How Roblox is Exploiting Young Game Developers

(Please note that in the making of this article Roblox has removed the “Earn Serious Cash” information paragraph from the Roblox create section.)

The video game Roblox is the most popular video game in the US and Europe. Played by around 200 million kids under the age of 14. Roblox is a popular game for these “experiences” created by young developers. Roblox is popular among kids and youth for reasons such as, connecting them with friends, sharing similar interests, and going on digital adventures. Roblox experiences are not created by the corporation itself, but by a developer community, and anyone with a computer can start to make a game on Roblox. Roblox markets game development as an easy task, “release your game to mobile, tablet, and desktops, consoles, and virtual reality devices in just one click”. Today, Steam hosts almost 55,000 games, and Roblox hosts more than 20 million experiences. We can credit Roblox for saying games are “easier” to make in comparison to Python or Javascript. Roblox uses a mix of two coding languages: Lua and C++. Let’s compare the revenue taken by popular game publishers. Steam takes 30% percent of each sale by developers' games, while Microsoft PC store takes 12% of revenue. Roblox claims that developers receive 24% of any sale. But in reality, it is much less.

According to People Make Games, a game-based journalism channel on YouTube, they have investigative journalists who research video game companies and how these games are made. In their own words, “These kids are not just hobbyists, they’re doing real work that is driving the value of the biggest video game publishers in history.” Now, before we dive into Roblox, we should focus on some of the positives. aspects of Roblox. The Roblox developer platform is a free platform where anyone can start making a game, the hosting for your game is free, and Roblox allows you to skip some of the traditional aspects of creating a video game. The corporation handles the complicated aspects of a game such as the API, data storage, 3D modeling of your game, and even the moderation of your game. Now all these tools are expensive and cost the Roblox corporation a lot of money. As I said before, Roblox is based around experiences, which are created by young developers. When you play a game on Roblox, you are making the developer of the game richer and the corporation richer because you are buying these passes and cosmetics from this developer.

Are these young developers making money? The short answer is no. I can tell you from personal experience that I thought making a Roblox game was going to be easy, but that is where my journey and many other aspiring young developers' journeys start to go downhill.

The coding aspect of Roblox can be fairly simple, you can learn Lua in a matter of days or weeks depending on how much time and effort you put into it. The part where your game can start to go downhill is when you want other people to play it. When you make a Roblox game and release it to the public, your game will not show up on the front page. Roblox only shows the games with the most active players and the most game visits. To get your game out there, a game developer has two choices: try and get your game in front of streamers and YouTubers or pay Roblox to advertise your game.

To have Roblox advertise your game, you must first convert your real money into Roblox currency (Robux). Developers bid their Robux for impressions and ad slots. The more Robux that is bidded, the higher the impressions and the more ad slots taken. Roblox only has a limited amount of ad slots, meaning a smaller game developer with less Robux has less of a chance to have their game seen by different users because they are competing against large developer groups for an ad slot. Essentially, kids are gambling with their money. Roblox is essentially saying, “Give us more money and you might have a higher chance of having your ad seen by more people and get more plays on your game.”

Ultimately, the ongoing story here is how Roblox is exploiting young developers by marketing how easy it is to get your game out there and how you can make a ton of money from your game when in reality the majority of game developers make no money at all. What we have learned here is that Roblox is exploiting young game developers, marketing the ease of creating a game, and how you can make a lot of money. Will these corporations notice their impact on young developers or will these corporations continue to exploit developers? Only time will tell.