A follow-up video dropped last week, going further into the platform’s problems with child safety, the dodgy nature of its in-game economy, and the black market that’s sprung up around it. The video caused quite a stir, garnering nearly 1m views, and unsurprisingly elicited a furious response from Roblox itself. Essentially, the company is profiting off the labour of children.Įarlier this year, YouTube games journalism channel People Make Games released a video outlining how Roblox Corporation could be seen to be exploiting young games developers, going into huge detail on the sketchy economy that drives it and revealing just how difficult it is for any player to make money from Roblox. And the thing is, kids’ creations are the ENTIRETY of Roblox the company relies on kids to create stuff for other kids. Roblox shares some of the money that it makes off its players’ creations, but only a small percentage. Players earn Robux, the in-game currency, by making and playing games – and that currency has real-world value. It turns out, however, that Roblox has a more troubling way than usual of making money from its players. It’s a strange venue for it, but it’s real.
I do not begrudge the kids their fun, and I’m not going to sit here and belittle the joy and meaning that they find in Roblox. They explore their identities, or learn about making games. Kids and teens form and find communities there, in the same way I did on game forums in the early 00s. It is, essentially, a social space where kids hang out with each other, as many parents discovered over the course of the pandemic. It is not a good game, at least not by any definition that makes sense to me, but its young players really love it, as evidenced by the literal billions of hours that they spend in it (not to mention the millions of YouTube videos that they make and watch). But I am a grown-ass woman, and Roblox is not for me.
I have kept my kids away from it, because I find it boring and ugly and I would rather they play Mario Kart with me. I’m going to be honest: I have never liked Roblox. A co-worker told me the other week that her daughter once presented her with a laptop and asked, “Mum, can you just spend an hour serving these pizzas for me? I need the Robux.” It is absurdly popular, with more than 200m players a month, and the developer behind it hit the headlines last year when it floated on the stock market and generated a $47bn frenzy. If you’ve got any children in your life, you’re going to have heard of Roblox, a virtual world where you can dress a crude Lego-like character up and play random games like cops and robbers with other people. This week we’re taking a critical look at one of the most popular games in the world – one you’ve probably never played.
0 kommentar(er)
