Simply put, IAP is the business model and has been since long before Roblox became successful (or criticized). I can only think of two potential alternatives.

Simply put, IAP is the business model and has been since long before Roblox became successful (or criticized). I can only think of two potential alternatives. 1) Advertising, but that would be even more fraught than IAP. 2) Subscription fees, but those would severely limit the reach of the platform. Reach is somewhat important here. A vast swathe of Roblox players have extremely low-end devices. Roblox provides low end games to match, AND a community composed of the same sorts of players (mostly kids 5-12 or so). These players don't pay and aren't involved in buying or selling anything (just like free games in general, the paying % is very low). The rare items you're reading about in this article are only relevant for a very tiny percentage of users. The interesting and concerning thing about Roblox is completely unmentioned in this article. That is: the Roblox IAP model is significantly different than the wider mobile game industry model. In mobile games, typically whales are the most important audience; those are the very tiny percentage of users who spend unhealthy amounts on games. On Roblox, whales by and large don't exist, and the early breakout successes on the platform had a very low spending cap, one that perhaps even a skeptical person such as yourself might be OK with. A user might pay $5 - $10 for their favorite game -- and then be unable to pay any more. But more recently (in the past 1-2 years) a number of developers on the platform have become MUCH more predatory, and seem to be gunning to create whales. If Roblox doesn't find ways to curtail them, that's going to become a major problem for the platform. I wouldn't rely on Vice to report on that, though. This article largely exists because Facebook bad, therefore all related businesses bad.