>Second, there’s the matter of how extensively Robux (Roblox’s in-app currency) are used to navigate the creator economy. Roblox creators are paid first by receiving a cut of Robux that comes from the sale, which they can use to purchase other Roblox experiences, in-game assets, cosmetics, etc. That means once a developer enters the Robux economy, their money is all spent inside the Roblox system until they’re able to withdraw it.
...
But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux.
This part seems pretty indefensible. Like yeah to a certain extent all online content platforms have a gate like this, but I've never heard of one that high. YouTube e will pay you as soon as you make something like $20 iirc. And the fact that they pay you in their gated currency which they then allow you to spend but only within their system seems like am obvious self-serving money grab.
> But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux.
It's even worse than that. They sell robux at one rate and cash them out for developers at a very different rate. That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. So they're taking cuts twice, once on the actual sale and again whenever you try to turn it into real money instead of their scrip.
The threshold to cash out seems high, but the percentage cut is curious, and I'm not convinced "exploitative" is the right word. It's a high cut, but is there anything else that makes it anywhere as close to make a game and share it with your friends? It seems to be in an entirely different league as any of the app stores or PC game development, so a higher cut there would make sense.
The "it's just for fun!" argument does cut both ways - then why introduce real money into the ecosystem at all? - but has an obvious "because real money is needed to make the product and ecosystem exist" answer. Is taking this much real money necessary? That seems like a much harder question. You could say it's a bit like college sports - playing a game with your friends and there's some institution that's taking all the money, and then, yes, if Roblox is rolling in huge profits and distributing a penance, they deserve some pressure on that.
I don't honestly know about Roblox, but I've read that YouTube (to name one of the most popular UGC platforms) keeps 45% of the advertising revenues.
Looking at the numbers they made around $46 billion in the past three years.
Do we know how much of those 46 billions went to creators?
YouTube videos are also very different from video games, one can easily make 30 YouTube videos in 30 days, video games require weeks (if not more), it's easier to give up.
The incentive is very different.
Paying for low effort content posted frequently rewards consistency, YouTube needs their creators to keep making fresh content, not their best content, new is enough.
Video games not so much, they have to be at least appealing and a higher threshold could be better to keep creators focused on finishing their work and/or maintain an higher quality of the product, instead of cashing out quickly by making very cheap games just for the 50 dollars of payout.
Worth noting that, since the currency can also come from a handful of other sources (e.g. trading cosmetics), each cash-out is manually reviewed to ensure that the currency only comes from approved sources (sale of assets, games, products). Because of this, reducing the minimum payout does not scale, and at some point becomes infeasible. The article and video, of course, both fail to mention this.
Maybe throwing more manpower at the problem will let them reduce the minimum rate. Or they could work on altering their infrastructure to support a more automated system, possibly eliminating the minimum rate entirely.
I had a blog or two that used Google AdWords circa 2008. I got very close to the $100 limit but never reached it - so Google just kept my $90. I wonder how many people and how much revenue that applies to.
> But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux
You can thank modern accrual accounting for this.
Roblox will be allowed to move money from liability to revenue based on a schedule using some sort of historical trends supporting the method. The higher the threshold, the higher their liability but also the more money that goes back to them long-term.
It's obvious that the company is trying to create clear distinctions between hobbyists and professional devs. A low cash-out threshold seems like bait, where as a higher threshold discourages would-bes from thinking it will be easy money and filling the catalog with garbage.
Though I do concede... the catalog is filled with a lot of garbage.
When you make a video and upload it to YouTube, that creation is entirely the result of your own hard work and ingenuity. YouTube doesn't need to exist for your video to exist.
When you make a game in Roblox, you are combining some amount of hard work and ingenuity of your own with a larger amount of hard work and ingenuity by Roblox Creation.
If you want to keep all the money, then you need to do all of the work.
I read the article but have not watched the video so I may be missing some context.
It really depends on how you define “exploiting”. It doesn’t seem like you _need_ to buy the ads. A kid could make a game on any platform and would encounter similar barriers.
Would it be better if the kid played Call of Duty rather than creating something? Even if the chance to profit is low does the kid get something else out of Roblox?
To my knowledge kids aren’t dropping out of high school with hopes of being a Roblox millionaire. They may dream about it but I don’t think they act on it. I dreamed about being a pro eSports gamer in high school and I’d argue my time was much worse spent doing that.
Roblox takes their 75% cut out of each sale then if you ever manage to accumulate the 100,000 Robux needed to cash out ($1000 worth for what Roblox sells it for) you only get $350. They're double dipping their cut. You should really watch the video it lays out the case very well.
If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would have better ways to surface new applications instead of only showing the top N that already have to have over a thousand users.
It sounds like Roblox does want there to be dedicated Roblox developers. I saw a clip from one of their conventions with someone, possibly the CEO, saying they envision companies of 100 people doing Roblox development
The main complaint is they encourage kids to create games by emphasizing the revenue sharing aspect, without making clear how hard it is to derive any revenue at all from it.
I think what the video presenter is suggesting is that:
1. Revenue could be shared more fairly. The money that Roblox is keeping from kids is going into corporate pockets. There's no way around that.
2. The advertising could be more honest. If it's only for devs to make money, then mention that part only under the dev pages where 1% of the people will find them. For everyone else, advertise playing and creating for fun.
My kids (and I) certainly don't see it as exploitation - they love learning to create games, and would be happy to do it even without any chance of payout.
I don't think the $1k minimum payout is crazy either, as the overhead of paying 10s of thousands of kids $11.32 would kill margins (leading to Robux having to take a higher %age). I'd have to think most kids are in the same boat as mine - if their games ever earn them any Robux, they'll turn around and spend those Robux in another game, because that's what they want to do with it anyway.
Upon further reflection, I think I've figured out why my kids and I don't see this as exploitative - they're not trying to get rich or famous.
I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, but if you look at all of the complaints through the filter of someone who wants to a) learn to make a video game, b) learn some programming, and c) make a cool game to share with his friends, then Roblox is a really fun, free, and easy way to do all of the above.
If your filter is a kid who a) wants to make a game that goes viral and earn a bunch of money off of it, then yeah - some of these are legit complaints.
Btw. did you really talk to your kids about this and really explained them the situation in a way they can appreciate it? For instance, take a large number of treats divide them on the table and show them who gets what for a game they built…
I think this would be a exceptionally great case to discuss business ethics and the perils of unregulated markets in a way that resonates with kids. Don’t leave this opportunity on the table!
I am really surprised by this attitude. I think most of the negative comments here are fueld by a perception of unfairness in general and not any drive to become famous or anything.
You basically seem to advocate for a world where it is ok for platform developers to double maybe tripple dip on transactions that only exist because of the hard work of others. I for myself don’t want to live in a world where this is par for the course. It should be called out and people should be made aware of injustice. It’s not about becoming rich or famous yourself but just realizing unfairness if you see it and ideally taking action on it so that the world may become a better place for all.
i mean, roblox still makes money off of the kid's effort and labor and work, and engineered the system such that they take large amount of cuts for that work.
I highly doubt the amount they take as a cut is necessary.
This is no more exploitative than someone trying to make it big on Youtube, Twitch, or Spotify and gaining zero traction. If the content someone creates on these platforms doesn't capture an audience, the hosting platform doesn't generate any revenue and neither does the creator. It's completely free to produce the content (minus your time) and the platform hosts it for free, even though 99% of it never receives any views/plays/listens.
At the end of the day I think the only worthy argument is whether or not the revenue sharing arrangement is fair.
> I have been impressed by the number of real world economic and business issues that Roblox is exposing my younger son to, both in the experiences and the larger ecosystem. There is a lot of thinking in terms of effort, reward, and risk.
"You seem to be ignoring the thesis of the video. For the vast majority of their creators, their is very little reward, and mostly a lot of exploitative business preying on children."
> I am disagreeing with the thesis of the video. Roblox provides opportunities previously unavailable; it is up to the individuals to decide if they are worthwhile to invest time in.
If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken?
my son (not yet 14yo) has learnt to write a few games in Roblox
he's learnt Lua, object orientated programing client side/ server side distributed programing (and how to optimse the speed)
he's also learnt that the people who run the platform will screw you over in many different ways (he's learnt a few tricks to semi counter this)
he's learnt that advertising can be useless and costly,
learnt people are extremely fickle, there's a far amount of people who have money to throw around
learnt that doing good graphics is harder than it seems.
(also learnt how to use blender)
also that game dynamics and subtile changes can have big real world changes to peoples experiances
also that UI and UX are important
also to train other (kids) how to program - for money
I'd say as a learning platform it has been fantastic, he's not made much real money, but has earned a far amount of robuks (platforms currency) that's he's spent in game
A lot of people seem to be missing the point - Roblox is motivated to make money from kids. In pursuit of making money they are likely to ignore harms associated to their business model.
Yes, this is how business works, but this is also why child labor laws exist. Roblox is treading a fine line between game development for fun and game development for work.
The absurd vast majority of people will never make any money via Roblox, or any of the major app stores for that matter. I have a few apps on both Google Play and the App Store.
I'm never going to see a dime. If anything I like that Roblox is encouraging kids to learn game development, later on they can always move on to Unity or Godot( I'm not really an Unreal fan since the editor doesn't run well on my computer). Then they can also enjoy making no money on Steam ! It's very very rare for indie game devs to make money !!
These allegations, if true, are terrible, and Roblox should address them.
That said, maybe if these young developers learn first hand why digital sharecropping is bad at an early age they can avoid being chewed up and spit out by the "AAA" game development machine and instead focus on creating and promoting games on a platform they have control over.
I think it is a terrible waste if even one kid with a bright future developing (for example) indie games is traumatized by this stuff and ends up pushing spreadsheets or designing webpages at an ad firm instead.
Sort of orthogonal, but a perhaps culturally telling anecdote: a few months ago I was actively looking for a new job, and got a cold email from a technical recruiter from Roblox (via linkedin). I was curious, so set up a time to call, he asked for me to submit my cv (which is 90% things you could see on my linkedin, but sure, whatever) through a upload page on some recruiting site of their. Within minutes of submitting the cv, I got a rejection email from them, even though I had already scheduled the call. I figured it was an error, but nope, crickets when the time for the call came around.
Its not really surprising, this is a platform designed solely for the purpose of keeping kids glued to their screens and spending money. And they are excellent at it. My kids are obsessed with it to the point where I have been planning a complete ban on gaming for a couple weeks to try and break the addiction. I know several (4) other families who's kids are going through the same thing. My kids are constantly asking for money as well to buy things in game, constantly to the point that it really reminds me of a drug addiction.
I feel like any criticism that centered around “it’s difficult to be in the top 200” is just ridiculous and sounds Like it’s just sour grapes from someone who failed at making something good and can’t accept that.
There is nothing any platform can do to have more items in their top 200. That’s just not possible. It’s not a problem in the platform that you didn’t make it to the top 200.
What I find most disturbing about this is the possibility to use real money to promote the games. Due to the misrepresentation of the chances of success this turns the platform into a gambling den for ten year olds.
Wonder what the IRS would think of these earnings. If someone earns $5,000 worth of Robux but spends it all in Roblox rather than ever converting it to currency, is that taxable income? Or would it be like S&H Green Stamps? While there likely aren't many who make games that earn that much or whatever the IRS's threshold is, this is the kind of edge case that ends up making headlines when (if) the IRS comes sniffing around.
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] only_as_i_fall|4 years ago|reply
This part seems pretty indefensible. Like yeah to a certain extent all online content platforms have a gate like this, but I've never heard of one that high. YouTube e will pay you as soon as you make something like $20 iirc. And the fact that they pay you in their gated currency which they then allow you to spend but only within their system seems like am obvious self-serving money grab.
[+] [-] rtkwe|4 years ago|reply
It's even worse than that. They sell robux at one rate and cash them out for developers at a very different rate. That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. So they're taking cuts twice, once on the actual sale and again whenever you try to turn it into real money instead of their scrip.
[+] [-] midwestemo|4 years ago|reply
Isn't it $100?
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1709871?hl=en
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
It doesn’t matter if you’re creating digital experiences, you must pay people with money, not company tokens.
[+] [-] donmcronald|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majormajor|4 years ago|reply
The "it's just for fun!" argument does cut both ways - then why introduce real money into the ecosystem at all? - but has an obvious "because real money is needed to make the product and ecosystem exist" answer. Is taking this much real money necessary? That seems like a much harder question. You could say it's a bit like college sports - playing a game with your friends and there's some institution that's taking all the money, and then, yes, if Roblox is rolling in huge profits and distributing a penance, they deserve some pressure on that.
[+] [-] peoplefromibiza|4 years ago|reply
Looking at the numbers they made around $46 billion in the past three years.
Do we know how much of those 46 billions went to creators?
YouTube videos are also very different from video games, one can easily make 30 YouTube videos in 30 days, video games require weeks (if not more), it's easier to give up.
The incentive is very different.
Paying for low effort content posted frequently rewards consistency, YouTube needs their creators to keep making fresh content, not their best content, new is enough.
Video games not so much, they have to be at least appealing and a higher threshold could be better to keep creators focused on finishing their work and/or maintain an higher quality of the product, instead of cashing out quickly by making very cheap games just for the 50 dollars of payout.
[+] [-] Anaminus|4 years ago|reply
Maybe throwing more manpower at the problem will let them reduce the minimum rate. Or they could work on altering their infrastructure to support a more automated system, possibly eliminating the minimum rate entirely.
[+] [-] code_duck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomnipotent|4 years ago|reply
You can thank modern accrual accounting for this.
Roblox will be allowed to move money from liability to revenue based on a schedule using some sort of historical trends supporting the method. The higher the threshold, the higher their liability but also the more money that goes back to them long-term.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nipponese|4 years ago|reply
Though I do concede... the catalog is filled with a lot of garbage.
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
When you make a video and upload it to YouTube, that creation is entirely the result of your own hard work and ingenuity. YouTube doesn't need to exist for your video to exist.
When you make a game in Roblox, you are combining some amount of hard work and ingenuity of your own with a larger amount of hard work and ingenuity by Roblox Creation.
If you want to keep all the money, then you need to do all of the work.
[+] [-] tyleo|4 years ago|reply
It really depends on how you define “exploiting”. It doesn’t seem like you _need_ to buy the ads. A kid could make a game on any platform and would encounter similar barriers.
Would it be better if the kid played Call of Duty rather than creating something? Even if the chance to profit is low does the kid get something else out of Roblox?
To my knowledge kids aren’t dropping out of high school with hopes of being a Roblox millionaire. They may dream about it but I don’t think they act on it. I dreamed about being a pro eSports gamer in high school and I’d argue my time was much worse spent doing that.
[+] [-] rtkwe|4 years ago|reply
If it's meant to be educational it shouldn't be marketing itself as a way to make money or charging kids to promote their app. It would have better ways to surface new applications instead of only showing the top N that already have to have over a thousand users.
[+] [-] Ashanmaril|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|4 years ago|reply
He has a great time, he's not chasing $, he just wants to have fun. It works great for that.
As soon as you try to stand out and chase money, yeah it gets HARD. Just like streaming on YouTube... or just getting noticed online for your blog.
But what's the alternative here? That's a question of scale. Just not let kids even have a chance to make money?
[+] [-] jnwatson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtagames|4 years ago|reply
1. Revenue could be shared more fairly. The money that Roblox is keeping from kids is going into corporate pockets. There's no way around that.
2. The advertising could be more honest. If it's only for devs to make money, then mention that part only under the dev pages where 1% of the people will find them. For everyone else, advertise playing and creating for fun.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] happyopossum|4 years ago|reply
I don't think the $1k minimum payout is crazy either, as the overhead of paying 10s of thousands of kids $11.32 would kill margins (leading to Robux having to take a higher %age). I'd have to think most kids are in the same boat as mine - if their games ever earn them any Robux, they'll turn around and spend those Robux in another game, because that's what they want to do with it anyway.
[+] [-] djrogers|4 years ago|reply
I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, but if you look at all of the complaints through the filter of someone who wants to a) learn to make a video game, b) learn some programming, and c) make a cool game to share with his friends, then Roblox is a really fun, free, and easy way to do all of the above.
If your filter is a kid who a) wants to make a game that goes viral and earn a bunch of money off of it, then yeah - some of these are legit complaints.
[+] [-] ace_of_spades|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ace_of_spades|4 years ago|reply
You basically seem to advocate for a world where it is ok for platform developers to double maybe tripple dip on transactions that only exist because of the hard work of others. I for myself don’t want to live in a world where this is par for the course. It should be called out and people should be made aware of injustice. It’s not about becoming rich or famous yourself but just realizing unfairness if you see it and ideally taking action on it so that the world may become a better place for all.
[+] [-] MrStonedOne|4 years ago|reply
I highly doubt the amount they take as a cut is necessary.
[+] [-] rdtwo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreyfan|4 years ago|reply
At the end of the day I think the only worthy argument is whether or not the revenue sharing arrangement is fair.
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|4 years ago|reply
> I have been impressed by the number of real world economic and business issues that Roblox is exposing my younger son to, both in the experiences and the larger ecosystem. There is a lot of thinking in terms of effort, reward, and risk.
"You seem to be ignoring the thesis of the video. For the vast majority of their creators, their is very little reward, and mostly a lot of exploitative business preying on children."
> I am disagreeing with the thesis of the video. Roblox provides opportunities previously unavailable; it is up to the individuals to decide if they are worthwhile to invest time in.
If the most legendary game developer of all time thinks Roblox is fine, are you sure he's mistaken?
[+] [-] 123pie123|4 years ago|reply
he's learnt Lua, object orientated programing client side/ server side distributed programing (and how to optimse the speed)
he's also learnt that the people who run the platform will screw you over in many different ways (he's learnt a few tricks to semi counter this)
he's learnt that advertising can be useless and costly,
learnt people are extremely fickle, there's a far amount of people who have money to throw around
learnt that doing good graphics is harder than it seems. (also learnt how to use blender)
also that game dynamics and subtile changes can have big real world changes to peoples experiances
also that UI and UX are important
also to train other (kids) how to program - for money
I'd say as a learning platform it has been fantastic, he's not made much real money, but has earned a far amount of robuks (platforms currency) that's he's spent in game
[+] [-] alexgmcm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csours|4 years ago|reply
Yes, this is how business works, but this is also why child labor laws exist. Roblox is treading a fine line between game development for fun and game development for work.
[+] [-] 41209|4 years ago|reply
The absurd vast majority of people will never make any money via Roblox, or any of the major app stores for that matter. I have a few apps on both Google Play and the App Store.
I'm never going to see a dime. If anything I like that Roblox is encouraging kids to learn game development, later on they can always move on to Unity or Godot( I'm not really an Unreal fan since the editor doesn't run well on my computer). Then they can also enjoy making no money on Steam ! It's very very rare for indie game devs to make money !!
[+] [-] phone8675309|4 years ago|reply
That said, maybe if these young developers learn first hand why digital sharecropping is bad at an early age they can avoid being chewed up and spit out by the "AAA" game development machine and instead focus on creating and promoting games on a platform they have control over.
[+] [-] kevingadd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaxfordAndSons|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderwonder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boublepop|4 years ago|reply
There is nothing any platform can do to have more items in their top 200. That’s just not possible. It’s not a problem in the platform that you didn’t make it to the top 200.
[+] [-] fridif|4 years ago|reply
Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.
[+] [-] sierpinsky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eezing|4 years ago|reply