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Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

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Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#151

Post by rtkwe »

elliekelly wrote: post #116
rtkwe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux. It's even worse than that. They sell robux at one rate and cash them out for developers at a very different rate. That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. So they're taking cuts twice, once on the actual sale and again whenever you try to turn it into real money instead of their scrip.

> That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. Knowing nothing at all about Robux I’m not sure I follow. When you say “$1,000 worth of Robux” here you mean $1,000 USD, right? And not 1,000 units of Robux? So if I’m a developer on the platform and I’ve earned however many Robux equal $1,000 USD and I initiate a transfer then my actual cash receipts will be ~$350 USD? Am I understanding that corre…

> my actual cash receipts will be ~$350 USD?

Yes, ignoring any tax requirements because I'm not a tax attorney. You have to have 100k Robux (Rb) to initiate a withdrawl, that 100k Rb costs 1000 USD (ignoring any bulk deals they may run) to buy if you just purchased it from Roblox, but when you sell it to Roblox for USD you get 350 USD. So depending on how you look at it it is worth either 1k or 350 USD. The article was using 1k as the frame and it's what it would cost you to get that much buying directly so to me that's the most accurate.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#152

Post by Talanes »

jameshart wrote: post #137
Stevvo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox is not comparable to YouTube. When you make a video and upload it to YouTube, that creation is entirely the result of your own hard work and ingenuity. YouTube doesn't need to exist for your video to exist. When you make a game in Roblox, you are combining some amount of hard work and ingenuity of your own with a larger amount of hard work and ingenuity by Roblox Creation. If you want to keep all the money, th…

You’re definitely undervaluing the raw video encoding, transmission and delivery framework YouTube brings to bear there. Sure, you made a video. But that’s not the same as having a player that works in multiple browsers, support for multiple streaming bitrates and codecs, optimized global distribution and caching.. and that’s all before we get to the discoverability, hosting and channel management features.

But with a video you have the portability to take your content somewhere other than Youtube for the supporting infrastructure. Your Roblox game is much less portable.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#153

Post by [deleted] »

elliekelly wrote: post #116
rtkwe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux. It's even worse than that. They sell robux at one rate and cash them out for developers at a very different rate. That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. So they're taking cuts twice, once on the actual sale and again whenever you try to turn it into real money instead of their scrip.

> That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. Knowing nothing at all about Robux I’m not sure I follow. When you say “$1,000 worth of Robux” here you mean $1,000 USD, right? And not 1,000 units of Robux? So if I’m a developer on the platform and I’ve earned however many Robux equal $1,000 USD and I initiate a transfer then my actual cash receipts will be ~$350 USD? Am I understanding that corre…

[deleted]

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#154

Post by inetknght »

only_as_i_fall wrote: post #88
inetknght wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For adults, I agree. But this is squarely aimed at kids If it's manipulative of kids then it's manipulative of adults too.

Eh, I think it's reasonable to have different expectations of children vs adults. After all, isn't there a reason why children can't sign legally binding contracts?

> I think it's reasonable to have different expectations of children vs adults.

Given the current state of stupidity in the US, I think there are a lot of children in adult bodies. No, I don't think it's reasonable to have different expectations for users.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#155

Post by Talanes »

Kiro wrote: post #144
humanlion87 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is insane. How are they even getting away with such a scheme? Did they start out at a 1:1 ratio and change it once network effects and lock-in happened.

In literally all other games I know of the ratio is 1:0 since you can't cash out their in-game currency at all. Do you have any of example of a game or a platform where you can sell the in-game currency for the purchase price?

The closest I can think of are systems like Eve, where players can trade in-game currency for game time tokens purchased by other players. 1:1 ratio, but the real money is proxied by game time so that no one can actually remove cash.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#156

Post by ATsch »

duxup wrote: post #103
kevingadd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's labor regardless of how much money you make off of it, though I think maybe you mean that they're little games that aren't the result of much effort?

Is YouTube getting free labor when I upload a video? I feel like the exchange there is not about labor...

Yes it is. That is what they make their money off of, the difference between what they earn off of the labor of the video creators and the money they pay out. If nobody uploaded videos, youtube could not sell attention just like if no steelworkers arrived, the steel mill can not sell steel. That applies to all social media/user generated content platforms.

Now, you might argue that this does not feel like labor because it's more voluntary than labor usually is. Which is totally correct and exactly why this industry is so lucrative.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#157

Post by MrStonedOne »

majormajor wrote: post #113
only_as_i_fall wrote: post #14

>Second, there’s the matter of how extensively Robux (Roblox’s in-app currency) are used to navigate the creator economy. Roblox creators are paid first by receiving a cut of Robux that comes from the sale, which they can use to purchase other Roblox experiences, in-game assets, cosmetics, etc. That means once a developer enters the Robux economy, their money is all spent inside the Roblox system until they’re able t…

The threshold to cash out seems high, but the percentage cut is curious, and I'm not convinced "exploitative" is the right word. It's a high cut, but is there anything else that makes it anywhere as close to make a game and share it with your friends? It seems to be in an entirely different league as any of the app stores or PC game development, so a higher cut there would make sense. The "it's just for fun!" argumen…

from what i can tell, its 30% at transaction time, then 65% at withdrawal time.

That is not necessary.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#158

Post by sumtechguy »

MichaelGroves wrote: post #45
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #3

Not sure what Roblox is in first place. An integrated game engine and hosting site?

Second Life for kids.

It is basically that. With freemium style monetization, cooldown periods, timed pop ups, consumable items (purchase in the store) and all,

My niece was about 300 dollars into this game before my sister got involved. She was using 'oh get me itunes gift cards' from relatives so mom would not notice. She was using all of the tools of an addicted person to use that game. Her sister on the other hand got bored with it and gave up on it.

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#159

Post by [deleted] »

happyopossum wrote: post #18

My kids (and I) certainly don't see it as exploitation - they love learning to create games, and would be happy to do it even without any chance of payout. I don't think the $1k minimum payout is crazy either, as the overhead of paying 10s of thousands of kids $11.32 would kill margins (leading to Robux having to take a higher %age). I'd have to think most kids are in the same boat as mine - if their games ever earn…

[deleted]

Re: Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers

#160

Post by 123pie123 »

my son (not yet 14yo) has learnt to write a few games in Roblox

he's learnt Lua, object orientated programing client side/ server side distributed programing (and how to optimse the speed)

he's also learnt that the people who run the platform will screw you over in many different ways (he's learnt a few tricks to semi counter this)

he's learnt that advertising can be useless and costly,

learnt people are extremely fickle, there's a far amount of people who have money to throw around

learnt that doing good graphics is harder than it seems. (also learnt how to use blender)

also that game dynamics and subtile changes can have big real world changes to peoples experiances

also that UI and UX are important

also to train other (kids) how to program - for money

I'd say as a learning platform it has been fantastic, he's not made much real money, but has earned a far amount of robuks (platforms currency) that's he's spent in game

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