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

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

#361

Post by drewcoo »

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'd have scores of industries behind them

Not if they have good lobbyists. In the US we still have beer ads on TV though tobacco commercials have been gone long enough to barely be remembered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUY0w2cVAUQ

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

#362

Post by Workaccount2 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #290
stavros wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Apple just had a fresh anti-trust suit opened in the US, and with Google just getting the stamp as a monopoly, I would say things don't look good for Apple.

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

#363

Post by Workaccount2 »

elif wrote: post #267

I'm sure it makes sense to people smarter than me but I just don't get building a software business with The best times I've had at startups were when we were lean, and profiting >50%. The business was easier, we had more flexibility for decisions, morale was great... But then they all seem to grow into 0-10% profit corporate behemoths where each employee can't even tell if the job they do is worth their paycheck, it…

In start-up spaces you usually don't have stiff competition.

Once you grow, and it becomes clear you have a viable market, competitors move in and prices start to get ground down.

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

#364

Post by amclennon »

wavemode wrote: post #340
whoknew1122 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 play... If there's a paid game your kid really likes, perhaps you can talk to his friend's parents and buy the friend a copy of the game. ...I say talking to the friend's parents first, because just giftin…

> just gifting a game to the friends would be creepy lol well this certainly depends on how it's done. Walking up to them in a trench coat and handing them a disc? Probably creepy. But you could also just, like, send them a gift key on Steam...

Unless this person is literally Santa Claus, I suspect a lot of parents might question the motives of a grown man sending gifts to their children without their knowledge.

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

#365

Post by SkittlesNTwix »

paulpauper wrote: post #276
staticautomatic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK about the stock but I’ve interviewed there and their cash comp is legit FU money. Am I misunderstanding you?

Roblox's salary ranges from $140861 in total compensation ... Levels.fyi collects anonymous and verified salaries from current and former employees of Roblox. does not seem like fu to me

That's $140k for an administrative assistant. Look at the software engineering roles. IC1 starts at $234k and goes significantly upwards from there.

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

#366

Post by niemandhier »

I bought my son a ps5, Hogwarts Legacy and told him Roblox is never going to be on any device we own or in any network I control.

In addition to being mostly pay-to-win the platform has a pedophile problem.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...

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

#367

Post by modeless »

ec109685 wrote: post #285
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 Roblo…

How were they getting away with it for the 10 years before that when they were still calling them games and were still clearly in violation? It's pretty clear that the name change is just a retconned excuse and has nothing at all to do with the real reason.

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

#368

Post by whoknew1122 »

wavemode wrote: post #340
whoknew1122 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 play... If there's a paid game your kid really likes, perhaps you can talk to his friend's parents and buy the friend a copy of the game. ...I say talking to the friend's parents first, because just giftin…

> just gifting a game to the friends would be creepy lol well this certainly depends on how it's done. Walking up to them in a trench coat and handing them a disc? Probably creepy. But you could also just, like, send them a gift key on Steam...

Having been a victim of grooming, trust me. It's better to talk to the parents than to give a child a gift without the parents' knowledge.

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

#369

Post by gruez »

bradjohnson wrote: post #333
gruez wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Btw, did you also know that parents in central china have protested over the right to cheat? Source?

It's extremely easy to find yourself, but here: https://qz.com/96793/chinese-students-and-their-parents-figh...

If that's what the other guy was referencing, then it's a misleading characterization of the situation. The original comment was:

>Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean kids widely DEMAND pay to win, and see people who complain about Pay2Win as "Losers in life", because, to them, it's just two valid paths, and if someone pays to win at a game, then it's just a mark of status. Btw, did you also know that parents in central china have protested over the right to cheat?

The article says:

>In response, angry parents and students championed their right to cheat. Not cheating, they said, would put them at a disadvantage in a country where student cheating has become standard practice. “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat,” they chanted.

The comment is claiming cheating is "a mark of status" and "just two valid paths", whereas in the qz article parents wanted to cheat because not cheating would put them at a disadvantage. Those aren't really comparable, because in the latter case they're presumably not supporting cheating in and of itself, only because they don't want to be put at a disadvantage. A parallel would be how in the US, democrats are against voter ID laws, because it would disadvantage minority voters. They don't (presumably) want election fraud (although republicans do think so), they just don't want a regime where their side is disadvantaged.

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

#370

Post by hansvm »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #351
hansvm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if cash flow ever does stop increasing, they can always get back to sustainability by pumping the brakes on reinvestment spending This is a point that's sometimes less obvious with cash flow games. It's possible to have positive cash flow even with negative unit economics, _even when no economy of scale can sufficiently improve those unit economics_ [0], so long as you have enough growth and a good cash flow situat…

Isn't uber is profitable these days with no qualifications?

Sorry, yes, it's too late to edit, but I perhaps wasn't clear enough about "over the years" vs "now."
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