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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

#551

Post by ffgjgf1 »

dagmx wrote: post #305
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think Steam puts in more effort than providing graphics APIs, system frameworks for everything from networking to controller handling, UI libraries, educational sessions and security critical updates? Sure. But this has absolutely nothing to do with fairness. They charge 30% because they can and because developers have no other options. Anyway consumers paying for HW/OS are the ones that are funding the develop…

Without an insight into how a company pays for its RnD internally, one cannot conclusively say that the consumers are the ones who pay for the HW/OS. I’ll also reiterate that the majority of devs pay 15% now on the App Store. Not 30%. And then this gets into every other market choice as well if we’re saying all the stuff is paid for up front by the consumer. What does Steam offer for its 30%? The majority of games on…

> I’ll also reiterate that the majority of devs pay 15% now on the App Store. Not 30%.

Probably not relative to total revenue. But it doesn’t really change much. To be fair I don’t have a problem at all with 15% or even 30% but with the fact that Apple is running a lite extortion racket by not allowing any competition.

> how a company pays for its RnD internally, one cannot conclusively say that the consumers are the ones who pay for the HW/OS

I don’t think the exact nuances of internal accounting (even if they do it this way instead of just putting all revenue into a single “pot”) really changes anything.

It’s pretty clear (based on all evidence from the last 30+ years) that platforms can generate significantly higher revenue by maximizing the amount of third party software and by giving away development tools/etc. for free or significantly below cost than by trying to extract as much money as feasible possible from 3rd part developers (and it wasn’t a huge concern anyway since all major desktop platforms have always been mostly open)

> why are we okay with the others that are arguably more? And why do people defend the other marketplaces ?

IMHO mainly because Apple has a very large market share and is effectively a monopoly in certain ways.

If you want to develop a mobile app/game you can’t not make it available on iOS. It’s just not an option. This gives Apple a huge amount of pricing power and effectively allows them to exploit developers and consumers by generating a surplus they don’t have to work for.

It a scale of course but no other company is quite in the same position. Steam can lose most of their customers if they stop providing value. Even Google is in a much weaker position (consequently they don’t have such strict controls on iAPs) since phone makers can (and have) make their own app stores, side loading etc. I think consoles are closers but they are purely an entertainment product with a lot of alternatives and substitutes.

Overall I personally believe consumer surplus should most dwarf everything else to an extent. Therefore I don’t see any reason why can’t we apply “arbitrary” rules/standards to corporations based on their size and influence on the market.

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

#552

Post by ffgjgf1 »

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…

Webkit (and subsequently Blink/Chromium) and LLVM especially did have a significant impact though.

> didn't build their platform "almost from scratch".

Well, no, it’s of course relative I meant that compared to Valve/Steam they did. And it’s not like iOS/macOS is just a collection of open source components slapped together with some small proprietary layer on top. At this point it’s mostly proprietary stuff they had to build effectively from scratch over the years with some open source components here and there.

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

#553

Post by xhkkffbf »

danans wrote: post #389
xhkkffbf wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's mixed. The states now get such a huge chunk of tobacco money that they're incentivized to keep people smoking. The more they smoke, the more the state gets.

> The more they smoke, the more the state gets. The state "gets" tobacco tax revenue to help pay for the burden of medical treatment for those with smoking related illnesses. Lung cancer isn't free to treat.

They have to treat them any way because of Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare.

So it's all about tax revenue to defer this cost.

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

#554

Post by yoGawd »

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…

Would it be toxic if your culture didn’t train you to see it as such?

Would members of an uncontacted tribe clutch their pearls all the same?

So tired of one cultures anxiety being made the norm everywhere to serve the hallucination 300 million Americans the other 8 billion don’t need should be special.

Americans have expropriated other nations labor and resources and rely on their slave labor without batting an eye about it. Really sick of holding them up as some shining beacon of freedom and dignity.

You rely on worse to survive but omgurd wurds hurt so much as someone else’s back and knees after digging up others food, and their lungs after testing vapes, and their hands after sewing together your Nikes.

The elders are right about my peers; oblivious and entitled. Just parrots of cognitive dissonant TV memes like “Do your own thing. Drink Sprite like the rest of the group we’re showing. Engaging in norms of your society like everyone else is unique!”

Americans are an insane and dangerous people; temporary meat suits convinced of their permanence and righteousness while carrying on about being above biases and exploitative behavior.

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

#555

Post by johnnyanmac »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #548
johnnyanmac wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most games? Mario Bro's. was addicting.

mario bros didn't ask you for $1 to revive and save your progress every time you died these are gambling mechanics... if I just pay $1 more I can make it to the end! if you pay $5 you can be better than everyone else! if I buy just one more lucky box it will have the rare item! arcades had this, but they also had additional friction as a physical location... now little timmy can sit at home every waking hour badgerin…

>mario bros didn't ask you for $1 to revive and save your progress every time you died

Nope, that was the decade prior. I guess Street Fighter would be a better example where it monetized both ways. Eat quarters at the arcade, or spend $200 in 1980s moneys for the NES/SNES and anywhere from $50-80 for the full version. The arcade in many ways was as much an ad for "well you know can play this at home 24/7!"as much as an quarter muncher.

>all the typical trappings of life exaggerated and optimized to extract money in exchange for good vibes... from children

I'm not opposed to rating it M. But all those kids on COD and GTA tell me that that won't be the silver bullet that solves everything. At some level the parent needs to intervene and not buy that for them (like me for GTA).

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

#556

Post by _gabe_ »

nsxwolf wrote: post #390

They have the craziest most difficult interview process I've ever seen, like beyond quant level. But I don't know why. My kids play it and it feels like the jankiest most busted-ass 3D engine that ever existed. I'm sure all the secret sauce is doing all this stuff at scale, but what do Leetcode hards in 20 minutes have to do with that?

Most games have a lot of “jank”, even triple A games. I feel like most people underestimate Roblox because of the graphics, which is 90% how well you can create assets, and 10% programming skill. The real technicality of Roblox comes from its massive online nature, custom built-in editor + IDE combo, custom fork of Lua to add typing, sandboxing, and other optimizations, the social media aspect of the platform, the in game monetary system, and more I’m not thinking of.

If all you’re doing is characterizing it as a 3D engine, you’re missing pretty much everything about the platform that makes it work. Nobody looks at VsCode and asks why it’s hard to program that, or Facebook, or Unity, or MMOs, or Stripe. This platform is all those things in one. And I may be wrong on some of the details, but the stuff those devs get to work on is undoubtedly more difficult than the React apps 90% of developers do in their day job that they also had to grind leet code for.

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

#557

Post by mercenario »

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

Who gave to your kid the money to spend on Roblox?

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

#558

Post by skeaker »

HaZeust wrote: post #156
RockRobotRock wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For now.

That ship has sailed. People can and will just play on old versions if it comes to this. They already do for older versions that have better mod support.

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

#559

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

dgb23 wrote: post #226
jack_pp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because kids aren't utilitarian. They want shiny things impulsively now in whatever niche game they are playing at the moment. Or want to keep up with their friends who got cool stuff to keep status. Doesn't matter to them that they'll switch games in a week and lose everything.

It's not kids or Roblox specifically, it's gamers and platforms/games with "micro-transactions" etc. When I was younger and still played online games regularly, I was initially stoked about cosmetic micro-transactions in (competitive) online games. Not because I wanted to buy them, but because these would fund the continuous development of my favorite games without affecting their integrity (no "pay to win" mechanism…

I think you're right on with the micro-transactions, Roblox is particularly bad for it. One of the games on there my boy likes is Rainbow Friends, its some sort of tame horror survival genre which he loves exploring around and playing as the different characters. If I could just buy that game as a 'full unlock' or something I probably would, instead it's $$$ "micro" transactions for every little thing and it really isn't a habit I want to get the kids into.

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

#560

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

iainmerrick wrote: post #191
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 fashion. It's the same phenomenon as kids wanting to spend $100 to get the coolest shoes (in the real world).

At least with fashion / shoes its something you own / more or less have full control over. With the Roblox it all feels very ephemeral.
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