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Roblox is minting teen millionaires

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Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#71

Post by sanswork »

Incipient wrote: post #65
TacticalCoder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk. It's first and foremost a huge risk for kids. My solution is simple: my daughter (11 y/o) can play Roblox but she must be in a game with another friend (whom I know and whom I know her parents) and she must on a video/conf-call with that friend, using another device, while she plays Roblox. That way I hear…

I feel like for a 11yo, you can't even explain the risks. Not just for lack of true comprehension, but also just kids shouldn't have to worry about that stuff, and just be kids.

My son has had the local police do a presentation to his class/preschool/daycares about online safety every year since he was 4 so it's pretty drilled in by this point.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#72

Post by bombcar »

gmueckl wrote: post #52
ikr678 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasnt this 'casual' games market always existed? Once upon a time Zynga/Candycrush was a behemoth on the back of facebook embedded games.

Back then, the market was much, much smaller than it is today if I'm doing the math correctly. Zynga reached an early peak in the early 2010s, but multiple companies, including Zynga (at least pre-acquisition) reach bigger revenue numbers today.

It's so large now that most of that famous "Apple Services Revenue" is just their 30% cut of mobile game payments.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#73

Post by spaceribs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29
aj_icracked wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just laughed out loud. My friends and I LOVED RuneScape in middle school. I'll meet yall in the wilderness to trade armor.

Maybe every generation feels this. But I really think ours lucked out. We were shielded by childhood from the worst of the early times and then bolstered with past success for the worst of the later times.

I was big into the WC3 custom maps community back in the day, the idea that you could make money doing any of this was silly. The point when I was growing up was two things:

1. Make something fun to play

2. Make something I could put into my college portfolio

I did both things, but it was never about making money or being exploited, and I think I prefer that.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#74

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

tverbeure wrote: post #48
Swizec wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently his FIRE number is $40M > it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living I think a lot of people (especially young) just haven't done the actual math. Or have lifestyle desires beyond basic not-working. You can FIRE living in SF for $4M. This gives you $160,000/year basically in perpetuity. If you do it right, there's little to no income tax on that money so 160k should be plenty enough for a…

FWIW, the 4% rule is for safe withdrawals for around 30 years of retirement, as in, you retire at 65 and you hope to live until 95, and even then it has a non-zero chance of running out of money. It's not a percentage you should use if you want to retire at 40.

At $4 million, GP might have been hand-waving a 4% annual rate of return and keep the principle intact.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#75

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #36
xivzgrev wrote: post #26

"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby." Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M. Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something…

If he thinks he can get that with a ten year grind, why would he stop short? 10 years isn't long compared to most careers so maybe he should go longer and get a bigger house or something. Of course roblox will probably fall out of fashion and stop being so profitable by then. Milk that cow for all it's worth.

We all die in the end. At some point, an additional dollar is not improving your life.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#76

Post by draftsman »

Jabrov wrote: post #10
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or RuneScape.

RuneScape millionaires?

RuneScape private servers used to bring in tons of money. I helped manage one when I was in my early teens, and I can confirm the owner (who was only a few years older than I) was bringing in mid six-figures annually.

Then of course there was the rampant gambling. The founders of online casino Stake and streaming platform Kick both started their “careers” in RuneScape gambling. IIRC they invented “staking” which was a method of gambling gold against other players, before they were banned. But the gambling economy in RuneScape used to IRL mint millionaires for sure.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#77

Post by qingcharles »

toast0 wrote: post #60
NuclearPM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Roblox 2. WoW addons 3. Neovim 4. OpenResty 5. NodeMCU 6. Wireshark 7. Lightroom 8. Hammerspoon 9. LÖVE 10. Redis

> 6. Wireshark I love this game, but there's no paid DLC; not sure how they monetize.

It's location-based like Pokémon Go. If you play it at the right place you can definitely make a living wage from it :)

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#78

Post by Sebguer »

Heliodex wrote: post #49
amiga386 wrote: post #38

Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail. Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make gam…

The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible: The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because 1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee,…

[flagged]

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#79

Post by Ameo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352... https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/

Or RuneScape.

So true. A member of the clan I was in was operating a proper hedge fund, taking in investments from the clan and using it to flip on the Grand Exchange. Iirc he was even doing sorts of arbitrage, market making, and other advanced stuff.

Now he works at Google doing quantum computing research lol

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#80

Post by foobarian »

2001zhaozhao wrote: post #53
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it has to do with roblox being free. (I don't have a minecraft account) but Trust me when I say this but within developing countries especially. You can find 3-4 people out of 1 who plays on hypixel but can't because they can't pay for the game usually when we are really young which is also roblox's most major userbase. I can imagine Hypixel being atleast 2x and a rough estimate of 5x more the size if they su…

I agree with this. For the last ~4 years I have been working to turn my Minecraft server into a free browser game on a custom engine. Though in Roblox's case, there's two additional factors helping the success of games on its platform besides being free to play - Roblox has become the de-facto portal from which lots of people play games by default, especially on mobile devices like tablets where discovery for other g…

I would also add it's easier to download and set up than Minecraft. I still have nightmares about setting up various Microsoft and Xbox accounts and trying to help my kid play with her friends. IMO that Roblox doesn't have this friction is huge
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