Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

matthewball.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 590 posts

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#51

Post by modeless »

eru wrote: post #42
modeless wrote: post #17

The bigger question about Roblox is how and why they got their special treatment from Apple. The whole concept of Roblox is in blatant violation of Apple's App Store policies. I believe they are significantly shielded from competition because who else can get that kind of ongoing and reliable relief from Apple's famously picky and capricious App Store reviewers? Maybe Roblox is happy to pay Apple their 30% in exchang…

Why the SEC specifically? Are you suggesting investors are hurt by this? If you want any part of any government to investigate, shouldn't you suggest some agency that's supposed to be working for consumer welfare or so?

If there is any kind of undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO. There's a huge risk to Roblox were any such deal to unravel, both from the threat of competition being allowed and from the possibility of Apple starting to enforce their published policies on Roblox. For public companies, risks like that must be disclosed.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#52

Post by TulliusCicero »

bentcorner wrote: post #25

In my (non-finance, parent of a roblox-player) opinion, the problem that Roblox has is that every single roblox game has a "roblox" essence. Every roblox game is undeniably roblox, and to broaden their market and attract higher-paying users, I think they need to fix that. There's a certain amount of jank in every roblox game, and that's part of the charm. But it's undoubtedly also a reason why people with fatter wall…

Hard agree on the jank, but it may not be possible to fix that while keeping the upsides of the platform.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#53

Post by TulliusCicero »

jrm4 wrote: post #18

There's something weird and sad about Roblox for me as an old-timer who still has silly dreams about free/open software internet utopias for just fun? There's so much creative (programming etc) energy in that place and, for what? short rant over

In a lot of ways it reminds me of BW/War3 custom maps.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#54

Post by chii »

modeless wrote: post #51
eru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the SEC specifically? Are you suggesting investors are hurt by this? If you want any part of any government to investigate, shouldn't you suggest some agency that's supposed to be working for consumer welfare or so?

If there is any kind of undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO. There's a huge risk to Roblox were any such deal to unravel, both from the threat of competition being allowed and from the possibility of Apple starting to enforce their published policies on Roblox. For public companies, risks like that must be disclosed.

> undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO

not all undisclosed arrangements constitute securities fraud - only those whose intent is to defraud investors do.

As for anti-competitive measures, the investigation ought to be from the consumer protection agencies, like the FCC, or from the justice department regarding anti-trust.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#55

Post by NegativeLatency »

WheatMillington wrote: post #24
harry8 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an accounting trick. 1) Make tons of cash. 2) Invest the cash back in the business. 3) Record this investment on the financials as an expense. 4) The expenses inflated by investment spending means you declare no profit and probably pay no tax on that profit you just hid. The alternative is: 1) declare profit 2) Pay tax on it 3) Reinvest what's left after the taxman took a cut. Which would you choose if you were…

Sorry but I'm an accountant and I can't abide such a terrible and incorrect description of how this works. Dunning Kruger in full effect on HN today.

Care to explain what’s wrong/inaccurate with it?

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#56

Post by OuterVale »

Good content, but I must say that the site made it a difficult read. It seems serviceable on a phone, but on anything larger, it's questionable.

The width of the text seems odd. It's too narrow on a medium viewport but too wide on a large one. Around 75 characters per line is usually the sweet spot for legibility. The font sizes also seem to be quite peculiar, being done with seemingly unneeded complexity: `font-size: calc((var(--normal-text-size-value) - 1) * 1.2vw + 1rem)`. Not quite sure this is necessary?

My computer also seemed to really struggle rendering the page as it stuttered constantly while scrolling or resizing.

Additionally (and this is moving into nitpicking territory), the navbar strikes me as a bit busy and overwhelming with its 15 items. Perhaps some culling or drop-down menus are in order. I can't say I'm a huge fan of what looks to be a distorted AI-generated header image either.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#57

Post by modeless »

chii wrote: post #54
modeless wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is any kind of undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO. There's a huge risk to Roblox were any such deal to unravel, both from the threat of competition being allowed and from the possibility of Apple starting to enforce their published policies on Roblox. For public companies, risks like that must be disclosed.

> undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO not all undisclosed arrangements constitute securities fraud - only those whose intent is to defraud investors do. As for anti-competitive measures, the investigation ought to be from the consumer protection agencies, like the FCC, or from the justice department regarding anti-trust.

You are right that not all undisclosed arrangements are securities fraud. However, an undisclosed arrangement that represents an existential risk to the company were it to ever change would be securities fraud. You can't go public with huge undisclosed risks like that.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#58

Post by fl0id »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

This feels like reading finance fan fiction (which it kind of is, given the author's profession?) and uses a lot of text to reach the part that lays out the actual problem: the average operating costs based on daily active users are $18 per user per quarter, and the average amount made is only $13. so either operating costs need to come down, charges need to go up, or they need (more, stable) external revenue (e.g. a…

Yeah. Pretty sure most of the numbers mentioned are irrelevant in this case.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#59

Post by mahirsaid »

Why can't they just issue their own device to minimize app store fees. it seems to me the amount money going to app store real estate is more than enough to justify some sort of method of allowing their users to play the game without app store intervening. The total amount spent so far is astounding if viewed in figures. Minus half or quarter of the total time since appearing in app-store for it to be served to the large audience. The other half would have to be too much time spent content. Rest of that half of paid out fees could have more than enough to fund a plan B.

Another reason why having the current ecosystem, where app stores pretty much dictate the destiny for a growing company. creating another device assuming it magically becomes a success, there is most definitely not a long lasting venture either. Bypassing the app store to achieve what exactly? okay this device plays roblox 'and what else can it do?".Discouraging to see companies like this be dictating how they grow and succeed. Only to grow in this manner and be topped out as there is no next phase after this growth, the atmosphere they're in is polluted and cloudy. The next phase in BIG tech is most likely not going to resemble this depiction, for more reasons than i can list here. The big players in tech are losing their ground day by day. Epic Games is relisted back on to the app store, not long ago they were fighting apple over the very same hurdle that Roblox is facing today. Epic Games did however get their way with Google and went on to send a clear message to the rest of the big tech players out there.

I think a big change is near and if not than its needed.

Re: Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

#60

Post by bemmu »

andyferris wrote: post #22

> Unlike other social platforms, Roblox’s revenue is nearly all via user spending rather than advertising. As such, Roblox pays 25% of its revenue to Apple and Google (30% of transactions on those platforms) whereas Facebook, Snap, et al pay effectively 0. Note that Facebook, which has structurally lower costs to service users than Roblox and is far more mature, has an operating margin of roughly 40% — if the company…

I'm a full-time developer of Roblox games.

It's wild that Apple or Google make as much from my games as I do. Obviously it still works out well enough since I'm not abandoning the platform, but strange anyway.

Post reply on HN