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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

#441

Post by techjamie »

draebek wrote: post #414
mrmetanoia wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've mentioned this in other comments, but I sat in with my nephews on a Roblox session, then stayed after to check things out on my own. There's an astounding number of adults on that platform saying some of the most horrible things. The games are like you say, and there's some that are indeed the model of what I expected: games that kids and amateurs made with their tools. Car jump games. Simple platforming. Basic…

I struggle to understand why people are so toxic with chat in video games. I don't go to the supermarket, or even the bar and hear people just casually chatting about "who hates [racial slur]?" There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which says that if you give normal people anonymity and an audience then they become (let's call them) assholes. I feel that, in order to buy this, you must accept that t…

My boss at my first job was a nice guy, helped me out a lot when I was still a fledgling adult. Added him on Facebook after a few months and it was covered in Confederate flags, Nazi windmills, and talk about certain types of people.

I knew he did some bad stuff and spent a long time behind bars, but I didn't see that coming.

Also, if you go to any YouTube video that involves a non-white person committing a crime, the comments are stuffed with thinly veiled, or outright, racist remarks. People are just garbage.

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

#442

Post by conductr »

draebek wrote: post #414
mrmetanoia wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've mentioned this in other comments, but I sat in with my nephews on a Roblox session, then stayed after to check things out on my own. There's an astounding number of adults on that platform saying some of the most horrible things. The games are like you say, and there's some that are indeed the model of what I expected: games that kids and amateurs made with their tools. Car jump games. Simple platforming. Basic…

I struggle to understand why people are so toxic with chat in video games. I don't go to the supermarket, or even the bar and hear people just casually chatting about "who hates [racial slur]?" There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which says that if you give normal people anonymity and an audience then they become (let's call them) assholes. I feel that, in order to buy this, you must accept that t…

People revert to their inner twelve year old punk kid self when they are there. Bullying and trying to one up others in terms of most outrageous thing you can say is common and applauded.

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

#443

Post by ProfessorLayton »

modeless wrote: post #367
ec109685 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, they actually did get banned from the App Store at one point, but successfully appealed.

Here's a key part of this: Executives also have kids and they want to play Roblox on the go!

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

#444

Post by hipadev23 »

peanut-walrus wrote: post #409

They have positive cash and are paying their employees well. That's what a company should be doing rather than paying peanuts and hoarding wealth like a dragon. Especially as it seems they are actually profitable, just hiding it with accounting.

> just hiding it with accounting.

I posted this in another comment, but the deferred revenue recognition was forced by the SEC [1].

[1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-sec-told-roblox-to-chan...

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

#445

Post by jajko »

ciropantera wrote: post #431
wmeredith wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a gamer and I always play the games my kids are playing to see what's up. Roblox was banned in my house after I messed around with it on my own for 30 minutes. Most of the games on the platform are pay to win skinner boxes and they have a pedophile problem. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...

As a new father that will eventually get into that situation: how do you ban Roblox in your house? I imagine it’s popular among your kids’ real world acquaintances (school etc). Doesn’t banning it exclude your kids from these groups? Do they feel left out? Given the current state of gaming and where it’s heading I would love to ban gaming altogether but I feel social pressure from other kids makes it very hard.

I go against the stream it seems, but even though I grew up gaming, I see it now as mostly wasted time. Any benefit that came with it is easily overshadowed with literally wasting the most precious thing we have - our time in this universe which could be spent having serious adventures (or anything else like finding/working on love and real friends(TM)).

I've gotten into various sports mostly done in mountains and some additional filler training like weightlifting and running, my quality of life and satisfaction from it skyrocketed. Obviously you get much more healthier, attractive and happier as side effect, but over time your mindset also changes a lot.

These days, displays in our home are kept to the minimum since content is mostly toxic and made as addictive as possible (as mentioned all over this thread). As time progresses we will gradually ease it off, but games will be last thing on a long list. There is not much skill to learn so they are not missing out, clicking all around can be done by infants.

It helps that we are surrounded by people where such approach is the norm and mark of good invested parenthood, and letting kids get addicted to various dark patterns online or in gaming is seen as on cca same level as being absent alcoholic parent or similar fail. Not that I don't see it often ie when traveling, kids glued to screen to me looks very sad while their parents often look like epitome of laziness. Physically and mentally weak, socially awkward, stuck in eternal dopamine kick chase, largely defenseless from sophisticated actors milking their parents credit cards.

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

#446

Post by streamfan »

jjcm wrote: post #387
whoknew1122 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing I do when playing a multiplayer game with proximity voice chat is to turn voice chat off. Makes play sessions much more enjoyable. Sure you may miss the 5% of chat that is actually tactical and relevant to the game, but it's a very small price to pay in order to avoid edgelords and other toxic people.

I appreciate Valve for having both an in-game skill score as well as a behavior score. Once your behavior is maxed out chat becomes an entirely different experience. Here's a chat log from a game I played yesterday: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7902208511/chat Some wholesome banter and that's about it.

I wholeheartedly disagree as someone with 8k+ hours in game.

In fact most people in dota have maxed out behavior scores.

You have to try pretty hard to be muted in the game or have behavior or communication scores lowered significantly.

I can assure anyone that just because you're sitting at 12k doesn't mean your experience is going to be good or an "entirely different experience"

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

#447

Post by zamadatix »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #13
amitlevy49 wrote: post #2

reminds me of the path Minecraft could have taken - they also had a massive amount of community developers building servers, but instead of encouraging monetization and taking a cut, they banned it and cracked down aggressively Of course, unlike Roblox, Minecraft was profitable

I appreciate how they left Java edition alone and chose Bedrock edition to dump all the MTX bullshit on.

MTX?

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

#448

Post by resource_waste »

Me any my wife's experience with roblox:

>Find good games through reddit recommendations

>Play the games, most are novel and remind me of WC3 customs

>Show our non-gamer friends the quirky games

Its pretty cool, but there is soo much garbage to get past.

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

#449

Post by TheRealPomax »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #330
TheRealPomax wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except "bad for your health" is an objective biological fact, whereas saying something sucks is entirely subjective, so that argument too is invalid from the outset. You think it sucks, vastly more people don't. You're welcome to your opinion, but that's all it is.

Except the detrimental impact of Roblox is objectively and widely documented in various links in this thread and elsewhere on the inter webs. Kids don’t think junk food sucks, I guess millions of parents trying to keep them healthy are just going by their “opinions” as well?

Right, and now you're pretending that you said it was bad, not that it sucked.

Of course it's bad: it's factually and objectively bad, there's plenty of investigative journalism that unequivocally demonstrates it's absolute garbage and enables the worst kind of crimes the US can imagine. But, and this is important: that has nothing to do with whether it sucks or not. In fact, it "doesn't suck" enough for millions upon millions of people to use it every single day. Roblox is terrible BECAUSE it doesn't suck: the whole reason it's so bad for humanity is PRECISELY BECAUSE it's awesome enough for a large enough demographic to keep using it, while being opaque enough to the demographic that should be correcting this behaviour to not get it so that Roblox can keep getting away with it.

The absolutely biggest problem with Roblox is literally that it doesn't suck. If only it did, kids would stop playing it!

Roblox has, objectively, a terrible effect on the world. This is demonstrably true. It's not an opinion. But saying it sucks is. Words matter.

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

#450

Post by hipadev23 »

jandrese wrote: post #393
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…

$18/player is a staggering operating cost. I feel like there must be some easy optimizations to be had that would greatly reduce the overhead. Roblox games are user made! They aren't building the most sophisticated game engine. Sure there are server costs, but that should be pennies. Where is all of that money going?

It's unclear to me how $18/player was arrived it. It's not correct. We can simply look at Q2-2024 pg. 7 [1]:

* Total expenses: $1,131,492,000.

* Average daily active users: 79.5M, or $14/DAU/qtr.

* MAUs are closer to 375M, QAUs likely somewhat higher let's say 400M?

* So if we're talking about how much they spend per quarter per unique player, it's closer to $3.

* Last quarter they brought in $955M in bookings (revenue is pointless to look at due to the required accounting practices)

[1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001315098/785cb7e...

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