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

matthewball.co

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

#281

Post by squigz »

dloranc wrote: post #269
jack_pp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, for them money is like ice cream, comes from parents rarely and gives them temporary pleasure. That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades so that they start learning financial responsibility early. Sure they'll blow their money on useless stuff at first but then they'll have none for some other thing they wish they had money for and will learn to choose more wisely in the…

> That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades so that they start learning financial responsibility early. Have you ever read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn? He states that rewarding for the things you mentioned inhibits the desired behavior in the long run.

Could you elaborate on how that might be?

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

#282

Post by spywaregorilla »

wavemode wrote: post #4

> Though Roblox isn’t profitable, there are some significant caveats to the situation. Over the last twelve months, operating cash flow—a far more important measure than accounting-defined profits—were $650MM, about 20% of revenue. Roblox has been cash-positive for at least twenty-four quarters. This feels like an example of the phenomenon highlighted in another recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263…

Glossing at their financial statements, about half of that is due to deferred revenue (stuff they sold but haven't delivered on, which I'd guess is sales of their currency that haven't been redeemed). No particular insight on that either way.

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

#283

Post by foobarian »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #240
bemmu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a dev on the platform and agree that there is a lot of jank in Roblox games. There's some indication of more polish coming, as recently many games have been rewarded (Pressure, Shovelware's Brain Game etc.) from having more polished animations. Devs respond quickly to seeing other games succeed and take notes. The tools are also getting better. It's gradually getting less nightmarish to try to import a working sk…

Sure, but it's not like Roblox is special here, compared to Flash games / Blizzard games' custom maps / Valve game's mods / Minecraft-Factorio mods / HTML games / dev's own website / Steam Greenlight / Itch.io / Unity (yuck)...

Roblox got the multiplatform MMO experience dead right. Minecraft is atrocious in comparison; just creating an account is a painful exercise with Microsofts SSO setup and all. And then there is the Java/Bedrock schism which prevents seamless coop play. And don't get me started about modding scene on the matrix of Java/Bedrock and their own version ladders...

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

#284

Post by sumtechguy »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #88

My kids have started playing Roblox recently and they have started asking for some Robux so they can buy crap... I really don't get how so many people are into spending dollars on this stuff. Everything they wanted was ~$10-20 NZD and it was just throw away stuff, like a costume, etc. And then it's only useful in that one game you have brought it for. It blows my mind that it ever got this popular.

My niece was about $1500 into that game before anyone realized what she was doing. She had been asking for gift cards and what not to get the credits. My sister realized what was going on when she added it all up. She thought it was a harmless game her kid was playing. It has a lot of dark patterns designed to scrape cash. There is nothing more expensive than a 'free to play' game.

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

#285

Post by ec109685 »

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…

Roblox gets away with this due to the framing that it’s a single platform with many different experiences:

“To start, Roblox is not a single game. It's a platform that hosts millions of user-generated experiences, such as historical roleplaying games or virtual labs to simulate physics experiments. Because of the diversity of content you'll find on Roblox, we use the term experience to refer to what you play on Roblox.” https://create.roblox.com/docs/education/resources/frequentl...

From the epic trial, Apple addressed why it allows them in a pretty tortured manner: https://www.polygon.com/22440737/roblox-metaverse-game-exper...

I think the best argument is that you’re a single player across games, kids speak of “playing Roblox”, there are portals between worlds, etc. This comment makes the point that all games feel the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41287780

It’s pretty different from what Epic wanted to do by offering completely separate games in their App Store without paying apple commission.

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

#286

Post by rwmj »

shruggedatlas wrote: post #247
rwmj wrote: post #218

I'm surprised that if you're doing $billions through one of the app stores you can't negotiate some large discount from the usual 30% commission?

What leverage would they have in those negotiations?

That they won't write an amicus brief for the Bureau of Competition about the app store monopoly?

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

#287

Post by password4321 »

xrd wrote: post #274
skerit wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been running my own (not-for-profit, for people over the age of 21) server for the past 5 years. We're basically just a Vanilla+ server, we have no problems finding new people to join (thanks to /r/MinecraftBuddies)

My kids love Minecraft. They often run a curseforge mod (create?) and then open a port so they can play together inside the home LAN. But, I don't really understand how this works, and I would love to host it in a way that their cousins in another state could join. Do you know how I research this? I get a bit confused between the curseforge mods, the java edition. Should I start by downloading a JAR of the server and…

This may be enough to get the ball rolling:

https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/post/how-to-set-up-and-r...

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

#288

Post by CuriouslyC »

dloranc wrote: post #269
jack_pp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, for them money is like ice cream, comes from parents rarely and gives them temporary pleasure. That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades so that they start learning financial responsibility early. Sure they'll blow their money on useless stuff at first but then they'll have none for some other thing they wish they had money for and will learn to choose more wisely in the…

> That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades so that they start learning financial responsibility early. Have you ever read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn? He states that rewarding for the things you mentioned inhibits the desired behavior in the long run.

So... Paying people to write software inhibits them writing software?

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

#290

Post by CuriouslyC »

stavros wrote: post #202
mahirsaid wrote: post #59

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 l…

> Why can't they just issue their own device That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Don't worry, though, your iPhone will soon be your own to do whatever you want with, thanks to the DMA. It already is, if you live in the EU.

What are you talking about? Last I saw apple mostly won their lawsuits in the US and our government is so captured by late stage capitalists I doubt we're going to see any serious revision of their monopolistic behavior.

Lucky you that the EU actually does stuff to big tech.

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