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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

#201

Post by ashtonkem »

rtkwe wrote: post #83
all2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking something more stable than "buy for X and sell for X/10". Probably something not controlled by Roblox at all (USDC or DAI?). That would be giving up a lot of control, but it would solve the problems they're giving the kiddos.

Yeah Roblox doesn't want that. They want to be able to take a cut every chance they get and also to encourage people to just keep their money in Roblox to keep it moving through purchases so they can keep taking 75% cuts instead of the /only/ 65% they taken when someone cashes out.

Classic case of trying to use technology to fix a regulatory issue. You can’t use technology to fix the fact that Roblox wants to extract value from its creators twice. Either they’d create a crypto currency with the same exploitive structure, or you’d have to fight to legally force them to pay out fairly using whatever crypto they settle on. And by the time you’ve done the latter, you could’ve just forced them to pay in USD.

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

#202

Post by ashtonkem »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #121
ashtonkem wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the old regulations around company scrip and stores might be used to legally undermine such tactics. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating digital experiences, you must pay people with money, not company tokens.

You would first have to establish these kids were employed by Roblox, and I would predict that to be a very uphill battle. It would be hard to argue Roblox is paying anyone in exchange for work.

It’s long time that we eliminate the employee and contractor distinction for worker protections. Even if these kids don’t rate for benefits, they should still have the same protections that a full time employee has around being paid on time in cash.

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

#203

Post by CobrastanJorji »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #140
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawnmowing for a neighbor takes about an hour and earns maybe $10. Making a Roblox game takes perhaps 100 hours and is almost certainly going to result in earning $0 for everyone except the Roblox Corporation.

Ditto for learning the violin. (In this case, you learn Lua.)

But is it okay for a company to mislead kids into thinking that learning the violin will make them money?

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

#204

Post by y2bd »

tapland wrote: post #196
the_jeremy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be lower.

Not for youtube. I made a video and got stuck at $85 or so which has been sitting there. And the gate to get any ad revenue at all has been raised so I'd have to get pretty serious to get the hours watched to earn the remaining $15

In California (I assume other states have similar) the trick is to wait long enough such that it becomes unclaimed property. At that point, Google will surrender your 85 dollars to the state government and you can fill out some paperwork to collect it.

Source: happened to me via a Minecraft channel I used to run over a decade ago and essentially abandoned around 2013.

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

#205

Post by pankajdoharey »

dtagames wrote: post #184
robocat wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.B “Minimum of 100,000 earned Robux in your account. In order to protect against money laundering and comply with applicable law, we limit all Cash Outs to "earned" Robux. Robux are considered "earned" if you receive them by receiving payments from a bona fide third party transaction through the Services for (a) virtual items (such as clothing for an avatar) that you created or (b) virtual things in your game or for…

Ugh. It feels like Roblox is the MLM of gaming.

Do anti trust laws apply in this case? Is there any way to tip the investigating authorities to investigate in the predatory practices of Roblox?

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

tyleo wrote: post #120
rtkwe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox takes their 75% cut out of each sale then if you ever manage to accumulate the 100,000 Robux needed to cash out ($1000 worth for what Roblox sells it for) you only get $350. They're double dipping their cut. You should really watch the video it lays out the case very well. If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would hav…

I’ll have to watch the video. It looks like there is some missing context in the article alone. Still not sure how I feel. On the fence but leaning more good than bad. The thing I cant get past is “what else would a kid do with their time?” Even if its not a great way to make money, it seems like a better use of time than what I did. It just seems like it still provides a strong learning opportunity. I think there ma…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by bemmu »

testudovictoria wrote: post #118
rtkwe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox takes their 75% cut out of each sale then if you ever manage to accumulate the 100,000 Robux needed to cash out ($1000 worth for what Roblox sells it for) you only get $350. They're double dipping their cut. You should really watch the video it lays out the case very well. If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would hav…

To combine the numbers: Roblox takes 75% of each sale. This means the developer needs to make 400,000 in Robux sales before the developer accumulates 100,000 Robux for cash withdrawal. If 100,000 Robux is sold for $1,000, and 100,000 Robux only nets the developer $350, then the double dip gives Roblox a net 91.25% of developer sales. This excludes any applicable taxes or app store fees.

They don't combine like that, because the 75% already takes into account the double dip.

User spends $100 USD to buy 10000 robux. User buys item for 10000 robux in a game. Developer of game gets 7000 robux (dip #1). Developer of game withdraws to USD. 100000 robux = $350 (dip #2) so developer gets $24.5 USD.

Overall 24.5/100 = 24.5%.

In reality the numbers don't always come exactly to this, because robux can cost different amounts to buy depending on the amount, and there are PayPal/wire transfer fees when withdrawing.

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

#208

Post by Anaminus »

roblabla wrote: post #199
Anaminus wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that, since the currency can also come from a handful of other sources (e.g. trading cosmetics), each cash-out is manually reviewed to ensure that the currency only comes from approved sources (sale of assets, games, products). Because of this, reducing the minimum payout does not scale, and at some point becomes infeasible. The article and video, of course, both fail to mention this. Maybe throwing more…

> Because of this, reducing the minimum payout does not scale, and at some point becomes infeasible. Err, wat? This check could trivially be automated, and in fact I'd be very surprised if it wasn't already. All they have to do is maintain a separate (hidden) counter of "cashout-able" currency in their account, which only increases when the money comes from an eligible source (and decreasing so that it never goes abo…

What I can say is that, when the payout program started, all payout requests did go through a manual process (the minimum rate was the same then, by the way). Later on, there is evidence of account "snapshots", which is used to track income made before and after Roblox bumped the exchange rate up [1], which is described with some detail [2]. So it's not unlikely that there are other kinds of counters keeping track of income sources. Even so, there is still evidence for some sort of manual processing, at least up to last December [3].

[1]: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/the-robux-exchange-rate-and-mo... [2]: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/the-robux-exchange-rate-and-mo... [3]: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/holiday-schedule-for-the-devex...

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

#209

Post by rnd0 »

fridif wrote: post #67

It's all fun and games till people start talking about money and exploitation. Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.

>Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.

Back in your day, ID etc weren't profiting off of the mods you made. They were shared freely in other fan spaces.

Apples, oranges.

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

#210

Post by nmfisher »

w-j-w wrote: post #87
sillysaurusx wrote: post #81

See Carmack's rebuttal: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1428483898896535562 > I have been impressed by the number of real world economic and business issues that Roblox is exposing my younger son to, both in the experiences and the larger ecosystem. There is a lot of thinking in terms of effort, reward, and risk. "You seem to be ignoring the thesis of the video. For the vast majority of their creators, their…

I'm not really convinced by "John Carmack doesn't think it's a bad deal, so it's probably ok". He might very well be an incredibly talented game developer, but he also hasn't been in the position of being unknown in the space since the 90s. He also isn't an economist. However, I do think he makes a good point about accessibility. I also think that similar arguments are commonly used to defend MLM companies, which man…

I suspect he's more so talking from his position/experience as (1) a father, and (2) someone who launched his own (incredibly successful) business at a very young age.
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