High Commission and Platform Capitalism: How Roblox Exploits Young Developers

Today, the number of UGC games in Roblox exceeds 20 million. The company itself regularly talks about the possibility of earning real money for young developers. However, in fact, the platform hides many pitfalls. The author of the People Make Games channel spoke about the means by which Roblox exploits and manipulates children.

Roblox

The main claims of People Make Games

Anyone can create games on Roblox, but the company charges too high a commission compared to competitors. If Steam takes 30%, and Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store on PC – 12%, Roblox takes 75% from the authors.

One of the missions of Roblox is to enable children to develop games for other children. However, the author of the video Quintin Smith notes that this is the main problem.

According to the blogger, Roblox is extremely adept at turning children into its employees. Users have free tools for creating games, and as one of the advantages on the platform’s website, the opportunity to earn “serious money” is indicated.

The company regularly tells success stories of users who were able to become young entrepreneurs. This makes many teenagers think that they too can become businessmen. However, in fact, everything is not so rosy.

Smith notes that on Steam, an average game can earn several thousand dollars. But the income of most authors on Roblox is zero. There are many reasons for this:

• projects on Roblox have almost zero visibility and findability — there are no tools on the site to search for new games, and users are usually offered only a few hundred or thousands of already relatively popular projects out of 20 million available titles;
• the authors have only two options — to offer their game to streamers or pay Roblox for advertising;
• advertising is also not easy: authors need to participate in the auction for the opportunity to get an advertising slot (bets are accepted in in—game currency – robucks);
• game creators are also paid in-game currency, and the minimum withdrawal amount is 100 thousand robucks ($ 1000). Plus, the authors have to pay $5 monthly for a premium subscription;
• due to the conversion and commission when withdrawing robucks, the developer receives not $ 1000, but only $ 350. Therefore, many users leave money in in—game currency and pay for various cosmetics with it – this is doubly beneficial for Roblox, since the company receives an additional 30% from any transaction;
• because of this, it turns out that developers get less than even the stated 25% — in reality, on average, from $ 1 of Roblox revenue, game authors get only 17 cents;
• Smith notes that Roblox simply pays developers with fake money and does everything possible to make their conversion into real currency as unprofitable as possible.

According to Smith, Roblox’s business model is platform capitalism. It is used by companies such as Google, Facebook, Spotify and Uber. They keep the client within the same platform in order to offer him additional services and sell his data to third parties.

One of the experienced developers at Roblox in an interview with Smith noted that new authors will not be able to make money on the platform. The competition is too high and it is almost impossible to get into the top 200 titles on the main page. Another compared the development of a game for Roblox to the creation of viral memes and ticktocks.

Roblox benefits from getting most of the money only to a small stratum of already popular and successful developers. This way they can develop hit titles, make new ones and increase the profitability of the platform itself.

The authors of successful projects advise novice developers not to recycle in pursuit of revenue and just enjoy the process itself. However, in practice, a huge number of children continue to spend all their strength in the hope of earning “serious money”, as Roblox promises.

Another problem is the isolation of the platform. A developer can’t just port their game from Roblox to other platforms. The development skills acquired here are also difficult to apply in other areas, since other engines are very different and require deeper knowledge.

Smith believes that it is necessary to find ways to regulate Roblox as a platform focused primarily on children. However, it is not profitable for the company itself to change its model, since this is what brings it money and increases capitalization. The more children come to Roblox believing in the opportunity to become successful, the better the creators of the platform will feel.

Roblox’s response to the voiced claims

After the release of Smith’s video, Gamasutra portal turned to the company for comment. She refused to discuss the commission and the transparency of the withdrawal of funds.

Instead, Roblox talked about how much money developers earn on the platform. In the second quarter, payments to game authors amounted to $129.7 million, which is 53% higher in annual terms. Over the past 12 months, the number of developers earning more than $85,000 a year has doubled and now exceeds 600 people.

The company also noted that it appreciates the contribution of all developers to the development of the platform — it does not matter whether they create full-fledged games or assets for other authors. Roblox also stressed that it will continue to invest in the development of the site and make it more attractive to developers.

Roblox has previously been criticized for its business model. In June, American parents urged the company to stop luring children to its platform. They compared Roblox to a casino and accused her of financial exploitation of teenagers.