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

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

#231

Post by ffgjgf1 »

actualwitch wrote: post #192
dagmx wrote: post #145

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? Like, one may argue that the 30% isn’t valid (and it’s 15% for the majority of devs) but to say Steam does more is absurd. I’m curious if people who hold this opinion have actually been involved in the process of re…

> valve does contribute to gaming on Linux They only do it because they are painfully aware their rent-seeking behavior is entirely at whims of ms/apple and they want to have some moat.

What do you mean by “only”? You can really expect companies to behave irrationally. Pretty much every company funding Linux development do it because they expect this to benefit them somehow.

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

#232

Post by shkkmo »

Roblox is a destable scummy company that depends on the exploitation of children to make money.

They took the exploitative practices of microtransaction based games, targeted them at children, then decided to use child labor to create content inside an expoitatively taxed monetization system, then decided to abdicate all their responsibility for responsible community management to protect these children by shutting down their own forums and pushing everything to Discord. Now we have children working for unvetted strangers with no labor protection and no oversight.

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

#233

Post by Jensson »

maccard wrote: post #151
myspy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 3% of the 30% go to payment processing. Hence why they still want 27% when developers choose their own payment system. The 27% are seen similar to Sony and Nintendo as fees to be on a platform which has wide reach but also gives tools and does stuff to enable app distribution. Is that too much? I don‘t know but it‘s what all appear to do. The platform politics didn‘t evolve as fast as the tech though. So what ab…

The 3% payment charge is the transaction fee, but that doesn’t take into account the actual handling of the rest of the transaction lifecycle, like managing refunds, or chargebacks. A single chargeback will cost you $25 whether it’s successful or not (plus refunding the transaction if you lose), but on google play and co it’s just refunded.

> but that doesn’t take into account the actual handling of the rest of the transaction lifecycle, like managing refunds, or chargebacks

They do, which is why credit cards take that much, cost of chargebacks is a part of the transaction fee.

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

#234

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

Even if you specifically insist on Lua for some reason, there are probably way less predatory options, like Factorio.

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

#235

Post by BlueTemplar »

low_tech_love wrote: post #130
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 get you perfectly (I play Roblox with my kid almost everyday) but I have another opinion. When I think about what it accomplished, I think Roblox is pretty amazing; actually one of the most amazing software ever made. It accomplished in practice basically what lots of people have been trying to do for decades, since the MUDs from the 70s, and what Zuckerberg wasted billions of dollars with. Sure, most of its conten…

Looking at the founder's bio, he has kept trying to do this since at least the 1980's.

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

#238

Post by ffgjgf1 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #167
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As shown in Roblox case, it obviously is not. Especially as Apple also wants to take a cut from in-app sales.

Well it is for most developers on Steam.

Small/medium developers of course benefit much more from the increased reach/discoverability and PC games have a very different business model than mobile ones of course.

But even for iAP, yes 30% is very step but as a consumer I’m significantly more likely to spend money on an app published by a non-major company if I can use Apple as an intermediary (refunds, subscription management, no cc hassle etc.) I don’t think I’m unique in that way so there is some values we’ll just never know what % it’s actually worth until Apple stop restricting third part stores.

Large companies with a “sticky” user-base of course gain absolutely nothing from it.

Not that I’m trying to defend Apple, on the whole they hardly offer anything useful in return for the 30% to the developers at least because they don’t need to. The App Store as an app/platform is a complete pile of worthless garbage compared to Steam..

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

#239

Post by shkkmo »

amitlevy49 wrote: post #2

reminds me of the path Minecraft could have taken - they also had a massive amount of community developers building servers, but instead of encouraging monetization and taking a cut, they banned it and cracked down aggressively Of course, unlike Roblox, Minecraft was profitable

Minecraft took the moral approach of allowing independent servers and mods (in the Java edition.)

Roblox took the scummy approach of monetizing child labor and taking a cut.

I am so glad, despite the other bad things Microsoft has done with Minecraft, that they haven't taken the Roblox path.

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

#240

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

Sure, but it's not like Roblox is special here, compared to Flash games / Blizzard games' custom maps / Valve game's mods / Minecraft-Factorio mods / HTML games / dev's own website / Steam Greenlight / Itch.io / Unity (yuck)...
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