Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.

People Make Games · 7.9M views · 2021 · 35:22

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Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited heavily in Roblox threads as a damning investigation into child labor, exploitation, and weak moderation, and suggested viewing for parents.

What it is

A People Make Games follow-up investigation into Roblox, built on stories from players and creators after the channel's first video. It covers the platform's treatment of young developers and its moderation.

Recommended by 9 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2021 to 2026.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec philistine · 2022-09 · on “It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over”

Watch both People Make Games video about Roblox and try to argue that the company should not deserve all the public controversy it is getting. They are actively stalling any moderation and protection because their profit margin would be severely diminished. Children's safety versus money, the choice is oh so simple. [LINK] [this video]

Recommends josephg · 2021-12 · on “Twitter’s founder admits that shutting down the API was “worst thing we did””

> Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. I saw an excellent critique of Roblox the other day, which covered many aspects of their business and different kinds of abuse which are happening in and around their game. The most bizarre part was that they sent some questions to the company - and the company responded by saying they “clearly weren’t being objective” and essentially gaslighting the people making the video. I think the people in charge of Roblox seriously don’t see themselves as holding any sort of responsibility to the broader society that pays their bills. It’s like someone watched The Corporation and thought

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] [LINK] [2] [this video]

Recommends gorjusborg · 2022-01 · on “The trouble with Roblox, the video game empire built on child labour”

The 'People Make Games' videos discuss this: [this video] Essentially, Roblox has made the decision that they are only responsible for interactions that happen on their platform. Parents may be letting their children develop games thinking that it's a cute hobby. Roblox knows that there are game companies wooing child devs and doing shady stuff that can be potentially harmful to them. They are not doing anything to stop the practices because they aren't technically on their platform . But the whole interaction is around making games for their platform. So they may potentially not be legally be at fault, but it does seem that they are making a lot of money, albeit indirectly, from turning a blind

Recommends AlexandrB · 2022-03 · on “Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok”

Like most adults, most of what I know about Roblox comes secondhand from the media. Recently I saw[1] a pretty damning video about Roblox's lack of moderation and exploitation of its users. My basic perception at this point is that TikTok, Facebook, and Roblox all deserve each other. Hopefully they waste their money attacking each other until they mutually self-destruct. [1] [this video]

Recommends fabianhjr · 2022-07 · on “Problems at Roblox”

There are two video investigations from People Make Games into economic aspects of Roblox in particular child labor/exploitation and monopolistic aspirations via platform capitalism. 1. Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers ( [LINK] ) 2. Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. ( [this video] )

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. [LINK] [this video]

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 - [LINK] Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. - [this video]