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The "exploiting" part doesn't come from the ability for children to make money. It comes from the company taking 75% of profits and having a pretty massive mini

The "exploiting" part doesn't come from the ability for children to make money. It comes from the company taking 75% of profits and having a pretty massive minimum bar (100,000 Robux / $1,000 USD) which must be passed before the person gets to withdraw anything at all, which is then effectively double taxed because the company will then only give $350 for 100,000 Robux when cashing out to actual money. It's all designed to get a huge amount of free labor, while hiding how outside of a lucky few who benefit from the network effect, the average would-be game maker ("slum kid" or not) would be financially better off just using a standalone toolkit to make their own app and selling it on Itch or Gumroad.

modeless 3y ago
Don't forget Apple accounts for ~30 of those percentage points. It's not as if Roblox actually gets 75% of the money.
nulltxt 3y ago
> 100,000 Robux / $1,000 USD Not much better but still a bit at 30,000 robux for $105 now
SLHamlet 3y ago
Well, both allowing kids to monetize and taking almost all the revenue are a problem. The wild thing is Second Life's 600K MAU players monetize better than Roblox's 350M MAU players -- both for the company (it's still not profitable despite huge revenue) and for the creator community: https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2022/01/roblox-metaverse-revenue-second-life-philip-rosedale.html https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2022/01/roblox-metaverse-revenue-s...
- CharlesW 3y ago
  I get the revenue split issue, but why is providing a platform for kid creators to make money a problem?
  - crtasm 3y ago
    Because the majority of people on the platform are kid spenders?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  I expect the vast majority of Roblox players to be under 10 with low spending power. In contrast, someone still playing Second Life has more discretionary income.
  - techcode 3y ago
    With one kid just becoming a teen and other kid being half the age - I'm somewhat biased. I know a dozens of early teens (friends/classmates of my kid, kids of friends/colleagues ...etc) that are (still) playing Roblox. I even know one of those older teens (friends kid) that is earning enough money from Roblox games - that it doesn't make sense for him to do a typical Dutch teenager job of stocking shelves in stores/markets. From ages 6/7 and higher it's common for kids to say to each other "Don't need toy type of birthday present as I would prefer Roblox (or once they are a bit older Fortnite or other similar) gift card". More than once our kid got so many that we had to "throttle" their "use" over weeks/months. Anyway - yeah developers getting only 30% and Roblox keeping 70%, especially with all the fuss about the likes of Apple/Google/Unity getting into trouble for 70/30 split the other way - doesn't make sense. Sure - there are bigger operational costs for Roblox actually running game servers (instead of just the store) - though not that much bigger, right?
- crooked-v 3y ago
  I feel like that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison, given that Second Life's going to have a, by comparison, massive lean towards well-off older adults with long-term investment in the SL social ecosystem. If anything I would look at VRChat for comparisons instead (a young demographic, especially on standalone headsets, and an ecosystem that's still very Wild West in many ways), though measuring numbers there would be much, much harder since most of the creator ecosystem happens outside of the app itself on Gumroad, Booth, etc (content subscriptions through VRChat itself are still only in beta).
transcriptase 3y ago
If they wanted to really step up the shitty behaviour, they could do like Google Adsense and ban your account the moment you reach the threshold to cash out. Even if they apparently didn’t have a problem with you during the many months it took to get there while they were profiting from the ads you ran.
exolymph 3y ago
> would be financially better off just using a standalone toolkit to make their own app and selling it on Itch or Gumroad. Arguably not, because Roblox offers distribution. It's like selling on Amazon or Etsy — you give up an onerous-seeming cut to the platform, but people do it because a percentage of something is more than 100% of nothing.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Itch offers distribution, for no charge. Gumroad's 10%. (These, your original examples, are more relevant to this market than Amazon and Etsy.)
macspoofing 3y ago
>It comes from the company taking 75% of profits I know nothing about Roblox, but this YouTube short (from Pirate Software) came up for me recently, and made it seem like the revenue cut is a bit more nuanced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkihEtuVliU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkihEtuVliU His pinned comment also goes into a bunch of detail.

modeless 3y ago

Don't forget Apple accounts for ~30 of those percentage points. It's not as if Roblox actually gets 75% of the money.

nulltxt 3y ago

> 100,000 Robux / $1,000 USD Not much better but still a bit at 30,000 robux for $105 now

SLHamlet 3y ago

Well, both allowing kids to monetize and taking almost all the revenue are a problem. The wild thing is Second Life's 600K MAU players monetize better than Roblox's 350M MAU players -- both for the company (it's still not profitable despite huge revenue) and for the creator community: https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2022/01/roblox-metaverse-revenue-second-life-philip-rosedale.html https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2022/01/roblox-metaverse-revenue-s...

CharlesW 3y ago
I get the revenue split issue, but why is providing a platform for kid creators to make money a problem?
- crtasm 3y ago
  Because the majority of people on the platform are kid spenders?
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
I expect the vast majority of Roblox players to be under 10 with low spending power. In contrast, someone still playing Second Life has more discretionary income.
- techcode 3y ago
  With one kid just becoming a teen and other kid being half the age - I'm somewhat biased. I know a dozens of early teens (friends/classmates of my kid, kids of friends/colleagues ...etc) that are (still) playing Roblox. I even know one of those older teens (friends kid) that is earning enough money from Roblox games - that it doesn't make sense for him to do a typical Dutch teenager job of stocking shelves in stores/markets. From ages 6/7 and higher it's common for kids to say to each other "Don't need toy type of birthday present as I would prefer Roblox (or once they are a bit older Fortnite or other similar) gift card". More than once our kid got so many that we had to "throttle" their "use" over weeks/months. Anyway - yeah developers getting only 30% and Roblox keeping 70%, especially with all the fuss about the likes of Apple/Google/Unity getting into trouble for 70/30 split the other way - doesn't make sense. Sure - there are bigger operational costs for Roblox actually running game servers (instead of just the store) - though not that much bigger, right?
crooked-v 3y ago
I feel like that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison, given that Second Life's going to have a, by comparison, massive lean towards well-off older adults with long-term investment in the SL social ecosystem. If anything I would look at VRChat for comparisons instead (a young demographic, especially on standalone headsets, and an ecosystem that's still very Wild West in many ways), though measuring numbers there would be much, much harder since most of the creator ecosystem happens outside of the app itself on Gumroad, Booth, etc (content subscriptions through VRChat itself are still only in beta).

transcriptase 3y ago

If they wanted to really step up the shitty behaviour, they could do like Google Adsense and ban your account the moment you reach the threshold to cash out. Even if they apparently didn’t have a problem with you during the many months it took to get there while they were profiting from the ads you ran.

exolymph 3y ago

> would be financially better off just using a standalone toolkit to make their own app and selling it on Itch or Gumroad. Arguably not, because Roblox offers distribution. It's like selling on Amazon or Etsy — you give up an onerous-seeming cut to the platform, but people do it because a percentage of something is more than 100% of nothing.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
Itch offers distribution, for no charge. Gumroad's 10%. (These, your original examples, are more relevant to this market than Amazon and Etsy.)

macspoofing 3y ago

>It comes from the company taking 75% of profits I know nothing about Roblox, but this YouTube short (from Pirate Software) came up for me recently, and made it seem like the revenue cut is a bit more nuanced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkihEtuVliU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkihEtuVliU His pinned comment also goes into a bunch of detail.