Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers

With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage of?
Support us on Patreon: / peoplemakegames
Written and presented by Quintin Smith:
/ quinns108
Design and art direction by Anni Sayers:
/ anni_sayers

[@PeopleMakeGames]

If you'd like to see more games journalism just like this, we're almost entirely funded by our audience over on Patreon. Chuck us a few quid, if you can: www.patreon.com/PeopleMakeGames

[@thegamesthief]

I have no quid to chuck, but I can throw you a few bucks :p

[@assertchris]

Do you have some way of reaching out to Amil? I'd love to see if he'd accept a licence for something like Game Maker Studio, to get those games releasable on other platforms...

[@LetsDoThis123]

Great eye opening video! Everything you say is spot on. And if you need another video idea then maybe look into how some roblox games treat the actual players. Need somewhere to start then check out Adopt Me (Top 2 game). They ask for a purchase before you even play the game and then every time you log in. (The catch is those items they are trying to sell don't even improve your game experience, because nobody plays that type of game anymore, it's all about collecting and trading) Of course, not all game are like this, but this is a great place to jump into the rabbit hole.

[@PankajDoharey]

Thanks for this video, this is slavery, rob-lox malpractices should be stopped.

[@lenon3579ify]

Hi!!! Can you open the video for creating subtitles for other languages?? I want to show this video to my 11yo daughter who's into making games and have been asking me to download Roblox for her, but she doesn't peak English.

[@BoopaKing]

"It would be illegal if it wasn't online" This sentence describes way too many company practices.

[@dragonslayers_6423]

U are hundred percent ✅

[@angelofdeath275]

the gaming world desperately needs to be taken to court. these virtual scrips needs to be abolished

[@gayjebus4079]

NFT's for example

[@hrgrhrhhr]

@@gayjebus4079 what?

[@ricecooker7037]

@@gayjebus4079 no they aren’t illegal or bad, they’re just kinda dumb. *screenshots your NFT*

[@ukasa1]

The kid literally drew a graph in MS paint to prove his point. Mad respect

[@sheer9203]

Mhm

[@elpanacheems1863]

stupid lie roblox doesnt do that you also need 18 to create a game

[@universenerdd]

@@elpanacheems1863 r/ihadastroke

[@deparition]

@@universenerdd go to reddit and shut up this is youtube

[@krighq]

@@deparition damn that really hits different, anyway r/woooosh

[@sleipnir_8364]

The kid just did the indie developer speedrun at 11. The industry is harsh.

[@danaking8959]

more than the industry, capitalism sucks for everyone but the rich

[@sidremus]

Just imagine the level of jadedness he'll have once he's actually old like me...

[@PraXisNiTron]

@@danaking8959 gonna like this comment before the hate mob arrives

[@childofnewlight]

@@danaking8959 Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system. Try again.

[@danaking8959]

@@childofnewlight straight up not true, for all it's faults, maoism has

[@clonemace]

I've been a Roblox developer for over a year, and the worst part is the tax. When you use the Developer Exchange, Roblox takes a whopping 70% of your total income BEFORE you account for federal taxes you have to pay. All in all, you only keep about 20% of your profits to split between everyone on your development team.

[@testingacc320]

tax the poor!!

[@CosmicStar3]

Hey it’s clonemace I found you

[@clonemace]

@@CosmicStar3 Yo!

[@mattmerced1148]

For example, if you earned 10 robux from a kind donation, roblox would take 7 of those, plus taxes, and then you would have only 2 robux left. Not even worth splitting.

[@kabeam5643]

@@mattmerced1148 No, that's not dev exchange, that's a developer product sale, which would only tax 30% and would maek it 7.

[@RubenSim]

Thank you for making this. I've been on the platform for 13 years and this is the most well put criticism of the company I've ever seen. Roblox needs to be honest and up front with us developers about how much money we're really taking home from all of the transactions people make in our games. They shouldn't be taking over 80% of our revenue when game servers run poorly, the website constantly crashes, platform updates take years to come out, moderation is hated by virtually everyone and child predators run rampant. The safety issues alone on Roblox could constitute another 20 minute video.

[@fluffmiceter1846]

Ditto. We need more videos like these that do a deep dive into Roblox and uncover rightful criticism. Maybe a follow up investigation on this channel is in order, some areas of research could be platform integrity (how well are core systems like the servers or moderation handled), child safety, etc. Investors need to be made aware of this information; most people only see Roblox for what it is on the surface.

[@unkindledparsley]

Glad you saw this Ruben!

[@ExperiencersInternational]

@@fluffmiceter1846 didn't expect to see you and Ruben here Roblox definitely needs to make a change to pay amounts and change DevEx requirements plus improve discovery, it's incredibly hard to build up a game (as you know)

[@facenameple4604]

They make money, so why would they care? Literally, that's how capitalistic exploitation works. As long as the revenue is safe, don't change.

[@doominance]

e

[@PolyMars]

thanks for making this! I thought roblox's misleading exchange process was the extent of their exploitation, but the way they market a "developer dream" to kids is terrible

[@_Edo]

It's even worse than is said in the video. 100k Robux is valued at $1247.50, not a thousand dollars.

[@gothicgolem2947]

Honestly I don’t get that part they havnt really lied from what I’ve seen they say you could make good money from it wich is true you just gotta make good games and either get lucky or advertise well

[@gothicgolem2947]

@@maxwell_edison it’s not bad in every fundamental way one of if not the most fundamental having fun it is great at

[@Hypcros]

love you poly

[@Sauczi]

This video is misleading they aren’t forced to make games lol

[@The_Horizon]

It sucks because due to such insane cuts, many small games have no option but to resort to Pay-to-win. If they took lighter cuts, games might be less scammy and Pay-to-win, and make roblox a better place in general

[@niuobie]

pov horizon switched from calling out minecraft servers to calling out roblox

[@TheRecapsKing]

Do a crashing roblox P2W games LMAO

[@babypartylol]

When will you upload again?

[@GiyuuTomioka1]

Ay if you need anyone to crash p2w roblox games hit me up-

[@thatonedummy5716]

oh look its that one person

[@coldsoup8176]

That 11 year old is so well spoken and put together. Sad that the platform has his so disheartened

[@jack90909]

Yeah but what wasnt mention was the fact that well built ips get sold for thousands of dollars outside of roblox

[@moneysebz]

He didn’t speak anything he prop made a bad game

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Roblox youtubers often do much better than roblox game developers.

[@TheMorriganAensland]

That's rather sad when you think about it. Though perhaps more of this younglings should go do both, ESPECIALLY as a way to advertise their own game/s.

[@R8Spike]

@@TheMorriganAensland yeah, it's the best way to get money, same thing with devlogs for steam devs, it increases revenue even if No one pays it

[@H1ydra]

true roblox treats star creators better than normal robloxians and devs

[@Bashar3A]

True. Though to be fair, this is very often true for game KZbinrs vs other game developers as well

[@spacetimit]

This is true

[@AbdallahAhmed-qz6uu]

What was even shadier was when roblox removed the ability to sort games by their categories (rpg,fps, etc.) which forced everyone to play only the "front page" games. Back then you could've sorted these games and played the much less popular roblox games. roblox didn't release a statement about this change ever after that.

[@rosebud6116]

Really? When did they remove this?

[@AbsoluteGorbSupreme]

@@rosebud6116 like 2 3 years ago

[@-fv]

THIS

[@DrShockz]

It's literally coming back, they removed it temporarily so they can re-do it, they are also adding back recommended games.

[@Partially_Frozen]

@@DrShockz How did u find that out? In curious

[@NeonShadowsx]

Incredible. I always thought "games journalism" was such a stupid concept, because the majority of stuff out there is just press releases. This is real, useful, powerful work. Great job.

[@revimfadli4666]

Shills & their 'subtle' marketing really need to be replaced with these

[@brandonnadel4298]

Gamer gate be like:

[@fidly4]

I recommend Jim Sterling. Their style of comedy is somewhat niche, so maybe that will keep you from enjoying, but if it doesn't bother you, Jim focuses almost entirely on exploitation in the games industry, mostly with regular news updates, but from time to time with well-researched essays much like this one with interviews and everything. Just recently they made a video about a university that teaches crunch culture.

[@fillosof66689]

@@fidly4 this video alone beats the pants off of Jimbo's whole catalogue for the last year at least. Since going full on leftover and coming out as trans, Jim has become utterly insufferable, in and out of character assumed for the show.

[@freindmaker4473]

@@fillosof66689 i mean theyve always done their stuff in character lol, not much has changed since they came out

[@YamamotoGenryusaiShigekuni]

Man, I'm really glad to know this because a few of my students are on that platform. As I'm against child labor and exploitations of workers rights, I'm sharing this video everywhere I can.

[@d0m0arigatomrr0boto]

hello bozo here is a simple fix do not work there or you could take Roblox as a side job and work somewhere else

[@Hallandfan847]

@@d0m0arigatomrr0boto frr

[@atanaZion]

@@d0m0arigatomrr0boto White ppl when someone try to support someone's roghts:

[@YamamotoGenryusaiShigekuni]

@@aaronlowe3156 Thank you very much for the kind response 🙏 I hope you earn more ☺️

[@aaronlowe3156]

@@YamamotoGenryusaiShigekuni Very likely.

[@impliqued1910]

Before, You had a "Because you liked [game]" tab, showing you more interesting game because you liked a specific game, but now it has been removed and replaced by a "Recommended for you" tab that is ...also influenced by games you play when joining your friend, therefore making it pretty much useless for finding new interesting stuff

[@ErlkingHeathcliff69]

Yeah i used to love playing heroes but then i lost it from my favourites

[@PearoIGuess]

The recommend for you also does not work one bit, its mainly games that i have no interest in or games with 10k+ players in it

[@oof4077]

When I used to play lots of SCP games the because you liked tab showed me more SCP games. But now it just shows games I have played mixed in with popular games.

[@fomalhaut_the_great]

man you dont even know. there used to be a search by genre function. *games still have genres, but you cant search for them.* how stupid is that? why even remove it!?

[@PearoIGuess]

@@fomalhaut_the_great EXACTLY! Why get rid of genres and even if you do get rid of the genre section, they still appear under the game?!?!

[@philippestomponfoot]

The fact that roblox KZbinrs get paid more than game devs is sad. The devs are the ones who gives the youtubers content and some of them don't even link it.

[@alternatef4-b3z]

Well reason being is that they get money from youtube

[@philippestomponfoot]

@@alternatef4-b3z true

[@Alex-gv3fn]

The fact that Roblox gets paid so much is sad. The devs are the ones who get content onto roblox so that people pay money for games and stuff like that, and yet Roblox gives them not enough credit.

[@alternatef4-b3z]

@@Alex-gv3fn well really we can't blame youtube for the fact that they pay their youtubers good and roblox doesn't.

[@angelofdeath275]

the whole thing is a pyramid scam

[@onion1940]

As a company that takes over 75% of all profits, you'd expect them to have more than 3 people on their moderation team, have decent servers that doesn't take 2 minutes to communicate with the client, and to push out updates more than once every decade.

[@noobifiedwastaken]

Ehhh, I mean 200,000,000+ users and millions of monthly players, I'd say their server is probs super expensive to be kept on, they only have 1,4-1,6K admins/moderator, but still the rate of exchange is pretty much a scam

[@noobifiedwastaken]

Oh and advertisement, if you develop an experience for a roblox that doesn't advertise shit, your game will be a waste

[@Jawsomest]

Buying robux should be 1$ = 100 robux. Reality 1$ = 80 Lets say you spend 7 robux on a donation or a t-shirt in roblox, The dev wont get 7 = 7 But 7 = 5 And then if they wanna EXCHANGE the robux for money, HOOOOOO BOI THATS ANOTHER CUT BUCKAROO.

[@Jawsomest]

Also yes, i do love constantly having data store issues in games and having progress reset, thats fun.

[@ukaszuckiewicz2875]

@@Jawsomest datastore problems are on you handling them poorly 😉

[@therealnav214]

I wish you could also discuss the situation with player exploitation through recent trends in simulators, quick cash grabs, gambling, etc. This was extremely informative.

[@jcclips3354]

As a game dev i can say games like this only do it because of the cuts. Roblox devs need someway to bypass these horrible cuts and make money its not their fault its roblox fault.

[@KiraTheDumbCat]

COUGH COUGH pet simulator x COUGH

[@P1ne_0]

there's also ton of mobile cash grab games that are targeted to kids, its not just roblox and people have to understand that.

[@Yow4]

@@jcclips3354it’s not the company’s fault

[@jack90909]

​@jcclips3354 they do they sell there ips outside of roblox for thousands of dollars in usd usually on discord on servers like ro devs

[@Valyssi]

Ubisoft/EA: *wins scummiest publisher of the year award* Roblox: "hold my non-alcoholic child-safe beer"

[@fenn_fren]

Missed opportunity to say "hold my Bloxy Cola"

[@slashuu_]

apple juice

[@charlesqueen1366]

@@fenn_fren yes

[@wackonaut]

More like “Hold my ######## non ######### ####”

[@wackonaut]

@@slashuu_ right

[@OfficialMaxBox]

Predatory practice after predatory practice, insane.

[@monkviolence5055]

The gaming industry is everything that's wrong with capitalism in a nutshell.

[@Leftistattheparty]

Unionize Roblux

[@mistergrumpy7379]

tf2 video when

[@colfaxschuyler3675]

@@monkviolence5055 Except, there's nothing wrong with capitalism.

[@hubhx]

yoo maxbox here

[@Buildosaurus]

It's so weird that this got recommended within an hour of 18:22 happening to me. I'm a newcomer Roblox 'developer' and my game got unexpectedly popular. Now people are copying it and Roblox won't do anything to help me. Thanks for this brutally honest video, I hope it's an eye opener for people!

[@SevensMarkedSeven]

Brrrr

[@Daniel-do2mh]

Just out of curiosity, what game is it about?

[@MUGEN666]

copying it how. you aren't going into detail. also, there are specific departments you can go to for this sort of thing you just have to dig because if they were public they would be virtually useless due to 100k+ kids sending useless spam mail

[@Buildosaurus]

@@Daniel-do2mh A shop-like game that lets people get free items without needing to browse the catalog, and helps with events

[@Buildosaurus]

@@MUGEN666 Thanks I am already in contact with them

[@novalinnhe]

This video made me cry... I remember being a young kid and getting exploited on sites like Stardoll and Habbo Hotel. I'm so sad that this still isn't being regulated. I hope that internet providers and governments step in soon to curtail practices like this.

[@MsShaza123]

I agree the government needs to help. But what makes Roblox different from any other platform? Unreal Engine is taking away players from their things, and competing with their devs.

[@olivercharles2930]

@@MsShaza123 Unreal Engine doesn't promise you money.

[@AkamiChannel]

How were you exploited?

[@bucheronlvl.1004]

How you can be exploited on Stardoll ?

[@novalinnhe]

@@bucheronlvl.1004 I've responded to my original comment 2-3 times now attempting to explain, but each time it gets flagged so it looks like the moderation won't allow me to go into detail. Sorry about that. All I can say is that safety for children is a concern on any site where users can direct message others. And Stardoll has a 'children making content' economy of its own, although at much lesser scale than Roblox. Stardoll is often overlooked because it was a "girly game", but it could get pretty depraved on there.

[@druhu4590]

"Our top develepors are getting 2 million dollars!" That seemed Pyramid Schemey, then i saw the bit about paying the company for being favored in the algorithm.

[@thecorrurtion215]

The way that they say top developers in a way to generalize all devs is just like such a huge scam to get money out of people that don’t pay that much attention to details, and inexperienced children

[@Vysair]

it's like lonely single hot chick in your area ads

[@Hassan-zw9tb]

top develepors that actually do something earn 2 million dollars while the ceo gets earns billions, even that sounds like too little tbh

[@APOPHISCA]

Yeah FUCK that pay2win system... and this is why I quit such a *GARBAGE ENVIRONMENT* of a game... not mentioning the toxic players

[@ChamanConTenis]

It's not a pyramid per se but they use a lot of MLM lingo to prey on the naive

[@deva_69]

As a person who is studying 3d and trying to get into Game-dev. My biggest concern would be how many children would have just given up. Thinking, making games won't get them money and never think of it as a career...

[@freecomkcf]

considering the whole Activision vs. the State of California thing, i'd say they're not missing out on much

[@amberbaum4079]

The market is oversaturated anyway. If you go AAA you get crunched to death and told to f off if you want to unionise. If you go indie then you often times lack funding and visibility. And it's not like you make the next Stardew Valley. Then on top of that still hold the rights to your IP. Few people make the bucks that allows them to stay afloat. Many indies I know off make games in their free-time, while they hold a full-time job. To be reliant on game developing money is pretty frustrating and unstable.

[@kaizen5023]

The game industry is notorious for working people to death in shitty conditions. Hang out on some game dev forums and ask them what their job is really like.

[@bobbycrosby9765]

I mean. They aren't that wrong. About 5 of my good friends in high school became game developers. By the time we were 30 none of them were game developers anymore. The working conditions are poor. The pay is bad. But there's always someone younger ready to take the abuse you're tired of taking, so it doesn't get any better.

[@oo--7714]

It won’t unless you make shovelware mobile games, which is ironic considering most games on Roblox are just that.

[@HugeFrigginGuy]

Scrip AND child labor? Now that's a business model we can all get behind! If only there was some way to give these little developers black lung, then we'd really be talking!

[@AbbeyNeverOverthinking]

Gaming and gambling addiction stand in for black lung. We've got the whole dark history of capitalism here.

[@dragonofepics7324]

@@AbbeyNeverOverthinking My 12-year old brother is absolutely glued to his screen, mainly because of Roblox. My other little brothers will eventually get bored and go play outside, but he seems to have no ability to regulate himself. Its scary.

[@crerul]

@@dragonofepics7324 Chemically dependence forming in a portion of the population. I know that feeling. It took me almost 8 years of my development to deglue myself. Freemium Isn't Free - South Park episode (season 18, episode 6) That episode made me feel pretty good.

[@angelofdeath275]

i feel like if this happened in china more people would react, but since its happening in front of our eyes people are slower to say something

[@wfjhDUI]

I'm honestly in awe of the sheer predatory and depraved greed here. The Roblox CEO would probably eagerly sell his own mother, wife, and daughter as sex slaves for a few bucks.

[@roxyhart5692]

Seeing your interview with Emil now. Kids these days are FANTASTIC, so smart and so capable of learning by themselves. Wish you all the best for the future, Emil!

[@Kosmicant]

Finally someone who realizes kids aren't just mindless idiots, they can create and learn themselves

[@silversun667]

Agreed, this kids are so smart

[@joncarter3761]

It breaks my heart hearing a kid say they wish they had robucks to advertise their game. This is a HORRIBLE lesson to be teaching children and potential future game developers. I really hope this doesn't kill his passion for making games, he deserves so much better.

[@whatdaytdoin]

No. First off, its "Robux". Second, advertisements often fail and are not the best way to advertise your game, and it is totally not needed for a game to succeed.....

[@Sieztt]

@@whatdaytdoin There is no other fiscal way to advertise your game on Roblox other than through the paid advertisements on the website. Advertisements for games on Roblox are only effective on the platform due to the target demographic of said advertisements, word of mouth or sheer dumb luck is the only other option for the effective success of your game.

[@ohnoi-3760]

Exactly i wanna legit punch the stupid greedy roblox owners.. So damn greedy.

[@whatdaytdoin]

@@Sieztt as long as the creator has atleast a few braincells, he can work around that by advertising with content creators, streamers, description tags, discord, twitter and other social sites

[@whatdaytdoin]

@@ohnoi-3760 like every second company...

[@ensuredchaos8098]

I love the fact that people are coming together to call Roblox out on their disgusting, scummy practices that are done upon young aspiring developers. However, I highly doubt this will do much unless we enact legislation to combat it. We have a legal system in place for reason and I so no reason why it shouldn't be used.

[@no8592]

What's wrong with this system? It combats ingame currency inflation and prevents Roblox from going bankrupt, they're already at a huge deficit.

[@chickenbokernot2598]

if there was something illegal that roblox was doing it they would’ve already been sued and forced to change or they just wouldn’t do it at all

[@KookoCraft]

@@no8592 did you even watch this video lol

[@flashpone7910]

@@chickenbokernot2598 The whole point of this video is that online gaming is NOT regulated by the law. Laws that apply in real life do not apply to virtual platforms. And they should.

[@chickenbokernot2598]

@@flashpone7910 that’s the point of my comment..?

[@Dadwar_Real]

i as a Roblox developer am happy that this issue is finally being talked about by more people, hopefully this will make roblox change and give us a actual cut.

[@ihavenoidea1]

Wish you the best of luck!

[@phuonglu1332]

Hope you can get your game’s on the popular page one day

[@popsrbx]

Yes, I agree and have been vocal about the %s since I’ve ever been able to de ex.

[@DamiemBlorp]

but like they give u a platform, easy way to publish, everything u need. server hosting and all. don't be mad they keep some of money

[@Dadwar_Real]

@@DamiemBlorp we arent mad, we just want a better cut, sure they give us the tools, but we make the platform what it is today,, they could at least give us 60% of what we earn.

[@fruit5488]

I love the way the kid describes the difference between small game developers and big ones, amazing explaination mate, and very true.

[@megamatthew75]

Honestly, I've seen hidden gems that are majorly overshadowed by big budget pay to win or cosmetic filled games, and it's just saddening to see this happen to the good creators on the platform.

[@auliamate]

ikr, like few people play Adventure Forward 2: Restored, and that game is amazing, but since it flew under the radar and didn't have the fancy Blender-made buildings of other games, it was left in the dark.

[@punchthecake82]

i have a friend that is a very good roblox game creator and his game is suprisingly very underrated >:(

[@NulTheSkull]

@@punchthecake82 can you link it or say the name? I wanna try it out

[@NulTheSkull]

@@punchthecake82 cool, thanks

[@p3wter0l0l3]

The good games are hard to find and have barely anyone sometimes which is sad

[@moonwatchereclipse5291]

I knew the situation was bad, but this is so much worse than I thought. Giving them 24 percent of the sales and then taking away more than half its value when turned into real money? That’s harsh.

[@Oshacompliantshibari]

It's closer to taking away two-thirds of its value. Scummy shit.

[@williamjenkins4913]

It comes out to the developer receiving 8.75% of the cut.

[@noobmanasdad865]

You gotta count the free features they do like: *Free Servers *Free data saving *Roblox studio thats already fixed for making games, etc.

[@anchovy5325]

@@noobmanasdad865 1) the servers and data saving are far more than made up for by the amount of kids who are tricked into wasting money on robux 2) of course roblox studio is free, all the popular game engines are

[@noobmanasdad865]

@@anchovy5325 Other game platforms like steam requires you to pay for data saving and servers. They also require you to pay a $100 for uploading a game

[@bruk5827]

as a dev with 2 years of experience, this is actually depressing.

[@ayo123]

if you feel alright answering this, how much money ahve you made over the 2 years on the platform

[@SuperWizardGamerX]

@@ayo123 I'm a pretty small dev on roblox and I made more robux from shirts then with games..

[@ARCHIVED9610]

@@SuperWizardGamerXi only ever got around 5 robux from someone buying my $5 clothing twice. that pay cut sucks

[@insertname7482]

@@ARCHIVED9610 5$ like 400 robux or 5 robux?

[@jokyroblox]

@@ayo123 as a 13 year old i have made 350 dollars in a year so it isnt a lot

[@doonasaurus]

I started making a roblox game when I was 12, but stopped due to laziness. I always planned on going: “well if it flops I can just advertise it” only to realise now that not only is the advertising system almost a scam, but everything I earned from what I might’ve created would only be given to roblox itself. I think I’m gonna give unity a try in a few years. Also, keep making these. Roblox needs to be called out for its greed, and they also help keep younger creators like me from falling into it. Keep the good work up, dude.

[@classicminecraftambience747]

I’m 13 and working on a shrunken recreation of Georgia but like the fallout game series. 1/4 of the map is done.

[@cantthinkofaname5046]

@@classicminecraftambience747it’s good that you’re creating, just don’t get any expectations for profiting off of anything at all, just keep it purely for fun so if your game gets no traction you’re not disappointed. It sounds rude but being a successful roblox dev is like being a popular KZbinr, it can be a fun hobby but don’t get your hopes up at the shot of being a big creator

[@andy-gamer]

Yeah you really should try unity now

[@cantthinkofaname5046]

@@andy-gamer unity is in a… situation right now, probably try something else

[@andy-gamer]

@@cantthinkofaname5046 its a joke

[@lunariumite5537]

You skipped a very important point 5:00 : at least 95% of the games on roblox are either no effort messy and disgusting games,or ones that come with you opening your studio for the first time. having a ''new'' section would just create thousands and millions of X's Place games that are the default tutorial map.

[@relo999]

exactly, same reason why the mobile markets don't have a "new" section and steam removed it's "we show your game to 100k people"-rule and limited the new listings to places you actively need to search for a few years back.

[@BenJaded]

Good point but I do think there could be some sort of middle ground - for example TikTok always shows new videos to people

[@relo999]

@@BenJaded Except that doesn't really work and plays into the problem game platforms face, which is a large amount of manipulative and low quality content. And with how game development works that would translate to a "meta" for the people that make such low quality content to make more of it while high quality content amount stays the same. The big difference between places like Tiktok and gaming platforms is that a half decent tiktok video takes about 5 to 10 minutes to make alone. A game? Alone that would take on average a year or longer.

[@a.q.2330]

Yeah, but roblox said that there are 20 million games, not the quality of them

[@dippythehippy]

I don't see the problem with this. Poorly constructed content is still content and the fact it has no way of finding an audience is a travesty.

[@medbii]

As douchey as the anonymous game dev sounds, he's right about the "burn out". I've joined countless Discord communities for up-and-coming games and literally none of them have ever lasted more than 3 months despite having seemingly organized development teams of scripters, builders, and artists. In most cases, the game never even gets released and the community dies.

[@gibbcharron3469]

Aye; I have found a couple of communities that last longer, but those have all been for mods for other games, like Anbennar (a fantasy mod for Europa Universalis 4) and Wars of Liberty (an overhaul mod for Age of Empires 3), and there's definitely a fair amount of turnover among the creators. I think it really helps to have an already-established community who are already fans, especially in a game with many existing assets and mechanics that modders can build off of.

[@Wyzai]

well, that might just be game development itself. A lot of people go into it with starry eyes thinking about all the amazing things they will do. Then you slowly realise that it's a very slow grind to get even simple and basic functionalities right. Without real passion and a supportive community, it's hard to stay motivated. I started developing indie games and it's actually rather painful when you realise just how much time you need for things that you originally took for granted. It's not 100 hours to make a game, it's 10 000. Not sure how different Roblox is from a normal game engine, but I don't imagine it will be any easier to make something original.

[@yahyachothia]

In some cases, the game is successfully released, yet it's servers are empty and nobody ever plays it. If you're target audience is 9. Then it's going to have trouble when games better suited for teens who are around 14-17 start playing. I wonder if they could make another site.

[@mettaursp309]

@@Wyzai Roblox's engine is kind of a mixed bag. For comparison, Unity and Unreal both can be limiting when you want to do something technically advanced that's outside of the scope of what they were designed for. I've personally run into these types of issues with both. You're also on your own if you want to make scaling hosted game servers with player account authentication, or anything similar. However, the tools are designed to be pretty powerful in general, targeted to make common use cases a lot easier and aim to fill the gaps of what's missing with third party assets. The tools aren't designed to be overly simplified, so the barrier to entry is certainly higher if you want to make any meaningful lasting content, but you can accomplish quite a lot with them. Roblox's are a lot more simplified and many features are catered to the lowest common denominator so it's relatively easy to get into compared to the other two. You also get free server hosting with effectively unlimited scaling, player account authentication systems, player save data hosting, and quite a few other goodies that make launching online games stupidly easy. However, because of the simplified presentation and limited scope of many of the other tools it can be very hard to make anything that isn't easily recognizable as being Roblox. It's a lot harder to push the boundaries of the engine because the features are so heavily sandboxed. It isn't all bad because the sandboxing means it is very, very hard to intentionally damage someone's system by playing a bad or straight up malicious game, but you also have to accept that your freedom is significantly more restricted. They have been slowly expanding the features available on the engine, allowing for more ambitious titles, but this also raises the barrier to entry for making titles competitive on that level. They're also very heavily limited by backwards compatibility, more so than with Unity and Unreal. In the latter two you can choose to stick on an old version to keep the features you need that your project depends on. With Roblox using the latest version is mandatory, so they need to be a lot more careful with which changes they make, when, and how they design them.

[@vizthex]

ikr. I was genuinely disappointed when he didn't say "don't make your game on roblox."

[@kyleallen204]

As someone who makes 3D models to sell online, this is absolutely heartbreaking to see. The time and effort you take into molding something out of nothing and being able to call your own is invaluable and this company just trashes it like its nothing. A grand to pull out money? that is literally unbelievable

[@clvsidy]

Yeah my friend’s a beamer and still make more than young game devs.

[@controllex_]

@@clvsidy your friend is a bmw?????

[@budallbudall8083]

@@clvsidy You mean your friends a skid ☠

[@wituma]

@@clvsidy Your friend is a gay monkey

[@Ratmasssss]

​@@clvsidy Report your friend immediately

[@marc8239]

This honestly makes me really sad, because game development was my first contact with programming back when I was 10, and it opened a world that changed my life forever, and now I’m here being close to my dream of becoming a mathematician. All we had back then was Minecraft, low quality KZbin tutorials, our dads Pc, and this weird thing called Java. There was no monetisation, just the motivation to make something cool.

[@K3end0]

Wouldn't be surprised if a massive part of their public listing success was simply this line in some form: "We take 75% of all the revenue earned on the platform, and our developers are too young to understand why its a bad thing".

[@kazmark4611]

Its literally just Child Labor with extra steps. not even a lot of extra steps either. literally one extra step and since they don't actually pay all the children who make games its also literally child slavery.

[@chrisbailey2098]

@@kazmark4611 I wouldn't really call it slavery, children aren't forced into making the games. They do it because that's what interests them. I agree pushing the 'how to make money' is wrong but growing the passion should be what parents should be informing their children on . Ready for the life of a games developer with excessive crunch, long hours with unpaid overtime, the constant risk of redundancy and if you're female sexual assault.

[@Persun_McPersonson]

@@chrisbailey2098 It's child labor via deception. The only difference from slavery is that they're tricked into it instead of forced. The video literally says this practice is illegal in real life, so excusing it away like this is just stupid.

[@chrisbailey2098]

@@Persun_McPersonson @Persun McPersonson @Persun McPersonson I literally said the 'how to make money on roblox' was deceptive. 9-13 year olds shouldn't be left to their own devices on the internet anyway, especially when money is involved. My son asks for robux, and as a parent I ask him to explain why he would like them and will he get the most value out of them. If he said he need to advertise his game he works on with his school friend I would refuse and explain why. It's not stupid to say that. He also didn't interview a single person who does it for fun, meaning his argument was stacked towards a child who was disappointed and three developers who have made money in the way he was arguing against.

[@luckyblockyoshi]

@@chrisbailey2098 “9-13 year olds shouldn’t be left to their own devices on the internet anyway.” Does this change the fact that Roblox is marketed towards children, makes them work by deception, and that doing this is illegal? This is like saying “kids shouldn’t be left to their own devices anyway” when discussing child predators

[@m4rcuhs]

what frustrates me is that there used to be a filter option to find certain games but they removed it which makes it really hard to find less popular games..

[@beanzy1891]

I still play at 20 but they used to have tix a free currency you get everyday so you can still buy stuff without paying real money and they removed that

[@DarkLizard-]

@@beanzy1891 they removed it due to people exploiting it with bots

[@gh15Highlights]

Yeah they should add that back young debs are the back bone of their company

[@NightC7785]

It still at the home page you know

[@mysticeeye]

@@eddydiaz2609 I never understood that choice. Why remove the category page but leave the filter in? It's such a bizarre choice

[@takedown205productions6]

This video needs to be shown to every young developer out there. Their time is better spent on Blender and Python, than it is on Roblox.

[@raffandbotnik]

i also dont really get why some developers say that moving from roblox to unity is hard i;ve been a roblox developer for 5 years and i'm trying to move from lua to c# and its not that hard

[@moved4462]

@@raffandbotnik different people adapt differently

[@miigi-p4939]

@@raffandbotnik codes

[@ghedo6483]

@@raffandbotnik Not that it's hard to adapt to a new engine or learning a new programing language. It's just less work on Roblox, and a lot easier to advertise your game.

[@kingpig8732]

A lot of modellers on roblox use blender and just import them cause roblox’s modelling tools aren’t that good

[@williamhabberjam410]

is this not illegal? it feels like child exploitation

[@Miwwens]

It would be illegal if it wasn’t online

[@TheParadoxGamer1]

@@Miwwensgotta love the lack of labor regulations for the internet

[@CrisBy1]

And the TOS that they have basically says, "we own you and there is nothing you can do about it"

[@GAMER32231]

That’s because it is

[@darkzeroprojects4245]

It is, and I alone is why I don't touch roblox at all. Never liked the blocky character models anywasys.

[@Rob_Enhoud]

Remember when people used to believe KZbin wasn't making any money until they got busted for exploiting minors and we learned what their financials actually were?

[@WonderfulBoness]

Tell me more?

[@vrish1420]

@@WonderfulBoness yh me too

[@retrobit5973]

Ummm ... we don't. Care to elaborate more?

[@MrKasenom]

Ummm what? Please tell us more

[@Rob_Enhoud]

KZbin COPPA

[@jackcrimson5223]

As a dev who's been here for 5 years, I'd say for people to immediately drop Roblox and join unreal or unity. Roblox is never worth the time

[@auliamate]

The main appeal of ROBLOX is that Unreal and Unity are very spec-heavy, meaning a craptop will most likely be reduced to ashes if it ran Unreal, while Studio runs pretty well and Studio not being as complex as Unity, Unreal or Blender, who all have very high skill slopes while it takes about a day or week for to get used to ROBLOX Studio on average.

[@jackcrimson5223]

​@@auliamate you've got a good point. ROBLOX is like the Mc Donalds of the dev industry

[@53rdRenoInhabitant]

same i quit roblox for a long time and made better money on itch and steam

[@zwenkwiel816]

@@auliamate then start with godot or even game maker studio or something.

[@sheesh8051]

@@zwenkwiel816 Pygame is good lol

[@slightlybaked779]

Back when I started roblox as a kid in 2010, there were so many discovery tools available it blew my mind! You could sift through every category of game, when the game was made, if the game had paywalls, or games by a specific player. Sorry I keep calling them games, because that’s what they were in 2010, since it was only on the computer, like a 3D flash game. I moved away from the platform at around 2015 when they started getting money hungry and started getting rid of the discovery tools, thus making it harder to find games without paywalls. Then the censorship of the chat started getting really bad. I understand in most cases it’s to prevent inappropriate activity, but it’s made it so that you have to tip-toe around the system and not say certain normal phrases such as “ Well, “ for some reason.

[@someguystudios23]

Don't be sorry for calling them games, THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE.

[@gloows3397]

bro i remember where there used to be a ingame currency on roblox called TIX and you get TIX for free if someone plays your games, you can buy shirt hats and stuffs before, and roblox was a free game before and sadly they deleted TIX. And thats sucks.

[@shiiiiiion]

@@gloows3397 The removal of the TIX is probably the point in time where Roblox became the greedy exploitative company we see today. You could just wait to buy things in the market, but now you need to spend real money just to not look like a generic avatar.

[@dead_dude5248]

Even the word "ok" is censored sometimes for me (my acc is 13>) (Sorry if i have bad english)

[@gerneric454l08]

Too much text this is a information thingy

[@Brwykk]

Did a great service here. Still 3 years later not enough people know about this problem.. it's still prevalent as ever

[@visheshsinha4825]

Kids being game devs and not getting paid enough?? That's just child labour with extra steps in a nicely packaged, gift wrapped box with a pretty bow on it.

[@Cainkuzmin]

Where have I heard that before?

[@scumknight6074]

Rick and Morty

[@not_let]

Not "not being paid enough", just "not being paid".

[@DenzelIbrahim]

and what sucks is the kids are making games FOR them

[@MyNamesAveren]

I make games in roblox cuz i like to, i really want to make whats on my mind time to time

[@MrPopsnap]

this is crazy. the similarities that so many digital platforms have to scrip is terrifying :/ thanks for shining a light on all this. hope change comes soon

[@vwabi]

Roblox has become one of the best educational games though, teaching kids about capitalism from a very early age.

[@limlimy]

Pain

[@eduardog3000]

Communist revolution (in Roblox) when?

[@GerardMenvussa]

Sadly, I'm pretty sure most kids won't understand what exactly is wrong with the system. And won't make the connection with similar situations IRL.

[@Zalethon]

Teaching kids all about exploitation and class warfare

[@victorwidell9751]

And scams! My 2 kids have learned about several techniques other players use to screw over each other. A small stakes, highly obvious introduction to the world on online deception. It is great.

[@Mac_Daffy]

Billion dollar corporations lying to kids how easy it is to make money. Thanks for putting this information together in such a dense and well explained form.

[@Arguinghen]

The way how this articulates Roblox devs as child labourers by choice… Its a hard truth pill to swallow, but one which we ultimately must.

[@mandisaw]

Even without the predatory aspect, how does this not trip child labor laws??

[@Bladethegreat]

Putting up job postings for child workers in your factory would also allow for labor entirely by choice, but that still exploits children and is super illegal in most countries. How is this meaningfully different?

[@Toxodos]

your neighbours kid mowing your lawn is doing child labour by choice for you. It doesn't mean shit, it just sounds bad because it could be REALLY bad, but it depends on the context.

[@immigrantgaming420epic]

tbh atleast its fun to make the games

[@akg_table]

@@Toxodos That's not even quite a valid analogy. It's more like a kid volunteering to cut your lawn without even asking you, knowing that if he does a good job he'll get paid for it.

[@Trodgy]

As a 7-year running developer for a former Top-Rated game, hamburger, I can confirm that you tend to fall in popularity if you don't spend the money to make your game rise up. The whole reason our game ended up on Top-Rated was due to a combination of advertisement and luck with KZbinrs Flamingo and KonekoKitten playing the game back in early 2020 and no other reason. Our case was probably even worse due to a group run by a guy called Tubers98 temporarily hacking a popular game, MeepCity, and sending it's players to hamburger causing it to have a massive dislike spree which booted it right off of Top-Rated between Flamingo and Koneko's videos on the game, which almost killed it had Koneko not seen it. Nowadays the game is sitting mostly unplayed until we release an update to it which has taken well over a year and a half at this point to release. On another note; Super Doomspire probably wasn't the best example for "developers taking your idea and improving it", since the original Doomspire BrickBattle was made back in the era where making games was done purely for fun ( 2013 and earlier ) as opposed to games being made for profit ( and usually fun ). Super Doomspire also has very few things you can actually buy in it, the only things being Crowns ( currency to use in the shop for skins and stickers and etc. ) and Sticker Patches to put stickers on weapons to have some cool cosmetic effects, both of which can be earned for free by just playing the game and have no actual gameplay impact otherwise. It's also worth noting that ROBLOX doesn't have 20 million experiences. If you want to go into semantics the platform has approximately 3 BILLION, however most of them are just pre-generated places that are created upon an account being created, with somewhere in the range of 20-30 million being the total number of actual games out there that aren't just pre-generated places. Very well constructed criticism of ROBLOX's payout formula though. Even if I understood how harsh it can be at times, it was still very much an eye opener. ( and I'd argue that the sequel video was even more of an eye opener, go watch it if you haven't )

[@ka-md8ue]

Can you describe Roblox of 2013?

[@Trodgy]

@@ka-md8ue I started playing in 2014. honestly 2014-2016 roblox was really chill, not nearly as many players, much simpler avatar designs and the like. it was far more charming than modern day roblox, I definitely hold a lot of nostalgia to it despite modern day roblox improving the client over time. games were a lot simpler before 2017 with jailbreak and all of that too, game discovery used to exist in a proper way and it was way easier to find what you wanted to play. to answer your question, pre-2017 roblox is a nostalgia trip to say the least, and it's why I hold simulations of that era of roblox so dearly.

[@saitamabaldy2566]

@@ka-md8ue As someone who started in 2008 and stumbled across this video, (I don't play anymore, I do log in sometimes but hardly ever) as "@Trodgy" said games wasn't really created purely for profit and there wasn't much micro transactions. The only micro transactions most popular games had back then was mainly VIP t-shirts I would say even though games was not as sophisticated as today - I believe they was more enjoyable. Aside from games people say there was no toxic people or od'ers back then but those people are wrong and are most likely lying about being around on Roblox back then. The avatar trends in that era of Roblox which I would say is 2011-2013 was more simple but looked better, I definitely prefer the paper hats, sk8r boi hats mixed with beautiful hair and etc. over "Ro gangster" oufits and "slenders".

[@Decenity]

started playing in 2011, loved the game so much even though it was simple thats what made it great, you also didn’t have so many cosmetics shoved in your face which was really nice at the time. its a shame that companies are companies and they work on increasing profits every year, unfortunately thats capitalism for you. nowadays the game doesn’t have the same charm atleast for me anyway but maybe im just becoming older who knows

[@Abominus2]

My meep died of starvation. what happens now he has a cute dinosaur hat and is dead

[@khaelou]

I'm excited to see more people covering this Topic, the site is now oversaturated and extremely difficult if you're a great developer aiming get a game off the rocks even with a budget. I left Roblox due to this exploitation, I've been a silent community user for roughly 10+ years though.

[@JackAss-xo3gp]

Are you a developer?

[@eliasmarbina2279]

i hope they make filter options for games, or maybe make a underrated games or new games section, where they choose actaul good games that have no players

[@khaelou]

@@JackAss-xo3gp Yes, though I left Roblox earlier this year to pursue mobile/multiplayer game projects

[@khaelou]

@@eliasmarbina2279 Exactly, but this is not in the nature of Roblox as of now. You can simply tell where their focus is by the comment section of games. Highly spammed, even the likelihood of exploits happening amongst one's game is up there too.

[@worldgamer8550]

You say exploitation, but have you ever seen the price of a server. The fact that you do not pay anything to host a Roblox game is beyond amazing

[@mattmerced1148]

Case in point: dont build your dev life around roblox, if you are in it for the money you will be disappointed greatly, unless you pull a blox fruits and make an addicting grind game choked full with microtransactions

[@JuanJimenez.]

Agreed. Same reason why there aren't many popular games, you got Blox Fruits, a bunch of RP games and so on and so forth. It's never a good idea to develop for Roblox hoping you'd get good money out of it.

[@joel784]

This is why A game you made for fun > A game you made for money Even if it gets popular cuz of microtransactions it will never have anything creative

[@Ovotun]

There's just something about roblox that really makes me not wanna use other game engines. Roblox's abstract nature of having little lego characters just fascinates me. The company is a lump of crap but there is still so much charm to just.. making an abstract game for the heck of it

[@Ovotun]

@@joel784 I mean, what about both? My games were made for the money, but i try to make them as fun, replayable, original, and creative as i can. I'll even try to interact with my community if i ever have one. Is that still bad?

[@joel784]

@@Ovotun When I said money I mean't just trying to have maximum profits Yk games like Blade ball

[@sharkwithnotoes3051]

Ea: we republish the same game every year! Roblox: We turn children into virtual slaves and make money off them! 😎

[@damiennathaniel09]

both are good business plans

[@supe4701]

Atleast EA’s development company has the decency to pay their developers a non slave wage

[@danka1167]

At the very least, like the other guy said, EA treats their employees well

[@Regex0034]

Wtf? Most children wont even know how to make a gamepass and roblox would get no benefit from them lmao

[@GETSTICKBUGGEDLOL]

They are not forced to make games and you have to be 13+ to make money people below make free model games with no effort

[@PimStoit]

I want part 2 about the addictive nature of Roblox' "experiences".

[@rai1578]

I was thinking this as well. I'd be very interested to see a full video about that side of things

[@michael_gibbs]

Seconded.

[@diegozanella9437]

+1 for this, I would be interested as well

[@rickvanleeuwen9589]

I'm subscribing in case he makes that video

[@revimfadli4666]

Especially those ANIME SIMULATOR RPG skinnerboxes And "tycoons"

[@Lin_The_Cat_]

Emil seems like a smart kid. If I got the chance, I’d tell him to keep his head up, ‘cause even though Roblox might not be the best platform to become an indie game entrepreneur/developer, the skills he picks up from it- and at such a young age- will be worth way more in experience and expertise by the time he’s an adult looking for a job in the field of software development!

[@gay.mer9328]

So he can be even more exploited by capitalists!

[@legonenen]

@@gay.mer9328 Or practically every other system. The only way to not get exploited is to actively fight against it, and even then you'll often end up losing that.

[@immigrantgaming420epic]

i mean we dont know what game he made, it might have just been a quick dumb simulator

[@Lin_The_Cat_]

@@immigrantgaming420epic I like to give kids the benefit of the doubt, (within reason, ofc) and save my “press x to doubt” for adults :)

[@knightesquire36]

Here is the problem, lua is not used that much outside of certain games, so he will prolly have to learn other languages, but yeah he would have skills from roblox I wish him luck.

[@jaedaryn]

Everyone needs to watch this before it possibly gets deleted.

[@SampleTextt]

This is criminal, thanks for putting a light on this. Just predatory to another level, sucks to see the years of game devs' effort amount to a measly 1000 dollars.

[@isolatikn4324]

Less than that taking in the exchange rate. I think he showed it to be USD$350.... I used to be big into roblox when I was younger and this honestly infuriates me.

[@maxwinter2265]

Funny when the exchange rate is about 700$ less than what its really valued at

[@ZenithAccount]

@@maxwinter2265 And then Roblox says they can't afford to pay them any more.

[@apache95]

Are you kidding me? I don't even earn a single dime or any visitors more than 50!

[@Jawsomest]

10 dollars = 800 robux, not even 1k, then when they SPEND robux, roblox takes ANOTHER cut, Then you need to pay devs, pay ads, (if your a dev) and THEN FINNALLY, after the moneys been hacked and cut, YOU FINNAL EXCHANGE IT, AND IT GETS CUT DOWN DURING THAT TOO.

[@Mcwoodys123]

It’s disgusting how roblox has run their company. This is a great video. The amount of work that some developers put into their games is astonishingly high and they get nothing from it.

[@TLMX722]

Wellcomme to roblox spend robux and earn nothing

[@ediodimacaroni]

Roblox wasn't what it used to be.

[@the_expidition427]

Their listing on the New York Stock Exchange was not good for optics either

[@infinitycraft5076]

FYI I have several ties with big roblox group owners who got mysteriously *terminated* when they got close to the 100k mark...

[@eugenechng7678]

That's the truth of marketing.

[@sampy901]

Most of those "20 million" experiences is a blank private map each user gets, or abandoned default sandboxes

[@graye3633]

Theyre talking about actual games that have been touched. Things that start in a persons profile is a different kind.

[@wolowolowolowolowolowolowo2417]

@@graye3633 yeah. otherwise there'd be billions of games due to billions of accounts

[@kandy1399]

tbh some of these games could be bot games and shit ,I do think the number is much lower but definitely it's in the millions compared to only 1000s of popular games in the recommended tab.

[@sofastealeroffensive]

And most of those are the popular ones..

[@md244-w6v]

How could their be 20 million games in total, assuming that pre made user games are taken into account, when the game has around 200 million monthly users, let alone all the dormant accounts

[@officialblimp]

the editing on this video is top tier

[@LordHenryVonHenry]

I know far too many people who have wasted years of their lives on Roblox developing skills that aren't all that transferable into the real world, and while it is my opinion developing on Roblox can develop useful skills, along with developing useful though pessimistic world views, the way they advertise it as free money making for any random kid if they put enough effort in is just outright rubbish. Roblox is above all, a company and as such has one goal, profit. Anyone who develops on Roblox needs to know this above all else.

[@ihavenoidea1]

Roblox is like an encapsulated place, separating itself from the "others"

[@Pxhyre]

Are you seriously going to make the argument that a COMPANY wants PROFIT?? Please rewatch this video when you get older and learn about the real world around you. When and where have they ever said it is easy to gain money? To my knowledge "Earn serious cash" doesn't equal free money.

[@Stuff1646]

I joined Roblox in 2006, and developed games up until 2013 when I decided enough was enough and just threw in the towel and went to other game creation outlets.

[@vuklind_9301]

@@Pxhyre What's wrong with that argument tho?

[@Pxhyre]

@@vuklind_9301 a company is not a non profit organization I do not see a reason why a company would do thinks that would make them earn less money.

[@walterr3602]

The comparison to company towns was really apt! Very interesting video and I hope many more watch it!

[@TheAmazeman]

No that comparison is inept. If you think voluntarily making a game and gaining virtual currency for it that can lead to real $, is like being in a coal mine town being paid scrip you need to touch grass

[@TheAmazeman]

​@Ash Barr Comparing coal miners with black lung stuck in their economic servitude to kids inside the comfort of their home learning to program and 3D model for free on Roblox. Read a history book and be grateful for how sheltered society is now days, especially yourself.

[@SirProdigle]

@@TheAmazeman If those developers are *genuine* profit creators for the company (which they are) then I think it's apt

[@TheAmazeman]

@@SirProdigle The video makes little effort into finding out where most of Roblox's revenue is from. Spoiler alert for all you who found out about Roblox yesterday, it's from players buying Robux to pay for perks in games they play. People in the games industry should stop being ignorant about this, you know how games in the F2P industry make money. The higher amount of paying players, the more money the devs make, therefore the more Roblox makes. Roblox doesn't profit from failed games, overdone advertising campaigns (without proper success indicator analytics) aside (which is just them not cashing out all the Robux as seen from the 24.5% to the 17 cents SEC filing). Until this video can prove most of Roblox's revenue is from innocent kids paying for Robux to pour into the onsite advertising system getting low returns, it has misled all of you to be hyper focused on one aspect of Roblox

[@SirProdigle]

@@TheAmazeman I don't think that really changes or negates the company town's comparison at all though. Regardless of how much money Roblox makes, the amount of barriers & disincentives to cash out are real unique across online creator spaces

[@TheRhythmDealer]

When the kid broke out Microsoft Paint the biggest smile appeared on my face. What a bright kid.

[@Beetless]

ah yes Microsoft paint so intelligent

[@kiwi3085]

@@d0k0night The kids a young developer, give him a bit more credit will ya?

[@DarkLordMorningstar]

I see now Roblox's decision to remove tix was much worse than we saw at-the-moment. It wasn't just "it's not making us money, so we're cutting this." It was insidious; "we're going to make money off you and capitalise you. Ha ha ha!"

[@katachiriku]

This is actually true, and I love how this 20-minute video criticizing Roblox for their greed for money is widely agreed upon by the community, even the star creators. Roblox doesn't even care about the developers at all. All that Roblox cares about is taking advantage of the developers to make more money for the company. Roblox doesn't even spend their money to improve the platform, like their terrible moderation system. Thank you for making this video though. The community didn't have an idea of how much Roblox actually cuts off from their profits.

[@kappamikeysupersaiyan911]

Its just Roblox in general. And it's funny because of the Ruben sim lawsuit drama everyone thinks that Ruben is the one in the wrong for breaking the rule, but yet none of them knows the history behind Roblox and the greed, terrible moderation, staff abusing their powers and so many shit that just get swept under the carpet. Its about time now that everyone is seeing the shitty thing Roblox has done to it's own community

[@katachiriku]

@@kappamikeysupersaiyan911 True. These people probably don't know who Ruben actually is. In fact, Ruben is actually a nice guy who sometimes likes to joke around. Roblox took it like a huge deal when Ruben jokingly swore at the admins. Roblox even filed a lawsuit against this poor guy. Literally *almost* everyone who used the new voice chat feature swore as well, but only Ruben (and a few) got banned from the platform. Why is Roblox this "mad" at Ruben?

[@katachiriku]

Ruben is actually a hero. Remember the MisterObvious incident? Nobody stood up but him. Ruben did everything he could, while Roblox remained quiet about it. Roblox didn't even try to help at all, like they don't even care about children's safety. It's ironic how Roblox does some serious ban waves on people who say the word "gay," but does nothing at all when it comes to child predators. Does Roblox even cares about the child victim? Now, Roblox is here, wanting Ruben to pay them millions of cash for "cyber-bullying and harassing." Wtf is wrong with them.

[@ceoofmemes1967]

Hi, veteran player here and I have to say that all arguments in this video are legitimate. However, I must add that all this seemed to happen after the death of one of the creators, Erik Cassel. Before, tickets were a way to get free stuff, and games had VIP t-shirts costing 10-100 tix (you earned 10 per day). ROBLOX still made money from developers, but developers didn't rip off children via "boxes" and "crates" that can be purchased with real money and only robux, so it didn't seem as bad. ROBLOX was more of a start for up-and-coming developers to start to learn how to code. It wasn't an actual job, more of a pass time. After Erik died, DevEx was introduced, tickets were removed, and free unsponsored gear from ROBLOX were stopped. Now it's more like ROBLOX making money off devs who rip off children with manipulative gambling for children.

[@kurgans]

How extremely fucking sad. Dancing on this man's grave they are.

[@kript0]

Exactly

[@TheNinja94a]

I used to blame every problem with ROBLOX on Erik Cassel no longer being with us, but now I'm not sure. ROBLOX is a corporation, and I feel like it would become successful regardless of his death, and success under capitalism encourages infinite growth, and the desire for infinite growth encourages unethical business practices. It really hurts to type this, but I feel like Erik Cassel would either leave, end up booted, or become another corporate ghoul, like David Baszucki.

[@joshuaberger65]

@@TheNinja94a highly likely he would get the boot from roblox. You also gotta remember correlation does not equal causation. It may seem like roblox went downhill after he died, but we don’t know what went on behind closed doors.

[@ceoofmemes1967]

@@joshuaberger65 that's definitely a good point, but I feel like Erik just had the soul David is missing. He cared about ROBLOX, and kids having a mega fun time messing around in it. Call me delusional, but I do think Erik would've kept ROBLOX in line to be more of a free platform as opposed to a "freemium" platform.

[@brownmims2311]

They're always trying to sneak scrip back in and people don't understand how furious they should be about it. Join me in my rage.

[@Wise_That]

Do you take funding in the form of iTunes giftcards?

[@ChristianCTaken]

Most people don't get taught about labor history.

[@aidanwarren4980]

This is one of the reasons I’m skeptical of crypto-currencies. Allowing a proliferation of different currencies sounds like a great way to bring back scrip.

[@kazmark4611]

@@aidanwarren4980 Crypto is 100% gonna become scrip one day, you are gonna go into work and your manager is going to say "hey you guys can get payed in the new KingCoins if you want, its burgerking's new crypto-currency" and they will talk up all the benefits like you will get paid more if you switch and your Kingcoins will be able to get you better food on your lunch break because they are "worth more" than money at BK and of course you can swap your king coins for real money. then one day it wont be optional and new hires will only get paid in kingcoins unless they fill out 50 extra forums that somehow mean its not legally a scrip, and congress will do fuck all because BK and Apple and everyone else who is doing crypto scrip will bribe the Republicans and Democrats to ignore it, and anyone who wants to maybe update the script regulation is gonna get accused of being a "socialist" who wants to hinder the free market.

[@granite_planet]

@@kazmark4611 6000 languages in the world and my man chose to speak facts 👌

[@lynnwade4867]

this was really well done, i knew absolutely nothing about roblocks before this but this was so educational and definitely should be heard by more people

[@irecordwithaphone1856]

Being someone that has played since 2011, and even used studio a lot, it does kind of shock me how a company worth 45 billion dollars is so slow to push out major updates. Everything is packaged and needs to be rolled out in phases, I get that, but so many things have been announced and then take actual years to be implemented.

[@Pxhyre]

you say it yourself, the company's WORTH is 45 billion they don't own 45 billion. It's like saying PewDiePie is a billionaire because of his net worth.

[@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413]

roblox is as slow as valve

[@irecordwithaphone1856]

@@Pxhyre It's still an indication of their wealth. They don't own 45 billion, but the value alone is pretty insane and gives you an idea of how rich the company is. Just because Jeff Bezos doesn't have over 100 billion in his account, doesn't mean he isn't way too rich. There should be higher standards if you're going to keep that much money from your own community that keeps your platform alive, like Roblox. It is kind of shameful imo. The userbase is the reason it works, and the reason the company gets paid to begin with.

[@Pxhyre]

@@irecordwithaphone1856 yeah and Roblox is why the userbase has fun, your point?

[@irecordwithaphone1856]

@@Pxhyre My point is that they shouldn't make promises as a company only to take years to deliver, despite their funding and examples of other companies that have done it much faster. They have built a platform where users entertain users, but the users also rely on updates from said platform. When the company has a lot of money from those users, but refuses to put equal reciprocal care back, it's not really a good thing. Again, I have been playing since 2011, I am a fan of the platform, I am simply voicing my criticism over the long long gaps between significant updates (and also the issues touched on by this video a bit) Roblox is severely held back by the company's slow pace. I, as a long time player and fan, care about that. I also care about devs getting underpaid in their cut, especially when the company in question could financially afford to take less of a percentage.

[@Zanejjb]

As Indie Dev, hearing that kid speak just sounded like a fellow indie dev speaking lmao

[@Ibbys_space]

Scrolled down to this at 4:11, talk about luck lol.

[@KlutchMeister]

Idk he sounds he use free model in his game , just my opinion

[@Ilovetoes6996]

@@KlutchMeister there are stupidly popular games made with free models so

[@KlutchMeister]

@@Ilovetoes6996 what game ?

[@Zanejjb]

@@KlutchMeister dunno if someone using free models really discredits the rest of the work they did to make what ever game it was they built no mater how simple. My point is more in his demeanor towards the roblox alagothrim makes him talk in a similar way to fellow dev friends I have lol. Either way he's a kid, give him credit where it's due. He spent time at his age to try and make a game and even spent time to learn how to do so. That impressive non the less.

[@MrTizzay]

Incredible work as always! This came out on the same day The Verge published a piece about Roblox struggling to moderate re-creations of mass shootings, so there's a lot to learn about such a massive platform

[@BishopCDN]

Fuck. Like actually, fuck. Having kids express their own experiences - and those experiences being of frequent mass shootings - and then having those experiences churned through late-stage capitalism. What a uniquely terrible thing to learn.

[@frostonium]

.

[@wowwhatabeautifuldayoutside]

@@maxwell_edison god damn are people not allowed to be concerned for the mental health of people recreating mass murders of children or something? cause i feel like that's a pretty reasonable thing to be concerned about

[@WHYZEE]

@@wowwhatabeautifuldayoutside While I agree with you that you should take to emotions of these people seriously, and I understand that there’s going to be some overlap between a school shooter and someone who’s edgy. That’s kinda the nature of being edgy. I don’t think that treating edginess as though it’s going to 100% the time mean that is the best way go about it .That isn’t to say that aren’t any legitimate emotions behind people being edgy that can’t lead into mental illness. But I feel like the topic is more broad than you seem to make it out to be. A good example of this is in a video called “why we did we like Elfen Lied” by hazel while it is pretty long winded and is coming from the perspective of a woman reflecting on her youth via an edgy anime you may or may not care about. The perspective it does have goes beyond just saying “ I did it because all my friends did it” or “it was the zeitgeist”

[@wowwhatabeautifuldayoutside]

@@WHYZEE i've seen that vid - it was very good! and trust me i'm well versed in edgelordism (one of my biggest interests ever is warhammer 40k; i am a self described unironical fan of unbearable grimdark as a writing flaw and overly purple-poetic edgelordism as a source of jank). i just think that dismissing fairly reasonable concerns about mental health (even if they're not universal, which, nobody ever claimed every school shooting themed videogame was a reflection of personal trauma in this thread, i don't think) as "people just being edgelords" is both super mean spirited/cynical and extremely reductive, as cynicism tends to be. there's a lot worth analyzing in why somebody would find a school shooting funny, even if it's a very depressing analysis. so yea 💜

[@v0lve3321]

Heyo, this is the first video of yours I've seen and I just wanted to say that I really appreciated that you interviewed a child for this. I've heard a lot about this issue over the years, but actually getting a child's perspective on the issue helped my old-person-understanding a lot

[@MattRoszak]

Very educational video. I don't know much about Roblox, but this is definitely a total scam and should be illegal. Back in my day kids could make Flash games for Newgrounds, Kongregate, Armor Games, and other websites, and keep 50-70% of their income, cash out at like $100, and have plenty of transferable skills. Regulation can't come soon enough to stop these awful tech monopolies.

[@404deletion]

HOLY SHIT ITS MATT ROSZAK

[@dslicckest1andahalf]

If anything we should be getting all of our earnings. What does Roblox need from us when they’re already a multi billion dollar company?

[@clint3868]

Roblox is older than half the games you listed lol. Also it isn’t a scam, the point of roblox isn’t as a serious development platform like steam. Roblox is a place for kids to build games and share them with other kids. They added the ability to cash in some robux for real life money a few years ago but that was never the point (which is why they only offer Devex to serious developers). Roblox is built to be more like a Minecraft server where you build stuff and show it to your friends. It’s just gotten so popular that people don’t see that anymore and are framing it differently than what it is

[@dryspongeyt7353]

Hey it's the gut that made EBF!

[@404deletion]

@@clint3868 ok and clearly roblox is just child labor with a few extra steps

[@pacohchinus6686]

That 11 year old kid seems like he could actually do well as a professional developer (in another platform), wish him a lot of luck!

[@DeeterPlays]

It's amazing how much Roblox Developers have in common with KZbinrs. Neither Roblox nor KZbin actually promises that success is going to be easy though. This video sort of treats kids like victims if they discover that success is not easy. I agree that Roblox could give a bigger cut, but other than that, just seems like he's slamming Roblox for making some sort of claim that they don't actually make.

[@Tamos40000]

It's all the problems of the uberisation free-market capitalists have been trying to sell as an idea for the past 10 years.

[@wilkson1300]

@@Tamos40000 i know right, but even real life capitalism has rules for the employee, this shit is basically exploitation and it wouldn't surprise me if it was borderline slavery

[@kyirid]

They both have more than 2 gears rotating in their heads. Most of the time.

[@teggolT]

KZbin says: how to create content If you are good you may monitize Roblox: How to use LUA How to waste money online(fast)

[@Nik-6675]

Thanks for the dev egg while I was still playing Roblox.

[@DrManHe]

roblox: If you make a ad you might get noticed! me: but there's people have adblocker roblox: IF YOU MAKE A AD YOU MIGHT GET NOTICED!

[@sebastianballestas2055]

This is absolutely brilliant. The fact that Roblox is exploiting kids AND revamping financial exploitation methods such as scrip shows that the lack of regulation of online game platforms allows corporations to recycle methods that almost resemble slavery in modern times. Even the fact that the community cannot voice themselves shows the lack of empathy from these guys on top of Roblox. Just nasty what they are doing.

[@almightybree2779]

And the fact no one really bats an eye is crazy. For years i used to think sumn was shady cause lil kids all wanted robux and now i see.

[@spunklord5000]

*Game Creator:* "Here you go, buy yourself something pretty." *Developers:* "Hey, this isn't money!" *Game Creator:* "No, It's even better! This is what Roblox pays me with! Roblox's wacky Robux!"

[@Deceptionisnotperception]

By game creator you mean roblox right?

[@spunklord5000]

@@Deceptionisnotperception more so the people who are directing a game and hiring developers with robux, game owner might've been a better way to word it

[@MyNamesAveren]

@@spunklord5000 well there are head dev or owner who gives then real money through dev ex, 100k robux = 300 USD

[@nichoindo123]

robus

[@boost24]

my sweet sweet doppio

[@Blossoming_Fate]

Back when I was in the latter years of elementary school my brother and I loved playing Roblox, the 'experiences' were fun, and well designed for the players, but now that I've jumped back into it for nostalgia reasons a few years after graduation, it's not the same. Every where I look I'm begging spammed by Robux transactions and none of the 'experiences' I used to love are even operational anymore. It hurts my soul.

[@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413]

Cashgrab games are being pumped out like crazy while good games are never made, because any serious developer stays away from roblox, and those who dont try their best to make an actual profit

[@Pyrohawk]

FWIW, all the old games are broken because Roblox introduced a client-server model to prevent people from inserting their own content into games via exploits. It was for the better

[@mettaursp309]

@@user-gf5lq2pe3q I don't think it is what you think, and it absolutely was for the better. Developers can still add and make whatever they want to their own games, but the problem was that exploiters were allowed to have a final say in what game servers would accept as the state of the world simulation. In a server-client architecture there are no certainties about whether incoming network requests from clients are legitimate or not, and if the information in the requests is legitimate or not. If a server openly accepts all traffic, the way Roblox game servers were set up before, then exploiters would be able to manipulate servers in almost any way they want. A good comparison would be how bad GTA:O is when it comes to people cheating, blatantly teleporting, spawning in items, going god mode, etc. The proper way to set up server security is reject most network requests and limit the scope of what control the clients have over the server's state. That locks out the vast majority of potential exploits, and that is the change that Roblox made. The issue is that most of the content that came before that change wasn't designed with the more secure networking model in mind, so that content broke when the new model was enforced and the old, looser network model was removed entirely. It was a 100% necessary change though because Roblox can't have games where exploiters can inject whatever content they want, because that could mean injecting adult content, scamming, etc.

[@warcrimes390]

@@user-gf5lq2pe3q inserting own content could also mean exploits, and roblox is pretty rampant with exploits still

[@mow_cat]

@@Pyrohawk yeah basically the client-server model was broken and clients could do things only the server should be able to do (exploitation got really bad, hence it being fixed). the solution would have been to have a working client-server model from the start so no one would code things that only worked with the broken model

[@theRevil100]

The fact that you likened robux to company town economy wasn't a reality i was emotionally ready for

[@oud13yearsago83]

I met the developer of a game called “hide and seek” on roblox, it was often and still is the most popular version of hide and seek on roblox and is often on featured. I asked him, he said he makes about $10 a day. Pitiful for how much work he put into it.

[@axolo3662]

How is this comment 13 years ago? Oh, the actual time was 2 mo ago

[@Minihood31770]

This sort of investigative journalism is vital and woefully lacking in most games press. I am so glad to be supporting this work. Also if this isn't just a prime example of why private ownership of the means of production is bad.

[@xSilentZeroXx]

Except Roblox is publicly owned. The private owners are slaves to the will of the public. The thing you are saying they should do is what they are already doing that took the problem from bad to worse. Commies need to be sterilized.

[@Katt1n]

@@xSilentZeroXx Don't need to sterilize them, they are all weeb incels anyways lol

[@guineverehaas2427]

@@xSilentZeroXx being publicly owned doesn't make a company a slave to the will of the public, it makes them a slave to profit. Only about half of American citizens even own any kind of stocks, and the majority of stocks are held by the rich. The only way for a company to make their stocks go up is to become more profitable, and that has nothing to do with the general will of the public. A company can find more profit in any number of ways: making internal systems more efficient, reducing overall employee count to get rid of redundant or useless jobs, or even forgoing expensive waste services and just dumping your leftover chemicals into a lake. In this case Roblox chose to exploit their workers (as in the people who created most of the content for the game). None of that is like communism.

[@thriller2910]

@@xSilentZeroXx I think he meant more like the development tools and such being so integrated into roblox being a problem. What has happened so far certainly isn't communism lmao, far from it

[@Katt1n]

@@guineverehaas2427 How does a company earn revenue? I will give you a hint, it is not by selling to rich people. Vote with your wallet.

[@Glacialgaming]

“these kids are doing real work” Meanwhile: escape miraculous ladybug parkour obby

[@andrewthefatwatso5639]

Omg not you again

[@sentientbeing8738]

True lol

[@user-fy7hx9gd6u]

Some kid somewhere is punching air after reading this comment

[@josephb.7500]

ive seen this games on roblox lol

[@Caloy_OFFICIAL]

@@josephb.7500 same

[@dadbot8480]

Roblox’s favorite method of production is child labor

[@nullied]

Roblox's entire motto is "Powering Imagination". However, this is not really a platform where it is wise to be imaginative. My friend has made about 100k USD from Roblox and this was from riding off other people's ideas, as well as immense luck. Those who are imaginative have a very low chance of being successful, but when they are, you can guarantee a developer will copy what they have done and make a similar amount of money, with a lower risk of their game failing. If you can take someone else's idea, turn it into your own, and have a lower chance of your game failing, why wouldn't you just do that? (There is an exception, as some developers don't make games with the intent of making money. These games are always the most enjoyable in my opinion)

[@kiannn]

100K??

[@nullied]

@@kiannn yeah somewhere around there.. and this was with 2-3 front page games and many many failed games

[@genghiskhan.2265]

You friend sounds bad

[@jaumpis]

good point. i genuinly enjoy making games on roblox and i think lua is a intresting progamming language. i do not want money (you should not trust me with it lol)

[@justintabatabai8063]

This kid is super impressive. Well spoken for his age and wise. Wish him the best

[@melaniey.5596]

As much as I admire little kids being mature for their age, it also leaves me feeling a little bitter as it usually means that they had to confront a harsh reality that forced them to mature. As is this case that made him sound like a “30 year old veteran (in the industry)” :(

[@justintabatabai8063]

@@melaniey.5596 that’s life, adversity makes you grow up

[@melaniey.5596]

@Justin Tabatabai yeah, but I don’t think it’s just. There is when they grow because the consequences of their actions, like punishments or what not. That’s just and that that’s life. But when they are forced to mature because they where exploited and swindled by a multimillion company...? (Because I’m pretty sure that “Roblox camp” cost money and that the company might have gained money from it) That’s not life, that’s injustice.

[@justintabatabai8063]

@@melaniey.5596 life has injustice. Not sure what you’re saying

[@melaniey.5596]

@@justintabatabai8063 uh. I personal believe that life is just, because humans naturally strive for it to be just. But people must strive for justice for ourselves and for others (as justice for only one of those is not true justice). How to say it... because striving for justice, is one of the things that make us more human.

[@fongus6420]

As a young person who tried developing games for a while on this platform, this is definitely all very true. I used to have an FPS game that I worked on every single day trying to make it brilliant, and I got way too burnt out. It made game development no longer fun for me. I mainly used Roblox due to the easy system for multiplayer, but it would definitely be better to use something else.

[@ConspiciousAction]

@@JETS5 same

[@joymation9710]

Yeah animation was fun for a bit until i found blender

[@botondzoltannagy8849]

@@JETS5 I think she/he never released it cus like she/he said, she/he got way too burned out.

[@EliP789]

@@botondzoltannagy8849 Theres a word called They

[@DecentVFXartist]

Considering i see nsfw things EVERY day on the platform it is wild to say that roblox handles moderation. Also games have to make their own scripts that prevent exploiting roblox doesn't care, even if the exploit is a fail in the code on roblox's part

[@ProkaryoteCellGaming]

Yup, that’s also one of the reasons why Roblox got banned in Turkey, because of NSFW being promoted to kids.

[@DecentVFXartist]

@@ProkaryoteCellGaming In the marketplace it only takes a few minuttes without searching to get to things like "girl chest" (i totally dont own one)

[@kormana]

"Powering imagination" turned into "Powering capitalism"

[@johnlop7763]

Imperialism

[@ea2508]

"Powering children exploitation"

[@hederatoxicodendron]

powering greedier mode

[@siduxjxhdgzhdjxhxuuxxyhgg1079]

@@hederatoxicodendron powering tainted keeper

[@hederatoxicodendron]

@@siduxjxhdgzhdjxhxuuxxyhgg1079 powering tainted keeper + swallowed penny + piggy bank

[@mystxry6885]

Been on the platform for 7 years, and my parents told me I could do some kind of money by making games on Roblox. I knew that but wasn't sure about it.. After seeing this video I am 100% sure to not go down that path.

[@jaumpis]

alright so, roblox is great if you are in to developing but not making money, and if you are just starting i highly recommend roblox. it can be a great starting point for game programming and a very simple and easy to use framework/studio with already a compiler and editor. but if you are experienced and want to make some money then you should probably go to something different. just a suggestion (also please dont believe this vid lol, its a whole load of crap.) (no really. making games is optional lol. "exploiting kids" also yes they want to make money but so do all companys. so this video is kinda making a crappy point.)

[@StinkyScript]

@@jaumpis As someone who has been on roblox for years, this video is very true in majority of ways. Sure there may be some off points (because they dont literally play roblox), roblox as a platform is very corrupt and deserves action. The video has totally true points and after playing on roblox for 5 years, I often recommend new people to not play (or pay) roblox as much. However in the light part of roblox, it's probably not as shady, but as someone who's completely submurged into roblox's entire structure, they are extremely shady, greedy, corrupt, and improper.

[@Creative_Devise]

As a veteran Roblox player I can agree with this, however, back in the early days prior to Roblox blowing up we used to have a genre feature on the Games/Discover page which would display newer games! On top of this Roblox used to have a secondary currency called 'tix' where they would give out free tix every x days you logged in. During 2017 Roblox took off, and then they decided to remove these useful much loved features. Awful corporate changes which flat out abuses developers and players.

[@FrankHeffleyOnYT]

Old Roblox was better then today. It’s crazy how time flies man…

[@aliakber775]

Sadly tix was removed cus some people used hacks to farm so many tixes(like 1 Quadrllion)so gayblox took down

[@srenten]

@@aliakber775 That feels like a scapegoat for their actual reason. If people where hacking tix, wouldn't they try to patch and make it so you don't get quadrillions of it? They are able to do it with robux, but why not tix? Just seems strange that they took down a free currency during a time they could earn peak profit.

[@IDHAN1224]

@@srenten you could make bots to farm tix by making them constantly joining and leaving your game since each join gives that game developer 1 tix. If the bots get banned, they simply make another one.

[@cheesecake4648]

no, that tix you are talking about are the reason some videogames become addicted and generate FOMO.

[@germgoblin5313]

Jesus fucking christ I just thought Roblox was just a failed Minecraft clone. I had no idea about how shady or huge it was before going down this rabbithole

[@jonathandpg6115]

It's nothing like minecraft. It's actually pretty good appart from how they treat their developers.

[@Professor-Badger]

Fascinating, this helped me understand why I feel almost all the popular games are devoid of fun and interesting mechanics. They're either idea thieves with money or just trying to make something to waste you're time in an addictive way. Probably another reason or two but yeah not great.

[@Jawsomest]

I can try to suggest a few games, but you’ve probably already played them since you seem so bored of front page games, I also hate the up & coming, they need more games on it, and it to actually be “up & coming” not JUST GOT POPULAR LOOKY HERE

[@Jawsomest]

Its like the devs look at the front page, see something new and are like : i haven’t seen this on the front page before! IT MUST BE UP & COMING

[@Professor-Badger]

@@Jawsomest Remember playing one called hexaria I think? Was alright made a turn based rpg in roblox that had some sense of strategy and deck building which is always nice. Just want people to experiment more with gameplay is all but they cant really cause of the way the site is, like I want me some dmc copy cats in there or something wild.

[@ImTheGherkin]

yeah, i've only played two awesome games i actually loved in roblox and i don't think any of them have stable playerbases anymore. it's polyguns, and then some weird pirate simulator type game. don't remember what it was called. it's really sad, polyguns was super well made and really fun (with a whole trading system and i don't remember any P2W bullshit like some games have now) and it got abandoned.

[@Professor-Badger]

@@ImTheGherkin Pirate one might've been pirates life or something the one with the port pirates vs cave pirates? That one was a real fun time killer

[@citratune]

I'm someone with a little experience developing for friends and such on Roblox, and I was looking forward to creating my own game this summer. I was a little too busy with a lot of other things, and I didn't prioritize it enough. A little background. I'm a 14y/o who plays Roblox at least every other day, and the game I was looking to make would be a fantasy style game with a theme from the card game "Magic: The Gathering" but gameplay styled around a resource centered tower defense. Due to this being such a niche genre, there's a good chance Roblox wouldn't even be a possible platform for it. Before this video, I had some prior knowledge on the subject, however a lot of the things mentioned in this video looking at it from a further backed up viewpoint and looking at Roblox's system as a whole makes it seem like it seriously needs to change. Improvement isn't going to help, the entire system should be reworked. The amount of lost potential(or at least ideas) Roblox has from people like me and the 11y/o mentioned in this video must be staggering due to the current system. I do still plan to at least make my game, because its something I'm passionate about, and I didn't have expectations for it to blow up, but I do at least think someone out there will like it, if they even find it. EDIT: Thanks for all the support everyone, this was quite a motivator! If anything, I plan to have a working beta version of the game by the end of this year, 2021.

[@cliche_5860]

I'd play it.

[@aizen38]

I'd play it too. Make sure not to rush on making the game. But tell us the name or edit your comment and I might find the game. If it gets popular, remember me lol

[@vitset679]

Looks cool, i like tower defense games, just make sure to optmize it, because there's a lot of games on roblox that could easily run on my pc but it don't because the DEVs forget to optmize.

[@aizen38]

@@vitset679 Yeah devs don't optimize games enough so my tablet can't handle much.

[@RyanTosh]

That sounds like a really neat game concept. Good luck!

[@FlawBlox]

This is actually relatable. Devs are essentially the backbone of roblox, and yet roblox exploits them for money and take 80 or 70% of the dev revenue. i myself as a really small dev have also experienced the pain of getting your robux cut back painfully, and its really hard to get small games earning actual decent robux unless masses of players play your game.

[@hodgepodge1275]

steam takes 30% of your cut even after you spend 10s of thousands of dollars and possibly even millions creating your own engine. roblox takes 70% and gives you a free engine. your choice. most people can't afford to make their own.

[@matiasaquino6213]

@@hodgepodge1275 You're right, there's not a single engine you can use for free, every single game in steam has their own engine which costs at least 10 thousand dollars and roblox only takes 70% of the money you get, because they don't give you an unfair rate when you change robux for money

[@hodgepodge1275]

@@matiasaquino6213 either make your game on steam and have to make your own engine and everything for money that most starting devs don’t have and get a 30% fee or go to Roblox where everything is given to you for free and you have a 70% cut

[@matiasaquino6213]

@@hodgepodge1275 "everything is given to you for free" "you have a 70% cut" and my favorite quote "have to make your own engine" I'm laughing too much this can't be real

[@hodgepodge1275]

@@matiasaquino6213 you clearly aren’t in the Roblox community.

[@violentlygoofy-s2o]

as of 2024, (this is an educated guess) a good chunk of popular obstacle course games, shooter games, tower defense games, etc. can be almost guaranteed to involve "skibidi toilet"

[@BenryTheMii]

This is the worst part of every game platform. The skibidi toilet games

[@juliamavroidi8601]

Once had a chat with a self-employed copywriter, who was looking for a career change, bc of what he called de-professionalization of the job. Basically agencies specifically target young teenagers with little to no prior experiences via the internet. These young people without full understanding of the industry standard, the jobmarket and often even money are happy to have found a way earn some extra pocketmoney without having to commit to a full job and in turn are satisfied with being paid significantly less than would be appropriate for the amount of work (even far below the minimum wage). If their work is good, they keep getting offers for similarlylittle money if not, they are quietly dropped. Not sure how accurate this is, but there seems to be a similar exploitation of young people who undervalue their own work here. Edit: Nvm, it's even worse. Lol.

[@jeraldjoyce2995]

I've heard about this same thing with people working for crunchy roll, an anime streaming site. They are notorious for how little they pay their localizers. They are paying skilled workers 80 dollars an episode. These are the kind of people who did this as a hobby, so if anything getting paid is a bonus. But its hours and hours spent syncing up lip flaps, trying to convert a contextual language into a literal one, translating technical jargon and so much more.

[@theGermanBarbarian]

Man, listening to the kid talk breaks my heart. I hope Emil hops onto something like Unity, and doesn't let this despicable company kill his hopes and dreams.

[@fabiandrinksmilk6205]

Well looks like Unity is also a shady with their merge with Iron Source.

[@jangamecuber]

@@fabiandrinksmilk6205 Godot, then?

[@fabiandrinksmilk6205]

@@jangamecuber Yes, it's open source and community driven so it cannot have any scandal like this. But it's probably not always the best game engine. Unreal Engine is probably the best in many technical ways. Also, Godot 4 isn't here yet.

[@PufferMation]

The thing about roblox is that people use its engine Lua for reasons, 1 roblox has millions of players so when making a game they cover the cost of the servers and they give you a multi-player options like you can get friends and youtubers to play it and stuff while you have to be really lucky to get it popular but you have to like keep to alive and update it alot

[@Luc_ss]

@@PufferMation you don't need your game to be multiplayer to be popular

[@Wazzalish]

Dawn i love this and i love i am in it

[@ZeludeRose]

you're AWESOME man, really great that you're advocating for yourself so early in life. some people never learn how to do that in their whole life.

[@broshmosh]

Thanks for your input on this!

[@QtPieMarth]

As someone in their mid-twenties, it was really refreshing to hear the thoughts and experiences of someone at an age I'm so disconnected with. Thank you for your insight!! I hope you find success in life -- at whatever age that may be :)

[@kpishnery]

You killed it, Emil. Nice job! Loved the graphing.

[@boozebeard9501]

Machinarium profile pic? This kids got taste!