Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

matthewball.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 590 posts

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

#131

Post by tasoeur »

modeless wrote: post #95
saint- wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, why is Roblox in violation of Apple's App store policies?

> Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps. Roblox is in clear violation of this clause, downloading and executing entire games written in Lua. Apple does have an exception to this policy for HTML5 games and…

It’s a gray area. If you look at apps like Snapchat, instagram and TikTok, they all have this concept of filters/lens/effect which are effectively One app effectively violating that policy is WeChat with their mini programs, but they get away with it due to the fact that iOS without WeChat would be doa in China.

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

#132

Post by modeless »

tasoeur wrote: post #131
modeless wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps. Roblox is in clear violation of this clause, downloading and executing entire games written in Lua. Apple does have an exception to this policy for HTML5 games and…

It’s a gray area. If you look at apps like Snapchat, instagram and TikTok, they all have this concept of filters/lens/effect which are effectively One app effectively violating that policy is WeChat with their mini programs, but they get away with it due to the fact that iOS without WeChat would be doa in China.

It's not gray. Your examples do not violate policy because Apple has an explicit exception to allow stuff like that when specifically running in WebKit's JavaScript engine. That's why they use JavaScript, to qualify for the loophole. But as I said, Roblox does not use JavaScript or WebKit for running games and does not qualify for that exception. There is also an exception for "plug-ins" which seems like it could cover the case of camera filters, but definitely would not stretch to cover an entire embedded app store full of complete games purchased with a third-party currency.

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

#133

Post by low_tech_love »

bentcorner wrote: post #25

In my (non-finance, parent of a roblox-player) opinion, the problem that Roblox has is that every single roblox game has a "roblox" essence. Every roblox game is undeniably roblox, and to broaden their market and attract higher-paying users, I think they need to fix that. There's a certain amount of jank in every roblox game, and that's part of the charm. But it's undoubtedly also a reason why people with fatter wall…

I’m not sure… maybe. But at the same time, I think that having access to thousands of games that more or less look and play the same has its advantages and might be a big part of its appeal. If you had Fortnite reimplemented within Roblox, why would you play the Roblox version? I don’t know.

On the other hand, as a Roblox-father also, I do enjoy some of the more polished games, but I almost always fail to get my son to be excited about them enough for us to spend our shared playtime in them instead of the other crap. No free lunch I guess.

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

#134

Post by low_tech_love »

bemmu wrote: post #67
bentcorner wrote: post #25

In my (non-finance, parent of a roblox-player) opinion, the problem that Roblox has is that every single roblox game has a "roblox" essence. Every roblox game is undeniably roblox, and to broaden their market and attract higher-paying users, I think they need to fix that. There's a certain amount of jank in every roblox game, and that's part of the charm. But it's undoubtedly also a reason why people with fatter wall…

I'm a dev on the platform and agree that there is a lot of jank in Roblox games. There's some indication of more polish coming, as recently many games have been rewarded (Pressure, Shovelware's Brain Game etc.) from having more polished animations. Devs respond quickly to seeing other games succeed and take notes. The tools are also getting better. It's gradually getting less nightmarish to try to import a working sk…

Sorry to hijack your comment, but could you recommend some kind of guide for someone who wants to start? There are lots of stuff out there but I need a filter.

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

#135

Post by matsemann »

andyferris wrote: post #22

> Unlike other social platforms, Roblox’s revenue is nearly all via user spending rather than advertising. As such, Roblox pays 25% of its revenue to Apple and Google (30% of transactions on those platforms) whereas Facebook, Snap, et al pay effectively 0. Note that Facebook, which has structurally lower costs to service users than Roblox and is far more mature, has an operating margin of roughly 40% — if the company…

It also makes it almost impossible to compete if Apple/Google has a similar product. They get 100 % of their own earnings, you only get 70 %, so need a much much bigger operational margin. And they still make 30 % off you, so if you're equally big they in reality make 130 % and you 70 %, almost the double of you while having the same sales.

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

#136

Post by ffgjgf1 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #125
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam also takes 30% despite all platforms it operates on being entirely open. So it doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable

There is competition in that space though. A PC game developer can self distribute, can use alternative storefronts (e.g.: GoG, Epic), etc.

Exactly, but paying 30% stills seems like a very good deal for most developers.

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

#137

Post by billyjobob »

treyd wrote: post #61
jrm4 wrote: post #18

There's something weird and sad about Roblox for me as an old-timer who still has silly dreams about free/open software internet utopias for just fun? There's so much creative (programming etc) energy in that place and, for what? short rant over

I've had this half-idea for recreating something like Garry's Mod in Godot for a while now. It seems like something someone would have created by now but it doesn't exist yet for whatever reason. Like, a framework for building first-person FPS-ish game modes and handling all the asset management, sync, etc, like GMod being built around Source does and just letting developers build the game modes without worrying abou…

Like The Mirror? https://www.themirror.space/

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

#138

Post by booi »

justinclift wrote: post #93
itake wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it wild? Microsoft keeps 30% of xbox store sales. Apple, Google, MS, etc. play a massive part in attracting users to the platform.

Visa and Mastercard provide entire global payment platforms, yet only (generally?) take a small fee per transaction. Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction.

> Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction.

I would bet Apple has put more into R&D for iPhones, iPads and iOS than the entire enterprise value of visa and mastercard put together. If anything, they've worked for it more than visa/mastercard who are merely rails with distribution. Most of the heavy lifting, risk and work in the card ecosystem is done by the issuers (banks et. al.)

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

#139

Post by wiseowise »

diatone wrote: post #122
justinclift wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa and Mastercard provide entire global payment platforms, yet only (generally?) take a small fee per transaction. Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction.

Apples to oranges. Card networks have more than three stakeholders to work with per transaction, apply fees indiscriminately from milk to digital music subscriptions, and operate at truly staggering volumes.

You mean they provide actual value to users unlike two parasites that hold whole world hostage?

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

#140

Post by nottorp »

alvah wrote: post #111

"...at a minimum, they will substitute a 30% fee with a 4% credit card processing expense..." Which large corporation is paying anything close to 4% for credit card processing? Based on what's available to me in my small business, I'd be astonished if anyone doing any significant volume was paying as much as half of this percentage.

Are you selling something with some utility to adults? And as a consequence you have zero to very few chargebacks, because your customers aren't going to be overriden by their parents?

I can imagine there are a lot more problems with kids' spending on Roblox, which would bring the processing fees way up.

Post reply on HN