roblox

I am usually thankful I don’t have the pressure of a following, but very occasionally I wish I had the megaphone. It astounds me that the insanely predatory nature of Roblox has not garnered mainstream attention. I feel like I’m going insane or really misunderstanding, but I need the adults in the room to wake the fuck up – this is not just derpy Minecraft. Can we get NakeyJakey on the case? 

This video is incredibly eye opening – please watch especially if you have or work with kids, because the Roblox iceberg has ominous implications. 

The twenty year olds being interviewed made millions (allegedly) from developing apps on the Roblox platform, and one of them described it as the new YouTube. I think it’s more like Steam – if every game was developed on the Gary’s mod engine, owned by Steam, and developed by the random teenagers (and younger) who use it. They also allow these kids to have full control over the micro-transaction systems in their games, and the in-game currency can be cashed out for real American dollars – but not before Roblox takes their cut of course. 

It’s obviously insane that an unregulated platform has so much of its content created by children/teens, with the explicit incentive to get as much money out of other kids as possible. Roblox makes bank the more they milk each other. The business model is fucked but also – it’s a race to the bottom content wise. Imagine the Elsa-gate problem but the content is made by the kids too, and instead of a video it’s the most cynical dopamine hack of a mobile game (sometimes with full mask off gambling). But it’s ok cus it’s just robux, right? Oh, you can cash it out just like the whole csgo knife thing? sick. 

This is full unabashed pearl clutching but I need adults to at least be TALKING about it. The game is ubiquitous with kids. Why bother buying any other game when you have a massive library that is constantly updating, and you have account progression like character skins and accessories. All of your friends have the game and it will run on a potato. This platform needs to be regulated – and maybe it won’t be in our current situation, but if we somehow avoid full fascism, it’s red meat for a congressional investigation. 

I say that not because I don’t see the positives. Kids learning to code, coming up with their own video games, and having a centralized platform to distribute it, is sick….if the content is censored and not monetized. The kids who develop these games are being heralded entrepreneurs, and I can’t deny that they are. The young guys in the video are running incredibly sophisticated operations. If this platform was for adults, the YouTube analogy would make sense. But even then, the government has spooked YouTube into cleaning up its act a few times – there is public scrutiny. Roblox is a black box to most people over 25. It’s also a festering pandora’s box, and I’m morbidly curious what more will come out as these early gen z / gen alpha become adults themselves.