it is up to the individuals to decide if they are worthwhile to invest time in. If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken?
- cma 5y ago
  > If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken? FWIW, he's the CTO of a 30% app store trying to also break into the Roblox business (their Metaverse talk/Facebook Horizon). So rather than Roblox only taking 40% and giving 30% to Apple, Facebook will potentially be in position to take the full 70% (or more due to getting children to pay for ad spend) of the child labor.
  - elefanten 5y ago
    I don’t think Oculus is courting amateur kiddie devs.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Carmack is a full time AI developer. He's working on AI in the most hardcore sense: aiming at full AGI. I've DM'ed with him for months about it. I was skeptical, and then his ideas turned out to be some of the most innovative I've seen. When Carmack tweets something, it's because he believes what he's saying is true. Searching for the most charitable interpretation of your argument, the only thing I can think of is "Maybe Carmack's view was contaminated by his time spent as CTO of Oculus." But he joined Oculus long before Facebook acquired it, and before the policies you mention. Carmack may be legendary, but he likely had no say in those policies.
jamesgeck0 5y ago
If you're interested in more info about the platform dynamics of Roblox, I found _So You Want to Compete with Roblox_[1] to be informative. 1. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-roblox/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...
41209 5y ago
Hard disagree. The absurd vast majority of people will never make any money via Roblox, or any of the major app stores for that matter. I have a few apps on both Google Play and the App Store. I'm never going to see a dime. If anything I like that Roblox is encouraging kids to learn game development, later on they can always move on to Unity or Godot( I'm not really an Unreal fan since the editor doesn't run well on my computer). Then they can also enjoy making no money on Steam ! It's very very rare for indie game devs to make money !!
eezing 5y ago
An 11 year old is having trouble earning a living as an independent game developer?
kenjackson 5y ago
This probably is exploitative at some level. Although for my son, he has made a handful of very low budget games. And he's gotten paid in Robux for them. He was actually pleasantly surprised when he got his first payout. Probably the equivalent of a few dollars. While he can't cash out his Robux, it turns out not to be so bad for him since he likes Robux. On his last birthday his biggest as was for Robux. As far as gaming development platforms, it is probably the best I've used. I'm not a pro game developer, so I've used simple stuff like Unity. But I have found Roblox to be a really easy platform to get started with.
caiomassan 5y ago
they should all go to sandbox. https://www.sandbox.game/en/ https://www.sandbox.game/en/ Play, Create, Own, and Govern a virtual world made by players
MrStonedOne 5y ago
articles like this would do better to actually spell things out. What is the cut. They say it's worse than other platforms, but nothing stops them from actually saying what it is. edit: the cut roblox takes for themselves is 30% at transaction time, and 65% at withdrawal time.
dang 5y ago
The video this article is reporting on is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ. Normally we'd change the URL to the original source but I think most HN readers probably prefer to read a summary even if the article is cribbed.
flerchin 5y ago
Cut is high, something like 91.25%. That should probably change. All the rest is whinging.
rdtwo 5y ago
I mean is a shit model but as long as you do all your transactions off marketplace it reduces fees significantly
123pie123 5y ago
my son (not yet 14yo) has learnt to write a few games in Roblox he's learnt Lua, object orientated programing client side/ server side distributed programing (and how to optimse the speed) he's also learnt that the people who run the platform will screw you over in many different ways (he's learnt a few tricks to semi counter this) he's learnt that advertising can be useless and costly, learnt people are extremely fickle, there's a far amount of people who have money to throw around learnt that doing good graphics is harder than it seems. (also learnt how to use blender) also that game dynamics and subtile changes can have big real world changes to peoples experiances also that UI and UX are important also to train other (kids) how to program - for money I'd say as a learning platform it has been fantastic, he's not made much real money, but has earned a far amount of robuks (platforms currency) that's he's spent in game
wonderwonder 5y ago
Its not really surprising, this is a platform designed solely for the purpose of keeping kids glued to their screens and spending money. And they are excellent at it. My kids are obsessed with it to the point where I have been planning a complete ban on gaming for a couple weeks to try and break the addiction. I know several (4) other families who's kids are going through the same thing. My kids are constantly asking for money as well to buy things in game, constantly to the point that it really reminds me of a drug addiction.
anonymousab 5y ago
If they were forced to change, I feel like the most likely outcome would be to remove the chance of renumeration for young developers, to sidestep any possible legal implications altogether. To turn experience-making, for kids at least, into a purely hobby effort. Maybe that's not bad, but I figure the same negative pressures would still exist, for the most part. It would be interesting to see the company's reaction to a completely free, hobby Experience becoming the most played (and unpaid) game on the platform. It's unlikely, but fun to imagine.
andrewstuart 5y ago
It's the epitome of what people have come to expect from Silicon Valley bro culture to exploit child programmers instead of paying them cash. Roblox developer business model should be renamed Dickensian Development.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
As a teen I spent many hours making games in Klik and Play and mods for Id Software games. Roblox and Minecraft both enable kids to craft experiences for and with friends. I think Roblox's market, messaging, and cut set it apart. If it didn't sell the dream of making money and maintain such a high bar to get money out and get discovered then it wouldn't be so exploitive. I don't feel exploited by my time with other game toolkits because the expectations and outcomes were clearer.
boublepop 5y ago
I feel like any criticism that centered around “it’s difficult to be in the top 200” is just ridiculous and sounds Like it’s just sour grapes from someone who failed at making something good and can’t accept that. There is nothing any platform can do to have more items in their top 200. That’s just not possible. It’s not a problem in the platform that you didn’t make it to the top 200.

297 points by turbohz 5y ago

These allegations, if true, are terrible, and Roblox should address them. That said, maybe if these young developers learn first hand why digital sharecropping is bad at an early age they can avoid being chewed up and spit out by the "AAA" game development machine and instead focus on creating and promoting games on a platform they have control over.

kevingadd 5y ago
I think it is a terrible waste if even one kid with a bright future developing (for example) indie games is traumatized by this stuff and ends up pushing spreadsheets or designing webpages at an ad firm instead.
- jandrese 5y ago
  On the other hand it may turn a child onto development when they would have normally defaulted into some kind of boring pencil pushing position. Or it may encourage the kids to go into open source if they're not getting paid anyway.

Shadonototro 5y ago

some people are jealous they didn't buy the IPO when it was cheap, some FOMO in hopes they can buy some now lol i am omniscient

forgotpwd16 5y ago

Not sure what Roblox is in first place. An integrated game engine and hosting site?

TinkersW 5y ago
A really messy and ugly game that lets people make & distribute mods for it, somehow popular with children, despite being a complete mess.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I haven't played roblox and know relatively little about it, but my guess would be that it is popular with children because it has a low barrier to entry. Sort of like what Flash did for young animators.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  I played Dreams on the PS4 before I had heard of Roblox, and when I first heard about it I thought "oh wow it's probably like Dreams but for PC!" I was sorely disappointed - I'm as perplexed as you are how they became so successful. It is indeed a total mess.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    Kids love the total mess! As an adult I don't see the appeal but I can understand why kids like it. Most of the complaints here about Roblox and revenue sharing, etc, completely miss the point: Roblox is not Steam; it's a playground.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  in my experience kids tend to gravitate towards chaos, and roblox has a LOT of it
duxup 5y ago
Think Steam. But you can jump from game to game quickly. Many of the games are similar-ish to popular games but the barrier to entry is low, share assets, games are easy to jump in and out of together with your friends.
djrogers 5y ago
That's precisely what it is. The game animations are fairly simple, but you can build a world and write fairly sophisticated game elements/rules/etc with Lua, and the kids actually seem to like the cartoonish models. Once you write a game or create a world, you can click and publish it for anyone to join.

tyleo 5y ago

I read the article but have not watched the video so I may be missing some context. It really depends on how you define “exploiting”. It doesn’t seem like you _need_ to buy the ads. A kid could make a game on any platform and would encounter similar barriers. Would it be better if the kid played Call of Duty rather than creating something? Even if the chance to profit is low does the kid get something else out of Roblox? To my knowledge kids aren’t dropping out of high school with hopes of being a Roblox millionaire. They may dream about it but I don’t think they act on it. I dreamed about being a pro eSports gamer in high school and I’d argue my time was much worse spent doing that.

Ashanmaril 5y ago
It sounds like Roblox does want there to be dedicated Roblox developers. I saw a clip from one of their conventions with someone, possibly the CEO, saying they envision companies of 100 people doing Roblox development
- dexwiz 5y ago
  There are already studios like this, such as Uplift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Games
  - lupire 5y ago
    That's 1 company, the biggest, saying they want to do that. Roblox makes a fortune off of everyone *failing" to reach that goal.
rtkwe 5y ago
Roblox takes their 75% cut out of each sale then if you ever manage to accumulate the 100,000 Robux needed to cash out ($1000 worth for what Roblox sells it for) you only get $350. They're double dipping their cut. You should really watch the video it lays out the case very well. If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would have better ways to surface new applications instead of only showing the top N that already have to have over a thousand users.

dreyfan 5y ago

This is no more exploitative than someone trying to make it big on Youtube, Twitch, or Spotify and gaining zero traction. If the content someone creates on these platforms doesn't capture an audience, the hosting platform doesn't generate any revenue and neither does the creator. It's completely free to produce the content (minus your time) and the platform hosts it for free, even though 99% of it never receives any views/plays/listens. At the end of the day I think the only worthy argument is whether or not the revenue sharing arrangement is fair.

wccrawford 5y ago
For adults, I agree. But this is squarely aimed at kids and they haven't got the life experience to see these problems coming or deal with them appropriately. If it were aimed at adults, but kids wanted to try, too, like Youtube... I don't have as much problem with that. But the target audience of Roblox ads is kids and always has been. It doesn't seem at all fair to trap kids into this ecosystem, sell them the things they need to get rich and famous, and then also give them a worse cut on their games than Steam, Apple, Google, etc.
- duxup 5y ago
  What then? Just don't let them make money on the platform?
  - trs8080 5y ago
    uh, yes? if your business model relies on exploiting children, you shouldn't be allowed to operate as a business. or maybe don't pay kids whose work attracts people to your platform in your in-game digital currency. pay them, like, actual money that they've earned.
    - duxup 5y ago
      I feel like we'd then have the same article: "Adults can make money but they don't let kids who create content make any money!"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

duxup 5y ago

My son makes some games on Roblox and plays a lot. He has a great time, he's not chasing $, he just wants to have fun. It works great for that. As soon as you try to stand out and chase money, yeah it gets HARD. Just like streaming on YouTube... or just getting noticed online for your blog. But what's the alternative here? That's a question of scale. Just not let kids even have a chance to make money?

jnwatson 5y ago
The main complaint is they encourage kids to create games by emphasizing the revenue sharing aspect, without making clear how hard it is to derive any revenue at all from it.
- duxup 5y ago
  Honestly I think it is a good learning experience. I talked about it with my son. "Yup there's lots of people making games, it's hard to make games as elaborate as everyone else." And then you just make them for fun ... The fact that kids try and fail at this is not a bad thing IMO. If kids out there can't control themselves (they're kids...) I gotta wonder what if any parental involvement there is. Let's say they ban kids from creating content ... kid who can't control him/herself will just go make an 'adult' account too and do the same thing. Roblox can only do so much.
  - lupire 5y ago
    I don't need to pay a third party to scam my children to teach them a lesson. I can do it myself.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > they encourage kids to create games by emphasizing the revenue sharing aspect I disagree completely here - they encourage kids to create games by giving them an easy platform to create games and letting them play games other kids have created. A kid who sees that other kids their age are able to actually make a video game is far more likely to want to learn to do that themselves.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago

>Second, there’s the matter of how extensively Robux (Roblox’s in-app currency) are used to navigate the creator economy. Roblox creators are paid first by receiving a cut of Robux that comes from the sale, which they can use to purchase other Roblox experiences, in-game assets, cosmetics, etc. That means once a developer enters the Robux economy, their money is all spent inside the Roblox system until they’re able to withdraw it. ... But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux. This part seems pretty indefensible. Like yeah to a certain extent all online content platforms have a gate like this, but I've never heard of one that high. YouTube e will pay you as soon as you make something like $20 iirc. And the fact that they pay you in their gated currency which they then allow you to spend but only within their system seems like am obvious self-serving money grab.

donmcronald 5y ago
There’s probably a long tail where a tiny fraction of devs make more than that. Free labor!
- duxup 5y ago
  Most of these kids are just sharing games with their friends... like posting a video to youtube. Free content maybe, but not free labor exactly IMO.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    It's labor regardless of how much money you make off of it, though I think maybe you mean that they're little games that aren't the result of much effort?
    - duxup 5y ago
      Is YouTube getting free labor when I upload a video? I feel like the exchange there is not about labor...
      - 5y ago

alexgmcm 5y ago

I have no experience of Roblox development, but if it teaches transferable skills to 'real' programming then it's still probably a net good.

duxup 5y ago
The scripting under the hood teaches some real skills. They use Lua. Very handy.
bink 5y ago
It does. The development environment is pretty bloated, but it's relatively easy to use and does require actual Lua code to do anything complicated.

djrogers 5y ago

My kids (and I) certainly don't see it as exploitation - they love learning to create games, and would be happy to do it even without any chance of payout. I don't think the $1k minimum payout is crazy either, as the overhead of paying 10s of thousands of kids $11.32 would kill margins (leading to Robux having to take a higher %age). I'd have to think most kids are in the same boat as mine - if their games ever earn them any Robux, they'll turn around and spend those Robux in another game, because that's what they want to do with it anyway.

bink 5y ago
Same with me. My kid makes Roblox games for her and her friends. It didn't take her long to realize that the odds of her making any money at all were very slim. In the meantime she gets to learn programming skills in a way that she finds fun. I do feel a bit bad for the older kids that put real effort into it, but I don't see how it's much worse than trying to start a youtube or twitch channel and failing. At least with coding they're getting some valuable experience. All that said, the way they sell "Robux" is absolutely predatory. We've had to have several talks about what is reasonable to spend money on. They even let you pay with Amazon. Payments via Amazon are on by default for Amazon accounts and don't require re-authentication, so a kid who clicks on a link in Roblox on a computer that has already authenticated with Amazon can drain their parent's account.
rtkwe 5y ago
It looks worse when that $1k becomes $350 because Roblox cashes out Robux at a 65% discount for itself after taking nearly 75% of every transaction.
- BigJono 5y ago
  So, to make $350 you need to sell $4000 worth of mtx? That's ludicrous.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago

djrogers 5y ago

Upon further reflection, I think I've figured out why my kids and I don't see this as exploitative - they're not trying to get rich or famous. I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, but if you look at all of the complaints through the filter of someone who wants to a) learn to make a video game, b) learn some programming, and c) make a cool game to share with his friends, then Roblox is a really fun, free, and easy way to do all of the above. If your filter is a kid who a) wants to make a game that goes viral and earn a bunch of money off of it, then yeah - some of these are legit complaints.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
i mean, roblox still makes money off of the kid's effort and labor and work, and engineered the system such that they take large amount of cuts for that work. I highly doubt the amount they take as a cut is necessary.
rdtwo 5y ago
Can’t you fix most of this problem by just buying the blox off market. Though discord and other backdoor channels?
ace_of_spades 5y ago
I am really surprised by this attitude. I think most of the negative comments here are fueld by a perception of unfairness in general and not any drive to become famous or anything. You basically seem to advocate for a world where it is ok for platform developers to double maybe tripple dip on transactions that only exist because of the hard work of others. I for myself don’t want to live in a world where this is par for the course. It should be called out and people should be made aware of injustice. It’s not about becoming rich or famous yourself but just realizing unfairness if you see it and ideally taking action on it so that the world may become a better place for all.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ace_of_spades 5y ago

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Wonder what the IRS would think of these earnings. If someone earns $5,000 worth of Robux but spends it all in Roblox rather than ever converting it to currency, is that taxable income? Or would it be like S&H Green Stamps? While there likely aren't many who make games that earn that much or whatever the IRS's threshold is, this is the kind of edge case that ends up making headlines when (if) the IRS comes sniffing around.

csours 5y ago

A lot of people seem to be missing the point - Roblox is motivated to make money from kids. In pursuit of making money they are likely to ignore harms associated to their business model. Yes, this is how business works, but this is also why child labor laws exist. Roblox is treading a fine line between game development for fun and game development for work.

MaxfordAndSons 5y ago

Sort of orthogonal, but a perhaps culturally telling anecdote: a few months ago I was actively looking for a new job, and got a cold email from a technical recruiter from Roblox (via linkedin). I was curious, so set up a time to call, he asked for me to submit my cv (which is 90% things you could see on my linkedin, but sure, whatever) through a upload page on some recruiting site of their. Within minutes of submitting the cv, I got a rejection email from them, even though I had already scheduled the call. I figured it was an error, but nope, crickets when the time for the call came around.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sierpinsky 5y ago

What I find most disturbing about this is the possibility to use real money to promote the games. Due to the misrepresentation of the chances of success this turns the platform into a gambling den for ten year olds.

fridif 5y ago

It's all fun and games till people start talking about money and exploitation. Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.

rnd0 5y ago
>Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate. Back in your day, ID etc weren't profiting off of the mods you made. They were shared freely in other fan spaces. Apples, oranges.
- fridif 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Valve made quite the pretty penny off of just user made maps alone for CS Source? "Dude check out this crazy game, you can SURF around, kill people, and level up your character for crazy new powers" was the reason I bought CS Source after seeing it at a friends house...

RistrettoMike 5y ago

I'm with others here in that this - while an extreme example - is just another version of common revenue-sharing that happens on pretty much all online creation platforms where the user isn't responsible for hosting the content themselves. I think it's a bit ludicrous that the company is pushing that as a marketing point towards children, that the payout-threshold is so high, and that they take multiple cuts of that payout, but at the end of the day; aren't all monetized products aimed at children kind of a scam built on exploiting people who can't recognize they're being exploited? Kind of egregious, but also just the same principle as many other platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Spotify, Medium, Google, etc.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

See Carmack's rebuttal: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1428483898896535562 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1428483898896535562 > I have been impressed by the number of real world economic and business issues that Roblox is exposing my younger son to, both in the experiences and the larger ecosystem. There is a lot of thinking in terms of effort, reward, and risk. "You seem to be ignoring the thesis of the video. For the vast majority of their creators, their is very little reward, and mostly a lot of exploitative business preying on children." > I am disagreeing with the thesis of the video. Roblox provides opportunities previously unavailable; it is up to the individuals to decide if they are worthwhile to invest time in. If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken?

cma 5y ago
> If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken? FWIW, he's the CTO of a 30% app store trying to also break into the Roblox business (their Metaverse talk/Facebook Horizon). So rather than Roblox only taking 40% and giving 30% to Apple, Facebook will potentially be in position to take the full 70% (or more due to getting children to pay for ad spend) of the child labor.
- elefanten 5y ago
  I don’t think Oculus is courting amateur kiddie devs.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Carmack is a full time AI developer. He's working on AI in the most hardcore sense: aiming at full AGI. I've DM'ed with him for months about it. I was skeptical, and then his ideas turned out to be some of the most innovative I've seen. When Carmack tweets something, it's because he believes what he's saying is true. Searching for the most charitable interpretation of your argument, the only thing I can think of is "Maybe Carmack's view was contaminated by his time spent as CTO of Oculus." But he joined Oculus long before Facebook acquired it, and before the policies you mention. Carmack may be legendary, but he likely had no say in those policies.

jamesgeck0 5y ago

If you're interested in more info about the platform dynamics of Roblox, I found _So You Want to Compete with Roblox_[1] to be informative. 1. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-roblox/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...

41209 5y ago

Hard disagree. The absurd vast majority of people will never make any money via Roblox, or any of the major app stores for that matter. I have a few apps on both Google Play and the App Store. I'm never going to see a dime. If anything I like that Roblox is encouraging kids to learn game development, later on they can always move on to Unity or Godot( I'm not really an Unreal fan since the editor doesn't run well on my computer). Then they can also enjoy making no money on Steam ! It's very very rare for indie game devs to make money !!

eezing 5y ago

An 11 year old is having trouble earning a living as an independent game developer?

kenjackson 5y ago

This probably is exploitative at some level. Although for my son, he has made a handful of very low budget games. And he's gotten paid in Robux for them. He was actually pleasantly surprised when he got his first payout. Probably the equivalent of a few dollars. While he can't cash out his Robux, it turns out not to be so bad for him since he likes Robux. On his last birthday his biggest as was for Robux. As far as gaming development platforms, it is probably the best I've used. I'm not a pro game developer, so I've used simple stuff like Unity. But I have found Roblox to be a really easy platform to get started with.

caiomassan 5y ago

they should all go to sandbox. https://www.sandbox.game/en/ https://www.sandbox.game/en/ Play, Create, Own, and Govern a virtual world made by players

MrStonedOne 5y ago

articles like this would do better to actually spell things out. What is the cut. They say it's worse than other platforms, but nothing stops them from actually saying what it is. edit: the cut roblox takes for themselves is 30% at transaction time, and 65% at withdrawal time.

dang 5y ago

The video this article is reporting on is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ. Normally we'd change the URL to the original source but I think most HN readers probably prefer to read a summary even if the article is cribbed.

flerchin 5y ago

Cut is high, something like 91.25%. That should probably change. All the rest is whinging.

rdtwo 5y ago

I mean is a shit model but as long as you do all your transactions off marketplace it reduces fees significantly

123pie123 5y ago

my son (not yet 14yo) has learnt to write a few games in Roblox he's learnt Lua, object orientated programing client side/ server side distributed programing (and how to optimse the speed) he's also learnt that the people who run the platform will screw you over in many different ways (he's learnt a few tricks to semi counter this) he's learnt that advertising can be useless and costly, learnt people are extremely fickle, there's a far amount of people who have money to throw around learnt that doing good graphics is harder than it seems. (also learnt how to use blender) also that game dynamics and subtile changes can have big real world changes to peoples experiances also that UI and UX are important also to train other (kids) how to program - for money I'd say as a learning platform it has been fantastic, he's not made much real money, but has earned a far amount of robuks (platforms currency) that's he's spent in game

wonderwonder 5y ago

Its not really surprising, this is a platform designed solely for the purpose of keeping kids glued to their screens and spending money. And they are excellent at it. My kids are obsessed with it to the point where I have been planning a complete ban on gaming for a couple weeks to try and break the addiction. I know several (4) other families who's kids are going through the same thing. My kids are constantly asking for money as well to buy things in game, constantly to the point that it really reminds me of a drug addiction.

anonymousab 5y ago

If they were forced to change, I feel like the most likely outcome would be to remove the chance of renumeration for young developers, to sidestep any possible legal implications altogether. To turn experience-making, for kids at least, into a purely hobby effort. Maybe that's not bad, but I figure the same negative pressures would still exist, for the most part. It would be interesting to see the company's reaction to a completely free, hobby Experience becoming the most played (and unpaid) game on the platform. It's unlikely, but fun to imagine.

andrewstuart 5y ago

It's the epitome of what people have come to expect from Silicon Valley bro culture to exploit child programmers instead of paying them cash. Roblox developer business model should be renamed Dickensian Development.

paulryanrogers 5y ago

As a teen I spent many hours making games in Klik and Play and mods for Id Software games. Roblox and Minecraft both enable kids to craft experiences for and with friends. I think Roblox's market, messaging, and cut set it apart. If it didn't sell the dream of making money and maintain such a high bar to get money out and get discovered then it wouldn't be so exploitive. I don't feel exploited by my time with other game toolkits because the expectations and outcomes were clearer.

boublepop 5y ago

I feel like any criticism that centered around “it’s difficult to be in the top 200” is just ridiculous and sounds Like it’s just sour grapes from someone who failed at making something good and can’t accept that. There is nothing any platform can do to have more items in their top 200. That’s just not possible. It’s not a problem in the platform that you didn’t make it to the top 200.