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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

#341

Post by ffgjgf1 »

dagmx wrote: post #296
sitkack wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those APIs are paid for by the owner of the phone. Charging developers (and the consumer) 30% to allow someone to distribute an app is utterly ridiculous. Framing it like Apple built these things and you are only paying 30% is in deep sycophant territory.

1. You assume they’re paid for by the owner of the phone. That’s not necessarily reflective of a companies income stream. Microsoft also charge for commercial access to their SDKs for example, and every company has different business models. 2. Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn’t just distribution? The majority of steam games do not use Valves tooling for matchmaking or their engine. 3. Can you go without n…

> That’s not necessarily reflective of a companies income stream

It is. Anything MS or Apple ever charged for SDKs and development tools was just peanuts compared to their other income streams.

At the end of the day open consumer platforms benefit much, much more from maximizing the amount of 3rd party software that’s available on them than from anything else.

> Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn’t just distribution?

Discoverability, consumer protection, relatively very good UX etc. of course that is much more valuable to smaller/medium developers than to companies like Epic/EA/etc.

Even the App Store and the 30% cut was a great deal for developers and consumers when it came out initially compared to all the alternatives available at the time.

The issue is that at this point Valve/Steam has to actually provide real value to consumers/developers and innovate. Apple can just do nothing and collect free money (consequently the App Store itself sucks immensely as an app/platform) since they don’t have to compete with anyone anymore. What are you going to do? Buy an Android? : D

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

#342

Post by ToucanLoucan »

GNOMES wrote: post #316
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously don't understand how Roblox isn't being investigated for predatory practices. Because if you held game companies responsible for deliberately fostering addiction in their customers to earn a profit, we'd have scores of industries behind them in line to be brought to heel the same way and the stocks for tech companies, game companies, tobacco companies, casino companies, alcohol companies, etc. etc. would…

Understand your point, but Epic (Fortnite) and games like Fifa have gotten sued or major slap on the wrists for the same practices

They're still doing it though. They stopped whatever specific part got them in trouble but in the broad strokes they're still exploiting customers because the law says they can.

Everything that a business of that size does is legal because if the authorities actually wanted it stopped, it would be stopped.

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

#343

Post by dagmx »

justinclift wrote: post #328
dagmx wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also contribute significantly to that same open source so how do you balance that out? Again, I’m not saying they’re above criticism but I am saying this feels like a very one sided presentation of facts.

> ... how do you balance that out? Not sure what you're asking? "Significantly" doesn't seem to be correct. At least, not for the (GPL licensed?) stuff that's been stuck on ancient versions for many years. Though they have (from my rough memory) made some contributions back to FreeBSD where it seemed to make sense. All that aside, the point is that they didn't build their platform "almost from scratch". They assemble…

What I’m suggesting more than asking is, when you say that open source has lifted their development burden, it makes it sound like it’s a unidirectional taking.

And sure, some might be freeloading. But they also do contribute quite a bit to open source. https://opensource.apple.com/

I know your response was more to correct the “developed from scratch” but I still think it’s important to note that it’s not unidirectional. Even in the development of their own platforms, you can find old Usenet discussions of how they were feeding things back. I think they could have gone their own route but Unix compatibility was important.

The history of Next, Apple, and the open source community is very intertwined and unfortunately cannot be reduced so easily.

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

#344

Post by micromacrofoot »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #317
GNOMES wrote: post #312

My kiddo has easily spent 500+ on Roblox across birthday/Xmas gift cards/chores. I can't stand that almost all of the games seem to have a pay to win aspect, or are heavily advertising every chance they get. As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play, but because they aren't free, his friends can't play. Just drives him to keep playing and wanting more Robux. It's compounded when his favorite Youtubers…

Eh, I dunno. My son plays a bunch of Roblox and has spent a net $10 for a few custom avatar mods. While there is certainly a pay to win aspect for some games within, there is also a ton of "free" games to sift through, and since all of them are competing for players, they still have to make the experience compelling enough at the free tier. We've had conversations about the pay-to-win aspect, and even though he has s…

both should be regulated, this type of predatory gambling-like behavior shouldn't be allowed for kids under a certain age

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

#345

Post by erehweb »

rvba wrote: post #327
iosjunkie wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading that as $700,000 or more total compensation.

What's total compensation? Doea this mean 700k base salary (real cash) + bonus (stock options)? On a side note, do senior engineers get company cars?

Total compensation means $700K, some of it being cash, some of it being stock. Company cars are pretty rare in the US, since basically everyone has a car already.

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

#346

Post by ryandrake »

sumtechguy wrote: post #284
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.

We limit our kid's Roblox and Fortnite in-app spending to Christmas and birthday, and she clearly understands she needs to stretch those game-bucks through the whole year. Four years in, it's worked out pretty well so far.

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

#347

Post by micromacrofoot »

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.

it's popular because it's addicting

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

#348

Post by riwsky »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #314
GNOMES wrote: post #312

My kiddo has easily spent 500+ on Roblox across birthday/Xmas gift cards/chores. I can't stand that almost all of the games seem to have a pay to win aspect, or are heavily advertising every chance they get. As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play, but because they aren't free, his friends can't play. Just drives him to keep playing and wanting more Robux. It's compounded when his favorite Youtubers…

> Seriously don't understand how Roblox isn't being investigated for predatory practices. Because if you held game companies responsible for deliberately fostering addiction in their customers to earn a profit, we'd have scores of industries behind them in line to be brought to heel the same way and the stocks for tech companies, game companies, tobacco companies, casino companies, alcohol companies, etc. etc. would…

We did that for tobacco, though? It was a huge public health win?

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

#349

Post by jack_pp »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #288
dloranc wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Doesn't inhibit them but makes the activity not pleasant because your mind is attaching the work itself to external motivation. You don't do it because you want to (for the pleasure of it), but for a paycheck and humans don't enjoy activities like that if they're not starving.

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

#350

Post by ffgjgf1 »

dagmx wrote: post #331
justinclift wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are you that childish :( > Microsoft also charge for commercial access to their SDKs ... Is that a new thing, or just for specific products? Asking because I've previously used some of their Azure SDK stuff before and that didn't seem to have a charge for SDK access.

Microsoft have charged for non-individual use for longer than they’ve had the free version. I should have perhaps used commercial non-individual use rather than just commercial. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/visual-studio-enterprise-s... Meanwhile Xcode is free and has been since the Project Builder days on Next. I’m not personally saying one is better value or not. Just that the companies have put different valu…

Did MS ever make any significant amounts of money from selling VS/MSDN compared to how much the availability f 3rd part software benefited Windows sales/increasing market share?

Also you didn’t actually necessarily need it to publish software on Windows.

While if you want to develop for iOS (and even macOS these days) you still need to pay the $100/300 yearly fee (which is there entirely for gatekeeping and not an actual income stream).

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