Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as the go-to evidence that Roblox exploits child developers, and parents are pointed to it before letting kids build games there.
What it is
People Make Games investigates how Roblox relies on young, often child, developers to build its content while paying them very little. It covers Roblox's monetization model, the revenue split, and the harms to kids who make games on the platform.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends DerArzt · 2022-01 · on “Roblox October Outage Postmortem”
To add, there is a nice documentary here[1] which also has a followup[2] that show even more of the issue at hand. Kids making games and only getting 24.5% of the profit is one thing, but everything else that Roblox does is much worse. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Recommends pull_my_finger · 2022-10 · on “Roblox sued for allegedly enabling young girl’s sexual, financial exploitation”
Some interesting related investigation (I think they mention this girl in the second video) related to roblox is anyone is interested. I had never used it, but after seeing these I don't think I would ever use it or encourage anyone to use it. [this video] [LINK]
Recommends shagie · 2023-03 · on “Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access”
People Make Games is one of the YouTube channels that I respect in this domain... Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers - [this video] Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. - [LINK]
Recommends follower · 2024-01 · on “Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?”
The YouTube channel "People Make Games" has a couple of reports that I'd suggest parents consider watching first before going down that road: * "Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers": [this video] * "Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.": [LINK]
Recommends teddyh · 2024-05 · on “Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game”
The one being exploited is the developer. From the article: > I spent $100 on advertising after publishing the game More information: < [this video] >
Cites dang · 2021-08 · on “Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers”
The video this article is reporting on is [this video] . Normally we'd change the URL to the original source but I think most HN readers probably prefer to read a summary even if the article is cribbed.
Cites tytrdev · 2022-01 · on “Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard”
I was just getting at the illusion of choice. At the end of the day it's all owned by the same handful of small groups. Found out yesterday that Blizzard apparently owns King. Tencent owns a cut of Activision Blizzard, as well as a slice of basically every gaming company. [LINK] Note that I'm not even criticizing or otherwise knocking these business practices, I'm simply making some observations. My use of the term bullshit was particularly to describe the illusion of choice. Not that it's anything new. [LINK] I think the world would be just fine without fortnite, but I will say unreal engine is pretty nice to have. Probably just a matter of time until Microsoft owns unreal engine as well. T
Cites aloisdg · 2022-06 · on “Game Design Mimetics (Or, What Happened to Game Design?)”
Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers [this video] Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. [LINK]