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Infrastructure at Roblox
- gnabgib 1y agoTitle: The Infrastructure Supporting Record-Breaking Experiences
- kgwxd 1y agoI really love the core idea of Roblox, if only it weren't a scam targeting kid's birthday money.
- pkulak 1y agoIf kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries… is that the worst thing in the world? I’d rather my kids play Roblox than scroll Instagram. One of those is “free”.
- jmyeet 1y agoRoblox engages the exact same psychological manipulation that gambling does. Would you let your children go nuts at a casino? Or online with sports betting or crypto slots? The problem isn't the $5-10. It's the psychological manipulation.
- ryandrake 1y agoAs a parent, if you sit down with your kid and curate (or at least actively check/approve) what they are playing on Roblox, it’s fine. Mine just uses it to socialize with her real life friends, who are also all there. She sticks to the wholesome stuff, it might as well be Minecraft.
- krapht 1y agoSure, but at that point, why not just Minecraft then?
- ryandrake 1y agoShe does! A lot of her friends left Minecraft though, but we still play together.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoThe problem is, most parents don’t.
- gehwartzen 1y agoIt sounds more like the same psychological manipulation that underpins the IRL world (at least the US) in the form of capitalism. Engineered towards adults to buy as much useless crap as possible. Teach kids that it’s the same kind of manipulation as in their games (and how to spot it) and perhaps they will be better equipped to not get fucked by adult life.
- Dilettante_ 1y agoI actually don't know very much about Roblox. I was under the impression that it was more like a storefront sort of thing, with 3rd party games being hosted there? Kind of like one of those 'old' flash game portals, except you buy the games and ingame items. Where do the gambling tricks come in?
- op00to 1y agoI recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers. Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it. They play with their friends on XBox Live, with voice chat limited to friends we personally add.
- UnlockedSecrets 1y agoAs someone with no experience of roblox but has heard this a few times, what exactly about it makes it 'such' a bad thing??
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago[flagged]
- charcircuit 1y ago13 years old and above can talk and dm with any other account also 13 years old and above. Unless a parent account disables it.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoI once overheard our nine year old explaining to a friend how to lie about their birthdate to create a YouTube account. Age checks are not meaningfully a working thing.
- charcircuit 1y agoParent account can be used for any age and can disable chat.
- superb_dev 1y agoThe YouTube channel “People Make Games” had a really great video on the exploitation going on
- Aurornis 1y ago> If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries If this was a game that had a subscription fee or where you had to buy the new version every year, that might be true. These games don’t work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual player. They’re designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you’re enticed to pay 5-10 bucks there, then you’re scrounging or begging for another 5-10 bucks for the next thing.
- moregrist 1y agoThe amount a child can spend on Roblox is entirely up to the parents. Children, especially pre-teens, don’t have access to credit or money without their parents consent, and a pretty easy way to limit the amount of money your child can spent on Roblox is to just make them have to ask you to buy the in-game currency. There are problems with the game but the amount of money going into it is something a parent can and should 100% control.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoClearly you aren't aware how many kids steal their parents' credit cards to buy Robux. It's a very common thing.
- Dilettante_ 1y agoHow common is it, and how specific to Roblox purchases? What about 19$ Fortnite cards, or whatever currency those "Tiktok NPCs" that make noises at children are paid in?
- landl0rd 1y agoIf toy stores had a subscription fee or where you had to buy a new access pass every year, that would be fine. They don't work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual child. They're designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you're enticed to pay 5-10 bucks for another toy, then you're scrounging or begging for another 5-10 bucks for the next toy.
- Spooky23 1y agoRoblox is awful with lots of weird crap and opportunity for abuse. Fortnite is way better and safer.
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago[flagged]
- bowsamic 1y agoThere are better alternatives to both of those that we should guide our children towards rather than just throwing up our hands and giving them their screens
- MOARDONGZPLZ 1y agoimo it’s so bad that employees might as well be working at Meta. It’s an ethical decision. Maybe their ethical framework supports it, but mine doesn’t.
- gavinray 1y agoMy mom paid my $5/mo Runescape subscription when I was a child and those are some of the fondest memories I have.
- mrbluecoat 1y ago> This infrastructure must support thundering herd situations where more than 21 million users join a single experience simultaneously > we now predict capacity needs up to two years in advance Those two statements taken together are mind boggling
- notnmeyer 1y agokids should _not_ be playing roblox unsupervised (or at all?). it’s full of inappropriate and seemingly unmoderated content, while simultaneously being built to extract microtransactions. amazing infra challenges, just a shame is a cesspool.
- TrainedMonkey 1y ago[flagged]
- tines 1y agoTerrible comparison not worth attacking.
- hartator 1y agoIdk, I play with them, and it seems the usual online game activities, not anything crazy. The games are pretty additive though, and the fake money becomes real money pretty fast.
- Manuel_D 1y agoWhile true this statement generalizes to any internet connected service. 2000s internet had loads of wild content, anyone remember LiveLeaks? And Roblox has decent parental controls. You can disable any chat outside a curated group of friends, and not sign up for micro transactions.
- jameson 1y ago> You can disable any chat outside a curated group of friends IMO public chat should be disabled by default for U13 accounts, not the other way.
- Brajeshwar 1y agoMy two daughters play Roblox.[1] Their parental control has improved a lot. However, I find that it is more about training and helping your kid understand how to be careful online than interacting with a 'better' Online Entity. Today, it is Roblox; there will be a lot of others. I know it will never be a solved problem, but help them understand very early on what to do and what not to do. We usually do routines - while in the car, at home - "What are our online protocols?", "What if someone, even if they seem like a tiny kid, asks you for anything personal?" "If someone told you that it is one of our family or relatives, what are the challenge words and codes?" etc. 1. https://story.oinam.com/2017/date-roblox/ https://story.oinam.com/2017/date-roblox/
- klooney 1y agoOne reason to not work at Roblox is all their user peaks are when you want to be with your family- after school, after dinner, the weekend, Christmas morning. Seems like it could be frustrating after a while.
- djdjhdhhshh 1y ago[flagged]
- purpleidea 1y agoIf they didn't use Kubernetes, they'd probably only need 10% of the capacity! /s but also not exactly /s
- markasoftware 1y agoRoblox is famously on the "hashistack" and uses Nomad instead of Kubernetes. What is the purpose of your comment?
- nick_m 1y agoHey 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.
- jokab 1y ago> NAND gates, flip-flops and I/O schedulers, and networks? No problem. That's kind of a weird flex.
- yurishimo 1y agoI 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.
- greatgib 1y agoLooks like a fun game, but sadly I had to pay Minecraft for my kid instead because of the really hostile position of Roblox on letting their client run in Linux.
- fRobloxinTheD 1y agoEat a bag of dicks, Roblox and the engineers that enable child labor.
- ilioscio 1y agoTry to express your opinion in a nuanced way that explains your position, there's plenty of yelling online already and it doesn't help.
- fRobloxinTheD 1y ago[flagged]