14 ms·

Roblox is minting teen millionaires

219 points by petethomas 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/6V4RI https://archive.ph/6V4RI

SoftTalker 8mo ago
This is so far out of the realm of what I do with computers that I'm not even really sure what Roblox is. I guess sort of a virtual game world? Seems crazy that there's so much money in it.
- giobox 8mo ago
  It's basically a litmus test for whether you have kids or not at this point. The age at which kids become aware of Roblox from their peers is getting younger and younger in my experiences anyway. Before I had kids, I had very little idea either, and I consider myself fairly well acquainted with PC gaming.
  - sayamqazi 8mo ago
    The solution is to give them a taste of better built (specifically competetive) games and they will never like roblox.
    - jiggunjer 8mo ago
      Mine rejected a Nintendo switch 2 in favor of more robux...
    - Goronmon 8mo ago
      The solution is to give them a taste of better built (specifically competetive) games and they will never like roblox. In my experience, this doesn't work. The primary reason being that most of their friends are playing Roblox and if they are consuming any content on the internet, much of it at their age is related to Roblox. Our kids have never been allowed to play, and it still comes up somewhat regularly despite all the various games and consoles they have available.
    - giobox 8mo ago
      Agree 100% with the sibling responses here. This almost never works in my experience. Kids want to play what their friends are playing - I remember feeling this way a long time ago too.
      - sayamqazi 8mo ago
        Maybe you are right and it depends on "friends". Me and my 3 other siblings have alwya liked similar gamnes (We are 7 siblings). Being the eldest I might have played a role thats why I thought that one could influence their children's gaming preference.
- LoganDark 8mo ago
  Roblox is a game engine and social platform. The basic idea is, you create a game in their engine, using their development tools (such as Roblox Studio), and then you market/promote the game on their website for others to play together with their friends. The game runs on their servers, and you don't have to worry about your own infra if you don't want to, in exchange for the money players spend on Robux (their virtual currency, and now the only one), which they can in turn spend on developer products and other paid items that you set up in your games. Then once you make enough Robux from player purchases, you can cash it out through a process called Developer Exchange which essentially makes you a W-2 employee of Roblox (or whatever financial partner they use, Tipalti?) The idea is that people like playing with their friends and when they can take their friends and make new friends across hundreds of thousands of games they stay for a long time and (they or their parents) make lots of purchases. The social features of Roblox are a huge part of the appeal, even though I was mostly interested in the engine.
- gmueckl 8mo ago
  In very simple terms, Roblox is an MMO based exclusively around user generated contents (games, items, assets...), including its own virtual currency, microtransactions, marketplaces and convertibility to/from real money. Roblox as a company takes pretty hefty cut from all transactions. There has been a silent shift in the gaming market over a long time now. Roblox is one aspect of it. Another is the absolutely massive amount of money raked in by some free to play mobile phone titles. For example, Playrix has a revenue comparable to Ubisoft, but their main products are a series of match-3 type games for phones.
  - ikr678 8mo ago
    Hasnt this 'casual' games market always existed? Once upon a time Zynga/Candycrush was a behemoth on the back of facebook embedded games.
    - gmueckl 8mo ago
      Back then, the market was much, much smaller than it is today if I'm doing the math correctly. Zynga reached an early peak in the early 2010s, but multiple companies, including Zynga (at least pre-acquisition) reach bigger revenue numbers today.
      - bombcar 8mo ago
        It's so large now that most of that famous "Apple Services Revenue" is just their 30% cut of mobile game payments.
        pqtyw 8mo ago
        I thought they included Google's payout in that category?
  - globular-toast 8mo ago
    In even simpler terms it's the current "shut the kids up" tax that parents pay.
- zerr 8mo ago
  And how does it differ from Second Life?
  - NuclearPM 8mo ago
    The main difference is there that Roblox games are fun.
  - 0x3f 8mo ago
    Kids in current year like it
  - kentm 8mo ago
    Second life is trying to be a metaverse in the style of snowcrash; it’s one big world. Roblox is more like Newgrounds, where you have a bunch of distinct games or experiences that you select from a menu, but skins and currency and whatnot are portable between the games.
  - jayd16 8mo ago
    Easy to dev for. Runs on a potato. There are many maps and modes.
blakesterz 8mo ago
Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352/ceo-whatever-17-year-old-runs-1m-business-designing-myspace-pages https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352... https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/ https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  Or RuneScape.
  - Jabrov 8mo ago
    RuneScape millionaires?
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      I had swim teammates who made at least hundreds of thousands minting and selling autominers on eBay. I assume if I knew a couple who did that well some made millions.
    - draftsman 8mo ago
      RuneScape private servers used to bring in tons of money. I helped manage one when I was in my early teens, and I can confirm the owner (who was only a few years older than I) was bringing in mid six-figures annually. Then of course there was the rampant gambling. The founders of online casino Stake and streaming platform Kick both started their “careers” in RuneScape gambling. IIRC they invented “staking” which was a method of gambling gold against other players, before they were banned. But the gambling economy in RuneScape used to IRL mint millionaires for sure.
      - quackware 8mo ago
        Staking was a built in feature of RuneScape in the duel arena before it was removed. They did not "invent" it themselves.
joezydeco 8mo ago
The one place where Lua coders are valuable.
- frakt0x90 8mo ago
  Balatro was made in Love2d which is Lua!
  - Levitating 8mo ago
    Oh wow, I would not have guessed that
- NuclearPM 8mo ago
  1. Roblox 2. WoW addons 3. Neovim 4. OpenResty 5. NodeMCU 6. Wireshark 7. Lightroom 8. Hammerspoon 9. LÖVE 10. Redis
  - toast0 8mo ago
    > 6. Wireshark I love this game, but there's no paid DLC; not sure how they monetize.
    - qingcharles 8mo ago
      It's location-based like Pokémon Go. If you play it at the right place you can definitely make a living wage from it :)
- sonofhans 8mo ago
  Factorio! The factory must grow! (And it must be modded in Lua).
2001zhaozhao 8mo ago
I come from the Minecraft modding/server community. There is interesting fact that I like to tell people about the sheer size of Roblox compared to other communities like Minecraft. The largest Minecraft server in the world is Hypixel at around ~30K concurrent players. Most other servers are very far behind. There is one Roblox game that looks and plays like Minecraft and copied one single gamemode (Bedwars) common in servers like Hypixel. It had 60K+ concurrent players last time I checked late last year. There are almost definitely more people playing BedWars on Roblox than there are playing it on Minecraft at this very moment.
- bstsb 8mo ago
  these days, Roblox BedWars averages 36K on weekends: https://romonitorstats.com/experience/6872265039/ https://romonitorstats.com/experience/6872265039/ however, Hypixel seems to have overtaken it! last Saturday, it peaked at 39,000 concurrent players. i prefer the original gamemode anyway
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  Some of it has to do with roblox being free. (I don't have a minecraft account) but Trust me when I say this but within developing countries especially. You can find 3-4 people out of 1 who plays on hypixel but can't because they can't pay for the game usually when we are really young which is also roblox's most major userbase. I can imagine Hypixel being atleast 2x and a rough estimate of 5x more the size if they support Cracked Minecraft accounts for example. Btw, this is also the reason why aternos is so popular within some communities because a free server which can have cracked option. Sign me up starts happening in bulk. Me and my friends had an aternos server. It was truly something out of this world meeting them tomorrow after having 10 people together in a minecraft server. I was the person though who spent way too much time and had less stacked gear lol in the end because some of my friends were like bandits haha, who stole my stuff from caves and in general, I have spent much of my time in minecraft during the starting (nothing -> diamond) then afterwards (diamond -> end/netherite) Anyways my point is that we all could've definitely been on hypixel and something similar if Hypixel supported crack client. For example 11 of us or more played the game one time or another (not sure) within our single class of 50 people and only one of the guys had an minecraft account. One of my friends literally got into some cash-app type stuff with a shady tetris to earn money app which showed ads to earn 25$ just so that he can buy minecraft to play on hypixel and the game fundamentally required something impossible and my friend felt so depressed at the time and he's one of the smartest people I know. A) people are easy to scam, B) he and many of us had so much desperation to play on hypixel in general. You can get an alt (and I used to) for free or very cheap which would work everywhere unless on hypixel which had stricter rules and the difference between account prices could be 10x back or more that at that point its just better to make a minecraft account just for hypixel or similar. (I remember seeing accounts for 3$ or something that would work everywhere except hypixel) I asked him if I should write a blog post to name and fame the company but he denied and he was truly sad that day :( All of this combined can show how Roblox truly hits a jackpot with it being a free game. Most people might not pay but because of the perceived fame of the game and the number of people playing it. The people who pay would be more likely to pay and I see some people/kids who really look for ways to make robux online. So with all of this, its easy to see how these (usually teen developers like us) can make something which can land 100k$ as unachievable that sounds. one of my friends racked in quite a lot of money making 3d sprites in blender for these roblox people and in exchange used to have them buy blender extensions. Those extensions were truly a lot of money if he had to go buy them.
bstsb 8mo ago
even tiny roblox games make money. i developed for a small game (~10m plays) a few years back and i still earn a decent residual from player revenue, even as the game slowly loses traction
- hmokiguess 8mo ago
  what does a decent residual mean?
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bstsb 8mo ago
    enough money to cash out via DevEx, Roblox's developer program, every month or so ($110). it's absolutely not a salary - there are barely five people playing at any given time - but given i've done nothing in a year, it's appreciated. edit: looked at the old stats online. a few years back that game was pulling $1,500+ with no effort each month
- 2001zhaozhao 8mo ago
  I made a roblox game years ago with no more than like 2 concurrent players at a time. The game's ideas were immediately copied by a much bigger game (this turned me off the Roblox platform for good). I still got enough robux to DevEx just from premium roblox subscribers playing the game. (If I cash it out i would get a few hundred dollars. Which is nothing for me today but absolutely a lot of money for an aspiring teenage developer.)
  - socalgal2 8mo ago
    Is there some other platform where ideas aren't copied?
    - g947o 8mo ago
      Depending on what is copied. If we are talking about game mechanics, they get copied all the time, of course. If it's about superficially reproducing a game including the assets, I don't think any big players on PC or consoles steal ideas from indie/smaller developers. That is despised and likely not allowed by the platform, if not challenged in court. (I have no idea about what happens on mobile platforms)
intrasight 8mo ago
"According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16." - Wikipedia 2 decades in the making, they are really hitting their stride. But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.
- Spivak 8mo ago
  See this is why I think the whole age verification thing is backwards. If you want to create child friendly spaces then you need to verify someone's age is under 18, 16, 13 etc.. That's a way more real and tangible harm than a teenager looking at a nudie mag.
  - intrasight 8mo ago
    For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules: App to IdP: is this person 13-15 IdP: yes
    - fakedang 8mo ago
      Is Persona an IdP or does it request you to verify with personal information every single time?
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    Please check this box to confirm that you do _not_ possess a government issued photo ID ... Sorry, in order to use this service you will need to visit your local police station and have them verify that you are in fact a child ... Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work. I don't think age verification solves very many real world problems. (It does mitigate some, such as alcohol consumption. Just not most.)
    - snackbroken 8mo ago
      >Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work You could verify the ID of an adult who vouches for the child they are a legal guardian of. That way, if it turns out that Brayden(M12) is actually Linda(F45) you know who to send law enforcement to to ask some very pointed questions. That said, I don't think online ID verification is effective and even if it was, it wouldn't be worth the level of mass privacy invasion. If your goal is actually to help kids who are victims of abuse, your efforts are much better spent elsewhere. For example: making child abuse report hotlines/websites more easily accessible and widely known, fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse, better education for children about what is and is not OK behavior even from "trusted" adults, and how to get help from someone who isn't a relative when you need it. "Stranger danger" hysteria catches all the outrage and public discussion, but is the least common source of abuse.
femiagbabiaka 8mo ago
Seems possible that MMO's will have a resurgence once the Roblox generation comes of age.
xivzgrev 8mo ago
"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby." Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M. Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  > Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class". I am teen and I think that FIRE has many terms but This still is like a really really FAT fire. At some point though, I think that what my generation might forget is that even with Fire, you still live a normal life or you would need tremendously more money if your lifestyle is lavish, something which we see in social media (sometimes even on paid money) If you want to buy 100k$ watches and 1 Million dollar or more lamborghinis, probably even this money would not be enough for you. But if you want to live a normal life like you do. even 2-3 years of sustained could be MORE than enough even for some slightly expensive side hobbies say horse riding or minor watch collecting even. But if you are online and you see people flexing their 1 million dollar watch, you are gonna add 12 more years of life on a project to get to that level I'd say its more of an expectation/comparison issue and I am not even sure if 10 years can satisfy that My personal Fat Fire number is more like ~2 million and I don't even want Fat Fire particularly because I would be happy doing a job that I might like so more of a lean FAT which can be around 300-500k even. maybe this changes into what is affordable or not within the more western hemisphere though as things feel even more (unaffordable?) but even that doesn't really explain why he might need 40M from my perspective. To be honest, it can very well be ambition. Might as well make 10 years of money if possible because then the number feels so absurdly large that I can do anything that I want and then I will make my own game. Not realizing that you would only need a fraction of 40M to realisticly achieve that same goal and we are discounting the fact that 400k is even sustainable in a such long period of time.
ge96 8mo ago
It's one of those things, you hear about it (Starter story) and think "I should start churning out games too" but gotta be in it/have drive/creativity too. I personally haven't been playing games for a while (I have a gaming rig). Also have to keep up with trends that kids are into Would be interesting to look at the numbers eg. how many games are created, percentage who gets paid. Like steam releases with free game assets
- nsingh2 8mo ago
  From [1] (2022 numbers), the median creator earned around 50 Robux per year, which is ~19 cents with the current DevEx rate, and the average was 13,500 Robux. Out of ~7.5 million creators in 2022, only 11,000 qualified for cashing out. The distribution is brutal, realistically you have to stick with it for years before getting a hit, if ever. Not to mention the stats probably look worse in the LLM era. You definitely have to like doing it as a hobby. One caveat is that the creator total likely includes a lot of casual experimentation. If many users make one or two games and then stop (I can see most kids doing this), the 7.5 million figure may overstate how many people are seriously trying to make money from it. [1] https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2023/07/vision-roblox-economy https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2023/07/vision-roblox-econ...
amiga386 8mo ago
Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail. Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make games for them strike it rich!!!! They don't mention that to do so, you first have to become popular amongst millions of competing titles, and the easiest way to do it is to pay them so they'll advertise it for you. Oh, and the company scrip - Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money. They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden. This is on top of the 75% cut they take! In all, approximately 17% of the real-world money paid into Roblox is paid back out to creators. What a scam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY
- Heliodex 8mo ago
  The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible: The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because 1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee, and the mean price of Robux) which isn't representative of what the average developer is earning and barely appears in the actual cash flow on the platform, 2. it's using the DevEx rates and sales fees from 2021. Today, DevEx rates are higher and fees are lower. Engagement-based payouts are not accounted for here either (which are also much higher than they were in 2021). 3. it's profit, not revenue. The expenses are paid for before the money is paid out. Comparing this to other platforms that offer revenue shares instead is misrepresentative. The 2nd video hinges more on moderation, showing how children are exploited by bringing them off platform, namely to Discord, where most of the evidence referenced in the video takes place. Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's. They then suggest Unity as an alternative platform, which I personally think is a much worse option. I used to be more cynical about this and believe the video creators were clearly being pushed by companies that had a financial incentive in the downfall of Roblox, though nowadays I just attribute it to bad journalism and watchbait. I suggest reading EcoScratcher's brilliant response <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493 https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493> and follow-up articles <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4 https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4>, of which their 2nd video briefly mentions and claims it misquotes (it doesn't) and misrepresents (it doesn't) their position. Edits in response to parent comment edits: > They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden Specifically through the DevEx programme, Roblox pays a small amount less than it costs to buy Robux to enable them to pay for server upkeep, platform hosting & support, and app store fees (when a developer's game is available through an app store, the app store fees for purchases are paid by Roblox). The rest (any Robux taken out of the economy, including that spent on advertising or first-party avatar items) goes towards platform investment and employee costs. > This is on top of the 75% cut they take! The DevEx rates have already been factored into this inaccurate "75%" figure. Taking the DevEx rates out a 2nd time (which, emphatically, never happens on the platform) makes it more inaccurate. The actual figure, calculated at <https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences>, is 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent, making for a near industry-standard 33% cut. And even this is underrepresentative due to being published before the September 2025 DevEx increase.
sys32768 8mo ago
My youngest has played Roblox half her life, but is very angry about recent decisions like requiring ID to chat in-game. Still, if she's anything like other players, she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games, and we've spent a few $100 on Robux gift cards over the years.
- lionkor 8mo ago
  I wonder why? Why was there not a point at which you said no?
- latexr 8mo ago
  > she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games It sounds like you disapprove, or at the very least recognise it’s not harmless, so I’m struggling to understand why you allow and incentivise it (by pouring hundreds of dollars into it). Would you expand on that? I have no intention of judging you as a parent—if you say you approve of her time on Roblox, that’s that. I’m only asking because it seems you might not.
- microtonal 8mo ago
  I hope she is 30 because playing Roblox half your life for anyone under 18 (which means you started at 9) does not sound healthy.
- g947o 8mo ago
  You know, just as a thought, if you have engaged with her like taking her outdoors or other activities, she wouldn't spend so much time or money on a stupid online video game.
  - mhitza 8mo ago
    Telling parents how to raise their children, while also making baseless assumptions of their life as well, is an approach with which you'll only antagonize people.
    - g947o 8mo ago
kylehotchkiss 8mo ago
Ugh, they're just gonna blow it all on e-bikes for them and their crew and broccoli hair maintenance product
themafia 8mo ago
The traditional Bloomberg money worship. > But the platform’s more successful game makers say they don’t have complaints. Imagine being a journalist and just accepting this and ending a paragraph with it. > “In Amsterdam we did get a VIP table at a club overlooking everyone,” Zirschky says. “But we always make sure to try McDonald’s in every country.” Blind consumerism making up for a lost childhood? Yikes, even for Bloomberg.
terrycody 8mo ago
I mean, I don't understand why those young teens can spend that MUCH money on it, does their parents allow this virtual spending thing?
- ares623 8mo ago
  What used to go to local business as kids and teens spend time out together, it now goes to a single company on the other side of the world.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  Consider how much money used to be spent by children in aggregate at suburban shopping malls.
sergiotapia 8mo ago
Do you know that in roblox you go into games and you just walk over something and it prompts you to buy stuff to "beat the game" or "level up". It's an exploitative "game" that targets kids.
jameson 8mo ago
Roblox is slot machines for kids Games are filled with loot boxes that drop exquisite items on chance. It's a repeated cycle of charging robux only to spend on another slot machine. US regulation is far behind protecting children from such scheme. Japan disallows many forms of such loot boxes due to addictive nature.
- Aeolun 8mo ago
  It’s not that bad. Sure, all the games allow you to spend money to rapidly get better, but the core gameplay loops work just fine without it.
  - bluefirebrand 8mo ago
    Anecdotally, I have 3 nieces and 2 nephews and only the oldest has avoided Roblox Every Christmas and birthday now is "I want Robux" and they are actively annoyed if they get anything else This thing is bad for children
    - Aeolun 8mo ago
      Pretty sure I was annoyed when I got anything but computer games. Which, I’m pretty certain, adults told me were bad for me.
      - sayamqazi 8mo ago
        You guys were getting presents?
      - pnt12 8mo ago
        Just because two things are "annoying", doesn't mean they have the same ethical problems. The fun single player games only need to convince you they are a fun experience and you should buy them once. Games with loot boxes are trying to convince you every day to spend money on them. Dunno about roblox, but often the items are visible, and "defaults" are often perceived as poor or noobs. We can't be naive: It's a whole other level and companies are spending millions on manipulating kids to spending more and more money.
unselect5917 8mo ago
>https://archive.ph/6V4RI https://archive.ph/6V4RI Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas before I gave up. VPN isn't even on. Anybody got a different link?
- selcuka 8mo ago
  > Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas Are you sure you haven't been DoS'ing a random website? https://au.pcmag.com/news/116045/wikipedia-blacklists-archiveis-after-alleged-ddos-attack-on-blogger https://au.pcmag.com/news/116045/wikipedia-blacklists-archiv...
  - unselect5917 8mo ago
    I clicked the link. That's it.
- grvdrm 8mo ago
  Same problem. Moved to Chrome from Safari and that fixed it.
assaddayinh 8mo ago
[dead]
pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
> Today, at 19, he’s collecting $400,000 a month for his creation... In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby. Lol if he waits like half a year he should have plenty enough to go make games as a hobby.
- himata4113 8mo ago
  Roblox games have a shelf life of days, getting to a month or more you either have to produce days worth of content in less than a day - it's extremely exhausing.
  - pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
    ah interesting, thanks for adding that context.
pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
> The travel offers him a fresh perspective. It shows him that his work “isn’t that big a deal. It’s not the end of the world because ultimately there’s people walking down the streets of Sydney right now who don’t care about my Roblox game performing 50% worse.” > Colley has indulged, just a little. Last year, after the Roblox developer conference, he took a private jet to Las Vegas with some friends. Did he place any bets? “I’m not old enough,” he says, “but I had people gambling next to me.” Honestly it's encouraging to hear that some teenage millionaires have some very reasonable views, it certainly goes against the stereotype of young wealth. I hope these aren't the exceptions that prove the rule.
CrzyLngPwd 8mo ago
My grandsons would come and stay, bringing tablet devices with them, and would prefer to stay glued to them the whole time. Since we banned their use, they now play outside with my other grandchildren, on the rope swing, the zip line, or exploring in the woods making dens and forts, using their imaginations. Children should not be playing computer games, or scrolling on any social media, IMO.
- otherme123 8mo ago
  I have heard a number of parents saying their kids are "good behaved" when they are silently glued to a screen, while roaming outside, making noise and playing are bad behaviours, specially when they break things or get a bruise.
  - CrzyLngPwd 8mo ago
    Worse still, they are so well-behaved, with their tablet and headphones on, watching YouTube or playing games.
    - grvdrm 8mo ago
      My nephew (8) has a VR headset. Doh.
- Brybry 8mo ago
  I think a fair number of us here got into computers because of playing computer games as kids. The issue is setting limits. Now obviously banning is easier and lower friction but limiting to an X time per day routine can also help with self-discipline. Depends on the person. Kids can have the same issue with TV. I had an issue as a kid with books. My parents had to limit my reading time because I would stay up all night under my covers with a flashlight reading.
  - fhennig 8mo ago
    I agree with the 'setting limits' bit. But also maybe the parent post and you refer to kids of different ages? I didn't have access to a computer until I was 9, and then also we didn't have tables and smartphones, so there computer was only available at home as well. I think below a certain age the limit is fine to be set as 'not at all'.
torlok 8mo ago
Another FOMO article. Bloomberg may as well start reporting on lottery winners.
Noaidi 8mo ago
The U.S. has no economy, it is a joke. I cannot believe this BS counts into our GDP.
WhereIsTheTruth 8mo ago
What a boring civilization
lunias 8mo ago
I remember how hard I had to lobby to get my parents to agree to ~$12 a month (that I paid for with 2 weeks of my allowance) for EverQuest.
xrd 8mo ago
I admittedly harbor a bunch of resentment towards Roblox for the predatory way they have encircled my childrens' friends, and my children as well, so take my feelings with a grain of salt. I didn't get far in this article. It feels like the modern equivalent of "there is a kid named LeBron James who is only 19 and will be make millions in the NBA." Roblox Millionaires might be true, but feels like an anomaly, and in this case, causes serious harm IMHO. Lebron James actually has used his wealth and prominence to make a difference in the world, and if he encouraged kids to get active, it feels like on balance a good thing. I just don't see a good/happy career path for anyone becoming a Roblox Millionaire no matter whether it is true for even one person. Maybe it isn't the point, but if it isn't, why even celebrate it?
Thorrez 8mo ago
>Founded in 2004, Roblox paid out $1.5 billion to game creators last year. On average, the top 1,000 developers — individuals or companies — earned $1.3 million, according to the company. So 87% of payouts go to the top 1000 developers.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

219 points by petethomas 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/6V4RI https://archive.ph/6V4RI

This is so far out of the realm of what I do with computers that I'm not even really sure what Roblox is. I guess sort of a virtual game world? Seems crazy that there's so much money in it.

giobox 8mo ago
It's basically a litmus test for whether you have kids or not at this point. The age at which kids become aware of Roblox from their peers is getting younger and younger in my experiences anyway. Before I had kids, I had very little idea either, and I consider myself fairly well acquainted with PC gaming.
- sayamqazi 8mo ago
  The solution is to give them a taste of better built (specifically competetive) games and they will never like roblox.
  - jiggunjer 8mo ago
    Mine rejected a Nintendo switch 2 in favor of more robux...
  - Goronmon 8mo ago
    The solution is to give them a taste of better built (specifically competetive) games and they will never like roblox. In my experience, this doesn't work. The primary reason being that most of their friends are playing Roblox and if they are consuming any content on the internet, much of it at their age is related to Roblox. Our kids have never been allowed to play, and it still comes up somewhat regularly despite all the various games and consoles they have available.
  - giobox 8mo ago
    Agree 100% with the sibling responses here. This almost never works in my experience. Kids want to play what their friends are playing - I remember feeling this way a long time ago too.
    - sayamqazi 8mo ago
      Maybe you are right and it depends on "friends". Me and my 3 other siblings have alwya liked similar gamnes (We are 7 siblings). Being the eldest I might have played a role thats why I thought that one could influence their children's gaming preference.
LoganDark 8mo ago
Roblox is a game engine and social platform. The basic idea is, you create a game in their engine, using their development tools (such as Roblox Studio), and then you market/promote the game on their website for others to play together with their friends. The game runs on their servers, and you don't have to worry about your own infra if you don't want to, in exchange for the money players spend on Robux (their virtual currency, and now the only one), which they can in turn spend on developer products and other paid items that you set up in your games. Then once you make enough Robux from player purchases, you can cash it out through a process called Developer Exchange which essentially makes you a W-2 employee of Roblox (or whatever financial partner they use, Tipalti?) The idea is that people like playing with their friends and when they can take their friends and make new friends across hundreds of thousands of games they stay for a long time and (they or their parents) make lots of purchases. The social features of Roblox are a huge part of the appeal, even though I was mostly interested in the engine.
gmueckl 8mo ago
In very simple terms, Roblox is an MMO based exclusively around user generated contents (games, items, assets...), including its own virtual currency, microtransactions, marketplaces and convertibility to/from real money. Roblox as a company takes pretty hefty cut from all transactions. There has been a silent shift in the gaming market over a long time now. Roblox is one aspect of it. Another is the absolutely massive amount of money raked in by some free to play mobile phone titles. For example, Playrix has a revenue comparable to Ubisoft, but their main products are a series of match-3 type games for phones.
- ikr678 8mo ago
  Hasnt this 'casual' games market always existed? Once upon a time Zynga/Candycrush was a behemoth on the back of facebook embedded games.
  - gmueckl 8mo ago
    Back then, the market was much, much smaller than it is today if I'm doing the math correctly. Zynga reached an early peak in the early 2010s, but multiple companies, including Zynga (at least pre-acquisition) reach bigger revenue numbers today.
    - bombcar 8mo ago
      It's so large now that most of that famous "Apple Services Revenue" is just their 30% cut of mobile game payments.
      - pqtyw 8mo ago
        I thought they included Google's payout in that category?
- globular-toast 8mo ago
  In even simpler terms it's the current "shut the kids up" tax that parents pay.
zerr 8mo ago
And how does it differ from Second Life?
- NuclearPM 8mo ago
  The main difference is there that Roblox games are fun.
- 0x3f 8mo ago
  Kids in current year like it
- kentm 8mo ago
  Second life is trying to be a metaverse in the style of snowcrash; it’s one big world. Roblox is more like Newgrounds, where you have a bunch of distinct games or experiences that you select from a menu, but skins and currency and whatnot are portable between the games.
- jayd16 8mo ago
  Easy to dev for. Runs on a potato. There are many maps and modes.

blakesterz 8mo ago

Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352/ceo-whatever-17-year-old-runs-1m-business-designing-myspace-pages https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352... https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/ https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
Or RuneScape.
- Jabrov 8mo ago
  RuneScape millionaires?
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    I had swim teammates who made at least hundreds of thousands minting and selling autominers on eBay. I assume if I knew a couple who did that well some made millions.
  - draftsman 8mo ago
    RuneScape private servers used to bring in tons of money. I helped manage one when I was in my early teens, and I can confirm the owner (who was only a few years older than I) was bringing in mid six-figures annually. Then of course there was the rampant gambling. The founders of online casino Stake and streaming platform Kick both started their “careers” in RuneScape gambling. IIRC they invented “staking” which was a method of gambling gold against other players, before they were banned. But the gambling economy in RuneScape used to IRL mint millionaires for sure.
    - quackware 8mo ago
      Staking was a built in feature of RuneScape in the duel arena before it was removed. They did not "invent" it themselves.

joezydeco 8mo ago

The one place where Lua coders are valuable.

frakt0x90 8mo ago
Balatro was made in Love2d which is Lua!
- Levitating 8mo ago
  Oh wow, I would not have guessed that
NuclearPM 8mo ago
1. Roblox 2. WoW addons 3. Neovim 4. OpenResty 5. NodeMCU 6. Wireshark 7. Lightroom 8. Hammerspoon 9. LÖVE 10. Redis
- toast0 8mo ago
  > 6. Wireshark I love this game, but there's no paid DLC; not sure how they monetize.
  - qingcharles 8mo ago
    It's location-based like Pokémon Go. If you play it at the right place you can definitely make a living wage from it :)
sonofhans 8mo ago
Factorio! The factory must grow! (And it must be modded in Lua).

2001zhaozhao 8mo ago

I come from the Minecraft modding/server community. There is interesting fact that I like to tell people about the sheer size of Roblox compared to other communities like Minecraft. The largest Minecraft server in the world is Hypixel at around ~30K concurrent players. Most other servers are very far behind. There is one Roblox game that looks and plays like Minecraft and copied one single gamemode (Bedwars) common in servers like Hypixel. It had 60K+ concurrent players last time I checked late last year. There are almost definitely more people playing BedWars on Roblox than there are playing it on Minecraft at this very moment.

bstsb 8mo ago
these days, Roblox BedWars averages 36K on weekends: https://romonitorstats.com/experience/6872265039/ https://romonitorstats.com/experience/6872265039/ however, Hypixel seems to have overtaken it! last Saturday, it peaked at 39,000 concurrent players. i prefer the original gamemode anyway
Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
Some of it has to do with roblox being free. (I don't have a minecraft account) but Trust me when I say this but within developing countries especially. You can find 3-4 people out of 1 who plays on hypixel but can't because they can't pay for the game usually when we are really young which is also roblox's most major userbase. I can imagine Hypixel being atleast 2x and a rough estimate of 5x more the size if they support Cracked Minecraft accounts for example. Btw, this is also the reason why aternos is so popular within some communities because a free server which can have cracked option. Sign me up starts happening in bulk. Me and my friends had an aternos server. It was truly something out of this world meeting them tomorrow after having 10 people together in a minecraft server. I was the person though who spent way too much time and had less stacked gear lol in the end because some of my friends were like bandits haha, who stole my stuff from caves and in general, I have spent much of my time in minecraft during the starting (nothing -> diamond) then afterwards (diamond -> end/netherite) Anyways my point is that we all could've definitely been on hypixel and something similar if Hypixel supported crack client. For example 11 of us or more played the game one time or another (not sure) within our single class of 50 people and only one of the guys had an minecraft account. One of my friends literally got into some cash-app type stuff with a shady tetris to earn money app which showed ads to earn 25$ just so that he can buy minecraft to play on hypixel and the game fundamentally required something impossible and my friend felt so depressed at the time and he's one of the smartest people I know. A) people are easy to scam, B) he and many of us had so much desperation to play on hypixel in general. You can get an alt (and I used to) for free or very cheap which would work everywhere unless on hypixel which had stricter rules and the difference between account prices could be 10x back or more that at that point its just better to make a minecraft account just for hypixel or similar. (I remember seeing accounts for 3$ or something that would work everywhere except hypixel) I asked him if I should write a blog post to name and fame the company but he denied and he was truly sad that day :( All of this combined can show how Roblox truly hits a jackpot with it being a free game. Most people might not pay but because of the perceived fame of the game and the number of people playing it. The people who pay would be more likely to pay and I see some people/kids who really look for ways to make robux online. So with all of this, its easy to see how these (usually teen developers like us) can make something which can land 100k$ as unachievable that sounds. one of my friends racked in quite a lot of money making 3d sprites in blender for these roblox people and in exchange used to have them buy blender extensions. Those extensions were truly a lot of money if he had to go buy them.

bstsb 8mo ago

even tiny roblox games make money. i developed for a small game (~10m plays) a few years back and i still earn a decent residual from player revenue, even as the game slowly loses traction

hmokiguess 8mo ago
what does a decent residual mean?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- bstsb 8mo ago
  enough money to cash out via DevEx, Roblox's developer program, every month or so ($110). it's absolutely not a salary - there are barely five people playing at any given time - but given i've done nothing in a year, it's appreciated. edit: looked at the old stats online. a few years back that game was pulling $1,500+ with no effort each month
2001zhaozhao 8mo ago
I made a roblox game years ago with no more than like 2 concurrent players at a time. The game's ideas were immediately copied by a much bigger game (this turned me off the Roblox platform for good). I still got enough robux to DevEx just from premium roblox subscribers playing the game. (If I cash it out i would get a few hundred dollars. Which is nothing for me today but absolutely a lot of money for an aspiring teenage developer.)
- socalgal2 8mo ago
  Is there some other platform where ideas aren't copied?
  - g947o 8mo ago
    Depending on what is copied. If we are talking about game mechanics, they get copied all the time, of course. If it's about superficially reproducing a game including the assets, I don't think any big players on PC or consoles steal ideas from indie/smaller developers. That is despised and likely not allowed by the platform, if not challenged in court. (I have no idea about what happens on mobile platforms)

intrasight 8mo ago

"According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16." - Wikipedia 2 decades in the making, they are really hitting their stride. But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.

Spivak 8mo ago
See this is why I think the whole age verification thing is backwards. If you want to create child friendly spaces then you need to verify someone's age is under 18, 16, 13 etc.. That's a way more real and tangible harm than a teenager looking at a nudie mag.
- intrasight 8mo ago
  For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules: App to IdP: is this person 13-15 IdP: yes
  - fakedang 8mo ago
    Is Persona an IdP or does it request you to verify with personal information every single time?
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  Please check this box to confirm that you do _not_ possess a government issued photo ID ... Sorry, in order to use this service you will need to visit your local police station and have them verify that you are in fact a child ... Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work. I don't think age verification solves very many real world problems. (It does mitigate some, such as alcohol consumption. Just not most.)
  - snackbroken 8mo ago
    >Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work You could verify the ID of an adult who vouches for the child they are a legal guardian of. That way, if it turns out that Brayden(M12) is actually Linda(F45) you know who to send law enforcement to to ask some very pointed questions. That said, I don't think online ID verification is effective and even if it was, it wouldn't be worth the level of mass privacy invasion. If your goal is actually to help kids who are victims of abuse, your efforts are much better spent elsewhere. For example: making child abuse report hotlines/websites more easily accessible and widely known, fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse, better education for children about what is and is not OK behavior even from "trusted" adults, and how to get help from someone who isn't a relative when you need it. "Stranger danger" hysteria catches all the outrage and public discussion, but is the least common source of abuse.

femiagbabiaka 8mo ago

Seems possible that MMO's will have a resurgence once the Roblox generation comes of age.

xivzgrev 8mo ago

"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby." Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M. Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".

Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
> Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class". I am teen and I think that FIRE has many terms but This still is like a really really FAT fire. At some point though, I think that what my generation might forget is that even with Fire, you still live a normal life or you would need tremendously more money if your lifestyle is lavish, something which we see in social media (sometimes even on paid money) If you want to buy 100k$ watches and 1 Million dollar or more lamborghinis, probably even this money would not be enough for you. But if you want to live a normal life like you do. even 2-3 years of sustained could be MORE than enough even for some slightly expensive side hobbies say horse riding or minor watch collecting even. But if you are online and you see people flexing their 1 million dollar watch, you are gonna add 12 more years of life on a project to get to that level I'd say its more of an expectation/comparison issue and I am not even sure if 10 years can satisfy that My personal Fat Fire number is more like ~2 million and I don't even want Fat Fire particularly because I would be happy doing a job that I might like so more of a lean FAT which can be around 300-500k even. maybe this changes into what is affordable or not within the more western hemisphere though as things feel even more (unaffordable?) but even that doesn't really explain why he might need 40M from my perspective. To be honest, it can very well be ambition. Might as well make 10 years of money if possible because then the number feels so absurdly large that I can do anything that I want and then I will make my own game. Not realizing that you would only need a fraction of 40M to realisticly achieve that same goal and we are discounting the fact that 400k is even sustainable in a such long period of time.

ge96 8mo ago

It's one of those things, you hear about it (Starter story) and think "I should start churning out games too" but gotta be in it/have drive/creativity too. I personally haven't been playing games for a while (I have a gaming rig). Also have to keep up with trends that kids are into Would be interesting to look at the numbers eg. how many games are created, percentage who gets paid. Like steam releases with free game assets

nsingh2 8mo ago
From [1] (2022 numbers), the median creator earned around 50 Robux per year, which is ~19 cents with the current DevEx rate, and the average was 13,500 Robux. Out of ~7.5 million creators in 2022, only 11,000 qualified for cashing out. The distribution is brutal, realistically you have to stick with it for years before getting a hit, if ever. Not to mention the stats probably look worse in the LLM era. You definitely have to like doing it as a hobby. One caveat is that the creator total likely includes a lot of casual experimentation. If many users make one or two games and then stop (I can see most kids doing this), the 7.5 million figure may overstate how many people are seriously trying to make money from it. [1] https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2023/07/vision-roblox-economy https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2023/07/vision-roblox-econ...

amiga386 8mo ago

Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail. Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make games for them strike it rich!!!! They don't mention that to do so, you first have to become popular amongst millions of competing titles, and the easiest way to do it is to pay them so they'll advertise it for you. Oh, and the company scrip - Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money. They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden. This is on top of the 75% cut they take! In all, approximately 17% of the real-world money paid into Roblox is paid back out to creators. What a scam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

Heliodex 8mo ago
The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible: The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because 1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee, and the mean price of Robux) which isn't representative of what the average developer is earning and barely appears in the actual cash flow on the platform, 2. it's using the DevEx rates and sales fees from 2021. Today, DevEx rates are higher and fees are lower. Engagement-based payouts are not accounted for here either (which are also much higher than they were in 2021). 3. it's profit, not revenue. The expenses are paid for before the money is paid out. Comparing this to other platforms that offer revenue shares instead is misrepresentative. The 2nd video hinges more on moderation, showing how children are exploited by bringing them off platform, namely to Discord, where most of the evidence referenced in the video takes place. Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's. They then suggest Unity as an alternative platform, which I personally think is a much worse option. I used to be more cynical about this and believe the video creators were clearly being pushed by companies that had a financial incentive in the downfall of Roblox, though nowadays I just attribute it to bad journalism and watchbait. I suggest reading EcoScratcher's brilliant response <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493 https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493> and follow-up articles <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4 https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4>, of which their 2nd video briefly mentions and claims it misquotes (it doesn't) and misrepresents (it doesn't) their position. Edits in response to parent comment edits: > They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden Specifically through the DevEx programme, Roblox pays a small amount less than it costs to buy Robux to enable them to pay for server upkeep, platform hosting & support, and app store fees (when a developer's game is available through an app store, the app store fees for purchases are paid by Roblox). The rest (any Robux taken out of the economy, including that spent on advertising or first-party avatar items) goes towards platform investment and employee costs. > This is on top of the 75% cut they take! The DevEx rates have already been factored into this inaccurate "75%" figure. Taking the DevEx rates out a 2nd time (which, emphatically, never happens on the platform) makes it more inaccurate. The actual figure, calculated at <https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences>, is 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent, making for a near industry-standard 33% cut. And even this is underrepresentative due to being published before the September 2025 DevEx increase.

sys32768 8mo ago

My youngest has played Roblox half her life, but is very angry about recent decisions like requiring ID to chat in-game. Still, if she's anything like other players, she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games, and we've spent a few $100 on Robux gift cards over the years.

lionkor 8mo ago
I wonder why? Why was there not a point at which you said no?
latexr 8mo ago
> she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games It sounds like you disapprove, or at the very least recognise it’s not harmless, so I’m struggling to understand why you allow and incentivise it (by pouring hundreds of dollars into it). Would you expand on that? I have no intention of judging you as a parent—if you say you approve of her time on Roblox, that’s that. I’m only asking because it seems you might not.
microtonal 8mo ago
I hope she is 30 because playing Roblox half your life for anyone under 18 (which means you started at 9) does not sound healthy.
g947o 8mo ago
You know, just as a thought, if you have engaged with her like taking her outdoors or other activities, she wouldn't spend so much time or money on a stupid online video game.
- mhitza 8mo ago
  Telling parents how to raise their children, while also making baseless assumptions of their life as well, is an approach with which you'll only antagonize people.
  - g947o 8mo ago

kylehotchkiss 8mo ago

Ugh, they're just gonna blow it all on e-bikes for them and their crew and broccoli hair maintenance product

themafia 8mo ago

The traditional Bloomberg money worship. > But the platform’s more successful game makers say they don’t have complaints. Imagine being a journalist and just accepting this and ending a paragraph with it. > “In Amsterdam we did get a VIP table at a club overlooking everyone,” Zirschky says. “But we always make sure to try McDonald’s in every country.” Blind consumerism making up for a lost childhood? Yikes, even for Bloomberg.

terrycody 8mo ago

I mean, I don't understand why those young teens can spend that MUCH money on it, does their parents allow this virtual spending thing?

ares623 8mo ago
What used to go to local business as kids and teens spend time out together, it now goes to a single company on the other side of the world.
fc417fc802 8mo ago
Consider how much money used to be spent by children in aggregate at suburban shopping malls.

sergiotapia 8mo ago

Do you know that in roblox you go into games and you just walk over something and it prompts you to buy stuff to "beat the game" or "level up". It's an exploitative "game" that targets kids.

jameson 8mo ago

Roblox is slot machines for kids Games are filled with loot boxes that drop exquisite items on chance. It's a repeated cycle of charging robux only to spend on another slot machine. US regulation is far behind protecting children from such scheme. Japan disallows many forms of such loot boxes due to addictive nature.

Aeolun 8mo ago
It’s not that bad. Sure, all the games allow you to spend money to rapidly get better, but the core gameplay loops work just fine without it.
- bluefirebrand 8mo ago
  Anecdotally, I have 3 nieces and 2 nephews and only the oldest has avoided Roblox Every Christmas and birthday now is "I want Robux" and they are actively annoyed if they get anything else This thing is bad for children
  - Aeolun 8mo ago
    Pretty sure I was annoyed when I got anything but computer games. Which, I’m pretty certain, adults told me were bad for me.
    - sayamqazi 8mo ago
      You guys were getting presents?
    - pnt12 8mo ago
      Just because two things are "annoying", doesn't mean they have the same ethical problems. The fun single player games only need to convince you they are a fun experience and you should buy them once. Games with loot boxes are trying to convince you every day to spend money on them. Dunno about roblox, but often the items are visible, and "defaults" are often perceived as poor or noobs. We can't be naive: It's a whole other level and companies are spending millions on manipulating kids to spending more and more money.

unselect5917 8mo ago

>https://archive.ph/6V4RI https://archive.ph/6V4RI Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas before I gave up. VPN isn't even on. Anybody got a different link?

selcuka 8mo ago
> Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas Are you sure you haven't been DoS'ing a random website? https://au.pcmag.com/news/116045/wikipedia-blacklists-archiveis-after-alleged-ddos-attack-on-blogger https://au.pcmag.com/news/116045/wikipedia-blacklists-archiv...
- unselect5917 8mo ago
  I clicked the link. That's it.
grvdrm 8mo ago
Same problem. Moved to Chrome from Safari and that fixed it.

assaddayinh 8mo ago

[dead]

pinkmuffinere 8mo ago

> Today, at 19, he’s collecting $400,000 a month for his creation... In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby. Lol if he waits like half a year he should have plenty enough to go make games as a hobby.

himata4113 8mo ago
Roblox games have a shelf life of days, getting to a month or more you either have to produce days worth of content in less than a day - it's extremely exhausing.
- pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
  ah interesting, thanks for adding that context.

pinkmuffinere 8mo ago

> The travel offers him a fresh perspective. It shows him that his work “isn’t that big a deal. It’s not the end of the world because ultimately there’s people walking down the streets of Sydney right now who don’t care about my Roblox game performing 50% worse.” > Colley has indulged, just a little. Last year, after the Roblox developer conference, he took a private jet to Las Vegas with some friends. Did he place any bets? “I’m not old enough,” he says, “but I had people gambling next to me.” Honestly it's encouraging to hear that some teenage millionaires have some very reasonable views, it certainly goes against the stereotype of young wealth. I hope these aren't the exceptions that prove the rule.

CrzyLngPwd 8mo ago

My grandsons would come and stay, bringing tablet devices with them, and would prefer to stay glued to them the whole time. Since we banned their use, they now play outside with my other grandchildren, on the rope swing, the zip line, or exploring in the woods making dens and forts, using their imaginations. Children should not be playing computer games, or scrolling on any social media, IMO.

otherme123 8mo ago
I have heard a number of parents saying their kids are "good behaved" when they are silently glued to a screen, while roaming outside, making noise and playing are bad behaviours, specially when they break things or get a bruise.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo ago
  Worse still, they are so well-behaved, with their tablet and headphones on, watching YouTube or playing games.
  - grvdrm 8mo ago
    My nephew (8) has a VR headset. Doh.
Brybry 8mo ago
I think a fair number of us here got into computers because of playing computer games as kids. The issue is setting limits. Now obviously banning is easier and lower friction but limiting to an X time per day routine can also help with self-discipline. Depends on the person. Kids can have the same issue with TV. I had an issue as a kid with books. My parents had to limit my reading time because I would stay up all night under my covers with a flashlight reading.
- fhennig 8mo ago
  I agree with the 'setting limits' bit. But also maybe the parent post and you refer to kids of different ages? I didn't have access to a computer until I was 9, and then also we didn't have tables and smartphones, so there computer was only available at home as well. I think below a certain age the limit is fine to be set as 'not at all'.

torlok 8mo ago

Another FOMO article. Bloomberg may as well start reporting on lottery winners.

Noaidi 8mo ago

The U.S. has no economy, it is a joke. I cannot believe this BS counts into our GDP.

WhereIsTheTruth 8mo ago

What a boring civilization

lunias 8mo ago

I remember how hard I had to lobby to get my parents to agree to ~$12 a month (that I paid for with 2 weeks of my allowance) for EverQuest.

xrd 8mo ago

I admittedly harbor a bunch of resentment towards Roblox for the predatory way they have encircled my childrens' friends, and my children as well, so take my feelings with a grain of salt. I didn't get far in this article. It feels like the modern equivalent of "there is a kid named LeBron James who is only 19 and will be make millions in the NBA." Roblox Millionaires might be true, but feels like an anomaly, and in this case, causes serious harm IMHO. Lebron James actually has used his wealth and prominence to make a difference in the world, and if he encouraged kids to get active, it feels like on balance a good thing. I just don't see a good/happy career path for anyone becoming a Roblox Millionaire no matter whether it is true for even one person. Maybe it isn't the point, but if it isn't, why even celebrate it?

Thorrez 8mo ago

>Founded in 2004, Roblox paid out $1.5 billion to game creators last year. On average, the top 1,000 developers — individuals or companies — earned $1.3 million, according to the company. So 87% of payouts go to the top 1000 developers.

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