Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ส.ค. 2021
- With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage of?
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Written and presented by Quintin Smith:
/ quinns108
Design and art direction by Anni Sayers:
/ anni_sayers - เกม
If you'd like to see more games journalism just like this, we're almost entirely funded by our audience over on Patreon. Chuck us a few quid, if you can: www.patreon.com/PeopleMakeGames
I have no quid to chuck, but I can throw you a few bucks :p
Do you have some way of reaching out to Amil? I'd love to see if he'd accept a licence for something like Game Maker Studio, to get those games releasable on other platforms...
Great eye opening video! Everything you say is spot on. And if you need another video idea then maybe look into how some roblox games treat the actual players. Need somewhere to start then check out Adopt Me (Top 2 game). They ask for a purchase before you even play the game and then every time you log in. (The catch is those items they are trying to sell don't even improve your game experience, because nobody plays that type of game anymore, it's all about collecting and trading)
Of course, not all game are like this, but this is a great place to jump into the rabbit hole.
Thanks for this video, this is slavery, rob-lox malpractices should be stopped.
Hi!!! Can you open the video for creating subtitles for other languages?? I want to show this video to my 11yo daughter who's into making games and have been asking me to download Roblox for her, but she doesn't peak English.
The kid just did the indie developer speedrun at 11.
The industry is harsh.
more than the industry, capitalism sucks for everyone but the rich
Just imagine the level of jadedness he'll have once he's actually old like me...
@@danaking8959 gonna like this comment before the hate mob arrives
@@danaking8959 Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system. Try again.
@@childofnewlight straight up not true, for all it's faults, maoism has
"It would be illegal if it wasn't online"
This sentence describes way too many company practices.
U are hundred percent ✅
the gaming world desperately needs to be taken to court. these virtual scrips needs to be abolished
NFT's for example
@@gayjebus4079 what?
@@gayjebus4079 no they aren’t illegal or bad, they’re just kinda dumb.
*screenshots your NFT*
That 11 year old is so well spoken and put together. Sad that the platform has his so disheartened
I've been a Roblox developer for over a year, and the worst part is the tax. When you use the Developer Exchange, Roblox takes a whopping 70% of your total income BEFORE you account for federal taxes you have to pay. All in all, you only keep about 20% of your profits to split between everyone on your development team.
tax the poor!!
Hey it’s clonemace I found you
@@CosmicStar3 Yo!
For example, if you earned 10 robux from a kind donation, roblox would take 7 of those, plus taxes, and then you would have only 2 robux left. Not even worth splitting.
@@mattmerced1148 No, that's not dev exchange, that's a developer product sale, which would only tax 30% and would maek it 7.
The kid literally drew a graph in MS paint to prove his point. Mad respect
Mhm
Lol
stupid lie roblox doesnt do that you also need 18 to create a game
@@elpanacheems1863 r/ihadastroke
@@universenerdd go to reddit and shut up this is youtube
Thank you for making this. I've been on the platform for 13 years and this is the most well put criticism of the company I've ever seen.
Roblox needs to be honest and up front with us developers about how much money we're really taking home from all of the transactions people make in our games. They shouldn't be taking over 80% of our revenue when game servers run poorly, the website constantly crashes, platform updates take years to come out, moderation is hated by virtually everyone and child predators run rampant. The safety issues alone on Roblox could constitute another 20 minute video.
Ditto. We need more videos like these that do a deep dive into Roblox and uncover rightful criticism. Maybe a follow up investigation on this channel is in order, some areas of research could be platform integrity (how well are core systems like the servers or moderation handled), child safety, etc. Investors need to be made aware of this information; most people only see Roblox for what it is on the surface.
Glad you saw this Ruben!
@@fluffmiceter1846 didn't expect to see you and Ruben here
Roblox definitely needs to make a change to pay amounts and change DevEx requirements plus improve discovery, it's incredibly hard to build up a game (as you know)
They make money, so why would they care? Literally, that's how capitalistic exploitation works. As long as the revenue is safe, don't change.
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Man, I'm really glad to know this because a few of my students are on that platform. As I'm against child labor and exploitations of workers rights, I'm sharing this video everywhere I can.
hello bozo here is a simple fix
do not work there or you could take Roblox as a side job and work somewhere else
@@d0m0arigatomrr0boto frr
@@d0m0arigatomrr0boto White ppl when someone try to support someone's roghts:
@@aaronlowe3156 Thank you very much for the kind response 🙏 I hope you earn more ☺️
@@YamamotoGenryusaiShigekuni Very likely.
This video made me cry... I remember being a young kid and getting exploited on sites like Stardoll and Habbo Hotel. I'm so sad that this still isn't being regulated. I hope that internet providers and governments step in soon to curtail practices like this.
I agree the government needs to help. But what makes Roblox different from any other platform? Unreal Engine is taking away players from their things, and competing with their devs.
@@MsShaza123 Unreal Engine doesn't promise you money.
How were you exploited?
How you can be exploited on Stardoll ?
@@bucheronlvl.1004 I've responded to my original comment 2-3 times now attempting to explain, but each time it gets flagged so it looks like the moderation won't allow me to go into detail. Sorry about that.
All I can say is that safety for children is a concern on any site where users can direct message others. And Stardoll has a 'children making content' economy of its own, although at much lesser scale than Roblox. Stardoll is often overlooked because it was a "girly game", but it could get pretty depraved on there.
Roblox has become one of the best educational games though, teaching kids about capitalism from a very early age.
Pain
Communist revolution (in Roblox) when?
Sadly, I'm pretty sure most kids won't understand what exactly is wrong with the system. And won't make the connection with similar situations IRL.
Teaching kids all about exploitation and class warfare
And scams! My 2 kids have learned about several techniques other players use to screw over each other. A small stakes, highly obvious introduction to the world on online deception. It is great.
It sucks because due to such insane cuts, many small games have no option but to resort to Pay-to-win. If they took lighter cuts, games might be less scammy and Pay-to-win, and make roblox a better place in general
pov horizon switched from calling out minecraft servers to calling out roblox
Do a crashing roblox P2W games LMAO
When will you upload again?
Ay if you need anyone to crash p2w roblox games hit me up-
oh look its that one person
is this not illegal? it feels like child exploitation
It would be illegal if it wasn’t online
@@Miwwensgotta love the lack of labor regulations for the internet
And the TOS that they have basically says, "we own you and there is nothing you can do about it"
That’s because it is
I wish you could also discuss the situation with player exploitation through recent trends in simulators, quick cash grabs, gambling, etc. This was extremely informative.
As a game dev i can say games like this only do it because of the cuts. Roblox devs need someway to bypass these horrible cuts and make money its not their fault its roblox fault.
COUGH COUGH pet simulator x COUGH
there's also ton of mobile cash grab games that are targeted to kids, its not just roblox and people have to understand that.
@@jcclips3354it’s not the company’s fault
Ubisoft/EA: *wins scummiest publisher of the year award*
Roblox: "hold my non-alcoholic child-safe beer"
Missed opportunity to say "hold my Bloxy Cola"
apple juice
@@fenn_fren yes
More like “Hold my ######## non ######### ####”
@@slashuu_ right
Roblox youtubers often do much better than roblox game developers.
That's rather sad when you think about it.
Though perhaps more of this younglings should go do both, ESPECIALLY as a way to advertise their own game/s.
@@TheAyanamiRei yeah, it's the best way to get money, same thing with devlogs for steam devs, it increases revenue even if No one pays it
true roblox treats star creators better than normal robloxians and devs
True. Though to be fair, this is very often true for game TH-camrs vs other game developers as well
This is true
Seeing your interview with Emil now. Kids these days are FANTASTIC, so smart and so capable of learning by themselves. Wish you all the best for the future, Emil!
Finally someone who realizes kids aren't just mindless idiots, they can create and learn themselves
I started making a roblox game when I was 12, but stopped due to laziness. I always planned on going: “well if it flops I can just advertise it” only to realise now that not only is the advertising system almost a scam, but everything I earned from what I might’ve created would only be given to roblox itself. I think I’m gonna give unity a try in a few years.
Also, keep making these. Roblox needs to be called out for its greed, and they also help keep younger creators like me from falling into it. Keep the good work up, dude.
I’m 13 and working on a shrunken recreation of Georgia but like the fallout game series. 1/4 of the map is done.
@@classicminecraftambience747it’s good that you’re creating, just don’t get any expectations for profiting off of anything at all, just keep it purely for fun so if your game gets no traction you’re not disappointed. It sounds rude but being a successful roblox dev is like being a popular TH-camr, it can be a fun hobby but don’t get your hopes up at the shot of being a big creator
Yeah you really should try unity now
@@andy-gamer unity is in a… situation right now, probably try something else
@@cantthinkofaname5046 its a joke
thanks for making this! I thought roblox's misleading exchange process was the extent of their exploitation, but the way they market a "developer dream" to kids is terrible
It's even worse than is said in the video. 100k Robux is valued at $1247.50, not a thousand dollars.
this video convinced me more that roblox is bad than yours, like this video is about how kids believe they can make games, but they can't, yours is just about the revenue cut
Honestly I don’t get that part they havnt really lied from what I’ve seen they say you could make good money from it wich is true you just gotta make good games and either get lucky or advertise well
@@maxwell_edison it’s not bad in every fundamental way one of if not the most fundamental having fun it is great at
love you poly
What was even shadier was when roblox removed the ability to sort games by their categories (rpg,fps, etc.) which forced everyone to play only the "front page" games. Back then you could've sorted these games and played the much less popular roblox games. roblox didn't release a statement about this change ever after that.
Really? When did they remove this?
@@rosebud6116 like 2 3 years ago
THIS
It's literally coming back, they removed it temporarily so they can re-do it, they are also adding back recommended games.
@@DrShockz How did u find that out? In curious
I love the way the kid describes the difference between small game developers and big ones, amazing explaination mate, and very true.
This honestly makes me really sad, because game development was my first contact with programming back when I was 10, and it opened a world that changed my life forever, and now I’m here being close to my dream of becoming a mathematician. All we had back then was Minecraft, low quality TH-cam tutorials, our dads Pc, and this weird thing called Java. There was no monetisation, just the motivation to make something cool.
The fact that roblox TH-camrs get paid more than game devs is sad. The devs are the ones who gives the youtubers content and some of them don't even link it.
Well reason being is that they get money from youtube
@@animelegacy6437 true
The fact that Roblox gets paid so much is sad. The devs are the ones who get content onto roblox so that people pay money for games and stuff like that, and yet Roblox gives them not enough credit.
@@Alex-gv3fn well really we can't blame youtube for the fact that they pay their youtubers good and roblox doesn't.
the whole thing is a pyramid scam
As a company that takes over 75% of all profits, you'd expect them to have more than 3 people on their moderation team, have decent servers that doesn't take 2 minutes to communicate with the client, and to push out updates more than once every decade.
Ehhh, I mean 200,000,000+ users and millions of monthly players, I'd say their server is probs super expensive to be kept on, they only have 1,4-1,6K admins/moderator, but still the rate of exchange is pretty much a scam
Oh and advertisement, if you develop an experience for a roblox that doesn't advertise shit, your game will be a waste
Buying robux should be
1$ = 100 robux.
Reality
1$ = 80
Lets say you spend 7 robux on a donation or a t-shirt in roblox,
The dev wont get
7 = 7
But
7 = 5
And then if they wanna EXCHANGE the robux for money, HOOOOOO BOI THATS ANOTHER CUT BUCKAROO.
Also yes, i do love constantly having data store issues in games and having progress reset, thats fun.
@@Jawsomest datastore problems are on you handling them poorly 😉
Billion dollar corporations lying to kids how easy it is to make money. Thanks for putting this information together in such a dense and well explained form.
Case in point: dont build your dev life around roblox, if you are in it for the money you will be disappointed greatly, unless you pull a blox fruits and make an addicting grind game choked full with microtransactions
Agreed. Same reason why there aren't many popular games, you got Blox Fruits, a bunch of RP games and so on and so forth. It's never a good idea to develop for Roblox hoping you'd get good money out of it.
This is why
A game you made for fun > A game you made for money
Even if it gets popular cuz of microtransactions it will never have anything creative
Before, You had a "Because you liked [game]" tab, showing you more interesting game because you liked a specific game, but now it has been removed and replaced by a "Recommended for you" tab that is ...also influenced by games you play when joining your friend, therefore making it pretty much useless for finding new interesting stuff
Yeah i used to love playing heroes but then i lost it from my favourites
The recommend for you also does not work one bit, its mainly games that i have no interest in or games with 10k+ players in it
When I used to play lots of SCP games the because you liked tab showed me more SCP games. But now it just shows games I have played mixed in with popular games.
man you dont even know. there used to be a search by genre function. *games still have genres, but you cant search for them.* how stupid is that? why even remove it!?
@@fomalhaut_the_great EXACTLY! Why get rid of genres and even if you do get rid of the genre section, they still appear under the game?!?!
I love the fact that people are coming together to call Roblox out on their disgusting, scummy practices that are done upon young aspiring developers. However, I highly doubt this will do much unless we enact legislation to combat it. We have a legal system in place for reason and I so no reason why it shouldn't be used.
What's wrong with this system? It combats ingame currency inflation and prevents Roblox from going bankrupt, they're already at a huge deficit.
if there was something illegal that roblox was doing it they would’ve already been sued and forced to change or they just wouldn’t do it at all
@@no8592 did you even watch this video lol
@@chickenbokernot2598 The whole point of this video is that online gaming is NOT regulated by the law. Laws that apply in real life do not apply to virtual platforms. And they should.
@@flashpone7910 that’s the point of my comment..?
I eventually gave up on Roblox and moved to UE5 after Roblox began changing the way its code worked, breaking most of my projects multiple times...
I do still play roblox though, and I love looking for obscure gems that never make it to the main page, games like 'There Is No Simulator', 'Get a Snack at 4am' and 'Cone' are some of the best that Roblox has to offer
Everyone needs to watch this before it possibly gets deleted.
Incredible. I always thought "games journalism" was such a stupid concept, because the majority of stuff out there is just press releases. This is real, useful, powerful work. Great job.
Shills & their 'subtle' marketing really need to be replaced with these
Gamer gate be like:
I recommend Jim Sterling. Their style of comedy is somewhat niche, so maybe that will keep you from enjoying, but if it doesn't bother you, Jim focuses almost entirely on exploitation in the games industry, mostly with regular news updates, but from time to time with well-researched essays much like this one with interviews and everything. Just recently they made a video about a university that teaches crunch culture.
@@fidly4 this video alone beats the pants off of Jimbo's whole catalogue for the last year at least.
Since going full on leftover and coming out as trans, Jim has become utterly insufferable, in and out of character assumed for the show.
@@fillosof66689 i mean theyve always done their stuff in character lol, not much has changed since they came out
Predatory practice after predatory practice, insane.
The gaming industry is everything that's wrong with capitalism in a nutshell.
Unionize Roblux
tf2 video when
@@monkviolence5055 Except, there's nothing wrong with capitalism.
yoo maxbox here
this was really well done, i knew absolutely nothing about roblocks before this but this was so educational and definitely should be heard by more people
Jesus fucking christ I just thought Roblox was just a failed Minecraft clone. I had no idea about how shady or huge it was before going down this rabbithole
It breaks my heart hearing a kid say they wish they had robucks to advertise their game. This is a HORRIBLE lesson to be teaching children and potential future game developers. I really hope this doesn't kill his passion for making games, he deserves so much better.
No. First off, its "Robux". Second, advertisements often fail and are not the best way to advertise your game, and it is totally not needed for a game to succeed.....
@@whatdaytdoin There is no other fiscal way to advertise your game on Roblox other than through the paid advertisements on the website. Advertisements for games on Roblox are only effective on the platform due to the target demographic of said advertisements, word of mouth or sheer dumb luck is the only other option for the effective success of your game.
Exactly i wanna legit punch the stupid greedy roblox owners.. So damn greedy.
@@Sieztt as long as the creator has atleast a few braincells, he can work around that by advertising with content creators, streamers, description tags, discord, twitter and other social sites
@@ohnoi-3760 like every second company...
Scrip AND child labor? Now that's a business model we can all get behind! If only there was some way to give these little developers black lung, then we'd really be talking!
Gaming and gambling addiction stand in for black lung. We've got the whole dark history of capitalism here.
@@AbbeyNeverOverthinking My 12-year old brother is absolutely glued to his screen, mainly because of Roblox. My other little brothers will eventually get bored and go play outside, but he seems to have no ability to regulate himself. Its scary.
@@dragonofepics7324 Chemically dependence forming in a portion of the population. I know that feeling. It took me almost 8 years of my development to deglue myself.
Freemium Isn't Free - South Park episode (season 18, episode 6) That episode made me feel pretty good.
i feel like if this happened in china more people would react, but since its happening in front of our eyes people are slower to say something
I'm honestly in awe of the sheer predatory and depraved greed here. The Roblox CEO would probably eagerly sell his own mother, wife, and daughter as sex slaves for a few bucks.
the editing on this video is top tier
I see now Roblox's decision to remove tix was much worse than we saw at-the-moment.
It wasn't just "it's not making us money, so we're cutting this." It was insidious; "we're going to make money off you and capitalise you. Ha ha ha!"
Ea: we republish the same game every year!
Roblox: We turn children into virtual slaves and make money off them! 😎
both are good business plans
Atleast EA’s development company has the decency to pay their developers a non slave wage
At the very least, like the other guy said, EA treats their employees well
Wtf? Most children wont even know how to make a gamepass and roblox would get no benefit from them lmao
They are not forced to make games and you have to be 13+ to make money people below make free model games with no effort
As a dev who's been here for 5 years, I'd say for people to immediately drop Roblox and join unreal or unity. Roblox is never worth the time
The main appeal of ROBLOX is that Unreal and Unity are very spec-heavy, meaning a craptop will most likely be reduced to ashes if it ran Unreal, while Studio runs pretty well and Studio not being as complex as Unity, Unreal or Blender, who all have very high skill slopes while it takes about a day or week for to get used to ROBLOX Studio on average.
@@auliamate you've got a good point. ROBLOX is like the Mc Donalds of the dev industry
same i quit roblox for a long time and made better money on itch and steam
@@auliamate then start with godot or even game maker studio or something.
@@zwenkwiel816 Pygame is good lol
Roblox’s favorite method of production is child labor
Wow, I'm 26 now but used to play this in 2008-2012 and I'm really blown away how massive it's become. Publicly traded and worth billions?! That's crazy 🤯
Same bro
and im also from philly lmao
*starts playing flex your account age*
It's so weird that this got recommended within an hour of 18:22 happening to me. I'm a newcomer Roblox 'developer' and my game got unexpectedly popular. Now people are copying it and Roblox won't do anything to help me.
Thanks for this brutally honest video, I hope it's an eye opener for people!
Brrrr
Just out of curiosity, what game is it about?
copying it how. you aren't going into detail. also, there are specific departments you can go to for this sort of thing you just have to dig because if they were public they would be virtually useless due to 100k+ kids sending useless spam mail
@@Daniel-do2mh A shop-like game that lets people get free items without needing to browse the catalog, and helps with events
@@MUGEN666 Thanks I am already in contact with them
"Our top develepors are getting 2 million dollars!"
That seemed Pyramid Schemey, then i saw the bit about paying the company for being favored in the algorithm.
The way that they say top developers in a way to generalize all devs is just like such a huge scam to get money out of people that don’t pay that much attention to details, and inexperienced children
it's like lonely single hot chick in your area ads
top develepors that actually do something earn 2 million dollars while the ceo gets earns billions, even that sounds like too little tbh
Yeah FUCK that pay2win system... and this is why I quit such a *GARBAGE ENVIRONMENT* of a game... not mentioning the toxic players
It's not a pyramid per se but they use a lot of MLM lingo to prey on the naive
Thanks Quinns and PMG! Great video
Roblox doesn't support the inspiration of young game-devs, it kills it.
You skipped a very important point 5:00 :
at least 95% of the games on roblox are either no effort messy and disgusting games,or ones that come with you opening your studio for the first time.
having a ''new'' section would just create thousands and millions of X's Place games that are the default tutorial map.
exactly, same reason why the mobile markets don't have a "new" section and steam removed it's "we show your game to 100k people"-rule and limited the new listings to places you actively need to search for a few years back.
Good point but I do think there could be some sort of middle ground - for example TikTok always shows new videos to people
@@BenJaded Except that doesn't really work and plays into the problem game platforms face, which is a large amount of manipulative and low quality content. And with how game development works that would translate to a "meta" for the people that make such low quality content to make more of it while high quality content amount stays the same.
The big difference between places like Tiktok and gaming platforms is that a half decent tiktok video takes about 5 to 10 minutes to make alone. A game? Alone that would take on average a year or longer.
Yeah, but roblox said that there are 20 million games, not the quality of them
I don't see the problem with this. Poorly constructed content is still content and the fact it has no way of finding an audience is a travesty.
I knew the situation was bad, but this is so much worse than I thought. Giving them 24 percent of the sales and then taking away more than half its value when turned into real money? That’s harsh.
It's closer to taking away two-thirds of its value. Scummy shit.
It comes out to the developer receiving 8.75% of the cut.
You gotta count the free features they do like:
*Free Servers
*Free data saving
*Roblox studio thats already fixed for making games, etc.
@@noobmanasdad865
1) the servers and data saving are far more than made up for by the amount of kids who are tricked into wasting money on robux
2) of course roblox studio is free, all the popular game engines are
@@anchovy5325 Other game platforms like steam requires you to pay for data saving and servers. They also require you to pay a $100 for uploading a game
Wow, I am so glad that Moon had a link to your video. You did a great in depth analysis on how people get paid for their work(7:07).
Wow this is eye-opening. Thank you for the enlightenment! I appreciate it especially as a father of two young kids, I've got to look out for this stuff.
This video needs to be shown to every young developer out there.
Their time is better spent on Blender and Python, than it is on Roblox.
i also dont really get why some developers say that moving from roblox to unity is hard
i;ve been a roblox developer for 5 years and i'm trying to move from lua to c# and its not that hard
@@jyto87yo987 different people adapt differently
@@jyto87yo987 codes
@@jyto87yo987 Not that it's hard to adapt to a new engine or learning a new programing language. It's just less work on Roblox, and a lot easier to advertise your game.
A lot of modellers on roblox use blender and just import them cause roblox’s modelling tools aren’t that good
As douchey as the anonymous game dev sounds, he's right about the "burn out". I've joined countless Discord communities for up-and-coming games and literally none of them have ever lasted more than 3 months despite having seemingly organized development teams of scripters, builders, and artists. In most cases, the game never even gets released and the community dies.
Aye; I have found a couple of communities that last longer, but those have all been for mods for other games, like Anbennar (a fantasy mod for Europa Universalis 4) and Wars of Liberty (an overhaul mod for Age of Empires 3), and there's definitely a fair amount of turnover among the creators. I think it really helps to have an already-established community who are already fans, especially in a game with many existing assets and mechanics that modders can build off of.
well, that might just be game development itself. A lot of people go into it with starry eyes thinking about all the amazing things they will do. Then you slowly realise that it's a very slow grind to get even simple and basic functionalities right. Without real passion and a supportive community, it's hard to stay motivated.
I started developing indie games and it's actually rather painful when you realise just how much time you need for things that you originally took for granted. It's not 100 hours to make a game, it's 10 000. Not sure how different Roblox is from a normal game engine, but I don't imagine it will be any easier to make something original.
In some cases, the game is successfully released, yet it's servers are empty and nobody ever plays it. If you're target audience is 9. Then it's going to have trouble when games better suited for teens who are around 14-17 start playing. I wonder if they could make another site.
@@Wyzai Roblox's engine is kind of a mixed bag.
For comparison, Unity and Unreal both can be limiting when you want to do something technically advanced that's outside of the scope of what they were designed for. I've personally run into these types of issues with both. You're also on your own if you want to make scaling hosted game servers with player account authentication, or anything similar.
However, the tools are designed to be pretty powerful in general, targeted to make common use cases a lot easier and aim to fill the gaps of what's missing with third party assets. The tools aren't designed to be overly simplified, so the barrier to entry is certainly higher if you want to make any meaningful lasting content, but you can accomplish quite a lot with them.
Roblox's are a lot more simplified and many features are catered to the lowest common denominator so it's relatively easy to get into compared to the other two. You also get free server hosting with effectively unlimited scaling, player account authentication systems, player save data hosting, and quite a few other goodies that make launching online games stupidly easy.
However, because of the simplified presentation and limited scope of many of the other tools it can be very hard to make anything that isn't easily recognizable as being Roblox. It's a lot harder to push the boundaries of the engine because the features are so heavily sandboxed. It isn't all bad because the sandboxing means it is very, very hard to intentionally damage someone's system by playing a bad or straight up malicious game, but you also have to accept that your freedom is significantly more restricted.
They have been slowly expanding the features available on the engine, allowing for more ambitious titles, but this also raises the barrier to entry for making titles competitive on that level. They're also very heavily limited by backwards compatibility, more so than with Unity and Unreal. In the latter two you can choose to stick on an old version to keep the features you need that your project depends on. With Roblox using the latest version is mandatory, so they need to be a lot more careful with which changes they make, when, and how they design them.
ikr. I was genuinely disappointed when he didn't say "don't make your game on roblox."
4:27 lmao he really used the "experiences". I love how they present their satire
i was gonna write a really wordy response as to how i feel after seeing this video and the follow-up but all of this just left a sour taste in my mouth, i'm disgusted by roblox corporate and i seriously can't believe i've played roblox for as long as i have.. in the last few months ive been distancing myself from roblox as a whole but it's so hard to do so.. that corporation has perfected their engine to the point where it's so inviting for new and returning developers alike that when i want to transition to a different engine like godot or learn to utilize a library... i just cant?? it's like a i learned nothing??? i've experience in languages other than lua and yet I still struggle to do basically anything outside of their studio and im genuinely lost
Kids being game devs and not getting paid enough?? That's just child labour with extra steps in a nicely packaged, gift wrapped box with a pretty bow on it.
Where have I heard that before?
Rick and Morty
Not "not being paid enough", just "not being paid".
and what sucks is the kids are making games FOR them
I make games in roblox cuz i like to, i really want to make whats on my mind time to time
The way how this articulates Roblox devs as child labourers by choice… Its a hard truth pill to swallow, but one which we ultimately must.
Even without the predatory aspect, how does this not trip child labor laws??
Putting up job postings for child workers in your factory would also allow for labor entirely by choice, but that still exploits children and is super illegal in most countries. How is this meaningfully different?
your neighbours kid mowing your lawn is doing child labour by choice for you. It doesn't mean shit, it just sounds bad because it could be REALLY bad, but it depends on the context.
tbh atleast its fun to make the games
@@Toxodos That's not even quite a valid analogy. It's more like a kid volunteering to cut your lawn without even asking you, knowing that if he does a good job he'll get paid for it.
Thank you for this. I work with children around the age of 7-8 and for the past years many of them play Roblox, and though I play games, I don't play Roblox and am not well informed on the game so this helps knowing the danger so to better look out for the kids and the their wellbeing
Good one, thanks for sharing this!
Honestly, I've seen hidden gems that are majorly overshadowed by big budget pay to win or cosmetic filled games, and it's just saddening to see this happen to the good creators on the platform.
ikr, like few people play Adventure Forward 2: Restored, and that game is amazing, but since it flew under the radar and didn't have the fancy Blender-made buildings of other games, it was left in the dark.
i have a friend that is a very good roblox game creator and his game is suprisingly very underrated >:(
@@punchthecake82 can you link it or say the name? I wanna try it out
@@punchthecake82 cool, thanks
The good games are hard to find and have barely anyone sometimes which is sad
i as a Roblox developer am happy that this issue is finally being talked about by more people, hopefully this will make roblox change and give us a actual cut.
Wish you the best of luck!
Hope you can get your game’s on the popular page one day
Yes, I agree and have been vocal about the %s since I’ve ever been able to de ex.
but like they give u a platform, easy way to publish, everything u need. server hosting and all. don't be mad they keep some of money
@@DamiemBlorp we arent mad, we just want a better cut, sure they give us the tools, but we make the platform what it is today,, they could at least give us 60% of what we earn.
This was an amazing video, thank you so much for sharing this!
We love capitalism don't we folks
Remember when people used to believe TH-cam wasn't making any money until they got busted for exploiting minors and we learned what their financials actually were?
Tell me more?
@@WonderfulBoness yh me too
Ummm ... we don't. Care to elaborate more?
Ummm what? Please tell us more
TH-cam COPPA
As a person who is studying 3d and trying to get into Game-dev. My biggest concern would be how many children would have just given up. Thinking, making games won't get them money and never think of it as a career...
considering the whole Activision vs. the State of California thing, i'd say they're not missing out on much
The market is oversaturated anyway. If you go AAA you get crunched to death and told to f off if you want to unionise. If you go indie then you often times lack funding and visibility. And it's not like you make the next Stardew Valley. Then on top of that still hold the rights to your IP.
Few people make the bucks that allows them to stay afloat. Many indies I know off make games in their free-time, while they hold a full-time job. To be reliant on game developing money is pretty frustrating and unstable.
The game industry is notorious for working people to death in shitty conditions. Hang out on some game dev forums and ask them what their job is really like.
I mean. They aren't that wrong. About 5 of my good friends in high school became game developers. By the time we were 30 none of them were game developers anymore. The working conditions are poor. The pay is bad. But there's always someone younger ready to take the abuse you're tired of taking, so it doesn't get any better.
It won’t unless you make shovelware mobile games, which is ironic considering most games on Roblox are just that.
Amazing video, well done!
This is one of the craziest things iv ever heard. I had no idea how extensive Roblox was & I always figured the devs had to be vetted or have something like a verified account to make content and especially the if theyre earning money.
as a dev with 2 years of experience, this is actually depressing.
if you feel alright answering this, how much money ahve you made over the 2 years on the platform
@@ayo123 I'm a pretty small dev on roblox and I made more robux from shirts then with games..
@@SuperWizardGamerXi only ever got around 5 robux from someone buying my $5 clothing twice. that pay cut sucks
@@ARCHIVED9610 5$ like 400 robux or 5 robux?
@@ayo123 as a 13 year old i have made 350 dollars in a year so it isnt a lot
Wouldn't be surprised if a massive part of their public listing success was simply this line in some form: "We take 75% of all the revenue earned on the platform, and our developers are too young to understand why its a bad thing".
Its literally just Child Labor with extra steps. not even a lot of extra steps either. literally one extra step and since they don't actually pay all the children who make games its also literally child slavery.
@@kazmark4611 I wouldn't really call it slavery, children aren't forced into making the games. They do it because that's what interests them. I agree pushing the 'how to make money' is wrong but growing the passion should be what parents should be informing their children on .
Ready for the life of a games developer with excessive crunch, long hours with unpaid overtime, the constant risk of redundancy and if you're female sexual assault.
@@chrisbailey2098
It's child labor via deception. The only difference from slavery is that they're tricked into it instead of forced. The video literally says this practice is illegal in real life, so excusing it away like this is just stupid.
@@Persun_McPersonson @Persun McPersonson @Persun McPersonson I literally said the 'how to make money on roblox' was deceptive. 9-13 year olds shouldn't be left to their own devices on the internet anyway, especially when money is involved.
My son asks for robux, and as a parent I ask him to explain why he would like them and will he get the most value out of them. If he said he need to advertise his game he works on with his school friend I would refuse and explain why. It's not stupid to say that. He also didn't interview a single person who does it for fun, meaning his argument was stacked towards a child who was disappointed and three developers who have made money in the way he was arguing against.
@@chrisbailey2098 “9-13 year olds shouldn’t be left to their own devices on the internet anyway.” Does this change the fact that Roblox is marketed towards children, makes them work by deception, and that doing this is illegal? This is like saying “kids shouldn’t be left to their own devices anyway” when discussing child predators
A very large thank you to my family and friends to never introducing me into Roblox so I got into game developing through unreal instead of whatever the **** this platform is
you are witnessing a business
very good vid; many thanks for putting it together
i assumed there'd be some shadiness but wow, this is off the scale
what frustrates me is that there used to be a filter option to find certain games but they removed it which makes it really hard to find less popular games..
I still play at 20 but they used to have tix a free currency you get everyday so you can still buy stuff without paying real money and they removed that
@@beanzy1891 they removed it due to people exploiting it with bots
Yeah they should add that back young debs are the back bone of their company
It still at the home page you know
@@eddydiaz2609 I never understood that choice. Why remove the category page but leave the filter in? It's such a bizarre choice
As a 7-year running developer for a former Top-Rated game, hamburger, I can confirm that you tend to fall in popularity if you don't spend the money to make your game rise up. The whole reason our game ended up on Top-Rated was due to a combination of advertisement and luck with TH-camrs Flamingo and KonekoKitten playing the game back in early 2020 and no other reason.
Our case was probably even worse due to a group run by a guy called Tubers98 temporarily hacking a popular game, MeepCity, and sending it's players to hamburger causing it to have a massive dislike spree which booted it right off of Top-Rated between Flamingo and Koneko's videos on the game, which almost killed it had Koneko not seen it.
Nowadays the game is sitting mostly unplayed until we release an update to it which has taken well over a year and a half at this point to release.
On another note; Super Doomspire probably wasn't the best example for "developers taking your idea and improving it", since the original Doomspire BrickBattle was made back in the era where making games was done purely for fun ( 2013 and earlier ) as opposed to games being made for profit ( and usually fun ). Super Doomspire also has very few things you can actually buy in it, the only things being Crowns ( currency to use in the shop for skins and stickers and etc. ) and Sticker Patches to put stickers on weapons to have some cool cosmetic effects, both of which can be earned for free by just playing the game and have no actual gameplay impact otherwise.
It's also worth noting that ROBLOX doesn't have 20 million experiences. If you want to go into semantics the platform has approximately 3 BILLION, however most of them are just pre-generated places that are created upon an account being created, with somewhere in the range of 20-30 million being the total number of actual games out there that aren't just pre-generated places.
Very well constructed criticism of ROBLOX's payout formula though. Even if I understood how harsh it can be at times, it was still very much an eye opener.
( and I'd argue that the sequel video was even more of an eye opener, go watch it if you haven't )
Can you describe Roblox of 2013?
@@ka-md8ue I started playing in 2014.
honestly 2014-2016 roblox was really chill, not nearly as many players, much simpler avatar designs and the like.
it was far more charming than modern day roblox, I definitely hold a lot of nostalgia to it despite modern day roblox improving the client over time.
games were a lot simpler before 2017 with jailbreak and all of that too, game discovery used to exist in a proper way and it was way easier to find what you wanted to play.
to answer your question, pre-2017 roblox is a nostalgia trip to say the least, and it's why I hold simulations of that era of roblox so dearly.
@@ka-md8ue As someone who started in 2008 and stumbled across this video,
(I don't play anymore, I do log in sometimes but hardly ever)
as "@Trodgy" said games wasn't really created purely for profit and there wasn't much micro transactions.
The only micro transactions most popular games had back then was mainly VIP t-shirts
I would say even though games was not as sophisticated as today - I believe they was more enjoyable.
Aside from games
people say there was no toxic people or od'ers back then but those people are wrong and are most likely lying about being around on Roblox back then.
The avatar trends in that era of Roblox which I would say is 2011-2013 was more simple but looked better, I definitely prefer the paper hats, sk8r boi hats mixed with beautiful hair and etc.
over "Ro gangster" oufits and "slenders".
started playing in 2011, loved the game so much even though it was simple thats what made it great, you also didn’t have so many cosmetics shoved in your face which was really nice at the time. its a shame that companies are companies and they work on increasing profits every year, unfortunately thats capitalism for you. nowadays the game doesn’t have the same charm atleast for me anyway but maybe im just becoming older who knows
My meep died of starvation. what happens now he has a cute dinosaur hat and is dead
Oo that is crazy dude, great review on the situation
the way his voice breaks throughout the video as he explains the horrors of what Roblox does... I can't believe this has flown under the radar for so long. Good work People Make Games!
As someone who makes 3D models to sell online, this is absolutely heartbreaking to see. The time and effort you take into molding something out of nothing and being able to call your own is invaluable and this company just trashes it like its nothing. A grand to pull out money? that is literally unbelievable
Yeah my friend’s a beamer and still make more than young game devs.
@@clvsidy your friend is a bmw?????
@@clvsidy You mean your friends a skid ☠
@@clvsidy Your friend is a gay monkey
@@clvsidy Report your friend immediately
To abstract this all; watching this video has made me more conscious, I feel almost meaningless developing games on Roblox.
I had a really terrible panic attack last night because of this video. I'm a Roblox game developer with 6 years of experience. I started making small experiences when I was 11 years old. The problem is that no matter what you complain about on the platform, Roblox doesn't take responsibility because there are laws to protect them & there are no laws to protect you. I have a lot of compassion for the games I make and I spend tremendous amounts of time on projects & experiences that I don't need to dedicate my time at all to. I now own 2 exploits, Synapse X & Script-Ware. I use these exploits to put my knowledge to use, but I have slowly lost all interest in the platform altogether & I have been in a horrible rut for quite some time. I just think it's really unfortunate that a Roblox exploiter could very well make more than that of a Roblox game developer.
Why would I want to be responsible for the mistakes Roblox makes in order to run my game? We are privileged to have free tools, but it's not nice when they don't give us the proper servers. I'm more curious about where the money's going at this point because Roblox has seriously overdone themselves and I feel nothing but ashamed to really be on the platform. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't have to be on Roblox to live a life that I find entertaining, but the platform has endless opportunities with limitations to your paycheck. I seriously believe you would earn more money as somebody working for Roblox Corporation rather than working under Roblox Corporation.
Edit: I quit Roblox last week. I'm concluding that this platform isn't for me.
You have my sympathy. It seems like the ecosystem(and I don't mean the people) is pretty toxic and hard to get out of. If you're able to devote six years of time into a skill, you can definitely make it anywhere else. We need people like you to speak out more. Please take your talents elsewhere and push back against your exploiter.
I wouldn’t blame you. This topic seems to hit home for you so to hear that could be really hard hitting.
YEAH ME TOO I HAVE LIKE 4 YEARS OF EXP
If I were you I would move to an actual game engine (Unity, Unreal, etc.) and start making games there. Me personally I would recommend Unreal or Unity as you will find the most help with those as they are the largest. Just read up and mess around with both to see which one you like.
Breaks my heart more
Great content! Is anyone else totally distracted by his amazing board game shelf background?! So many titles I want play or learn more about.
I'm apparently late to the party but this video educated me about this platform. I'm subscribed. I'm looking forward to binging the rest of your content.
Most of those "20 million" experiences is a blank private map each user gets, or abandoned default sandboxes
Theyre talking about actual games that have been touched. Things that start in a persons profile is a different kind.
@@graye3633 yeah. otherwise there'd be billions of games due to billions of accounts
tbh some of these games could be bot games and shit ,I do think the number is much lower but definitely it's in the millions compared to only 1000s of popular games in the recommended tab.
Nah, I'd say 20M is a good number. The actual number of accounts to my knowledge exceeds 100M by far, so 20M games with actual effort and intent to be played seems legit.
And most of those are the popular ones..
This is criminal, thanks for putting a light on this. Just predatory to another level, sucks to see the years of game devs' effort amount to a measly 1000 dollars.
Less than that taking in the exchange rate. I think he showed it to be USD$350.... I used to be big into roblox when I was younger and this honestly infuriates me.
Funny when the exchange rate is about 700$ less than what its really valued at
@@maxwinter2265 And then Roblox says they can't afford to pay them any more.
Are you kidding me? I don't even earn a single dime or any visitors more than 50!
10 dollars = 800 robux, not even 1k, then when they SPEND robux, roblox takes ANOTHER cut, Then you need to pay devs, pay ads, (if your a dev) and THEN FINNALLY, after the moneys been hacked and cut, YOU FINNAL EXCHANGE IT, AND IT GETS CUT DOWN DURING THAT TOO.
The fact that you likened robux to company town economy wasn't a reality i was emotionally ready for
Very well made video. I can see how creative minds could potentially lose hope if so little interaction occurs with their games due to roblox only advertising big games. Buying robux is really addictive as well and with a never ending selection of items and passes to buy, it can feel like a never ending transaction.
Back when I started roblox as a kid in 2010, there were so many discovery tools available it blew my mind! You could sift through every category of game, when the game was made, if the game had paywalls, or games by a specific player. Sorry I keep calling them games, because that’s what they were in 2010, since it was only on the computer, like a 3D flash game. I moved away from the platform at around 2015 when they started getting money hungry and started getting rid of the discovery tools, thus making it harder to find games without paywalls. Then the censorship of the chat started getting really bad. I understand in most cases it’s to prevent inappropriate activity, but it’s made it so that you have to tip-toe around the system and not say certain normal phrases such as “ Well, “ for some reason.
Don't be sorry for calling them games, THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE.
bro i remember where there used to be a ingame currency on roblox called TIX and you get TIX for free if someone plays your games, you can buy shirt hats and stuffs before, and roblox was a free game before and sadly they deleted TIX. And thats sucks.
@@gloows3397 The removal of the TIX is probably the point in time where Roblox became the greedy exploitative company we see today. You could just wait to buy things in the market, but now you need to spend real money just to not look like a generic avatar.
Even the word "ok" is censored sometimes for me (my acc is 13>)
(Sorry if i have bad english)
Too much text this is a information thingy
I want part 2 about the addictive nature of Roblox' "experiences".
I was thinking this as well. I'd be very interested to see a full video about that side of things
Seconded.
+1 for this, I would be interested as well
I'm subscribing in case he makes that video
Especially those ANIME SIMULATOR RPG skinnerboxes
And "tycoons"
Ayy, Quinns from SUSD! Wasn't expecting ya here
Thanks for being a good journo Quinns.its hard to find you guys..
They're always trying to sneak scrip back in and people don't understand how furious they should be about it. Join me in my rage.
Do you take funding in the form of iTunes giftcards?
Most people don't get taught about labor history.
This is one of the reasons I’m skeptical of crypto-currencies. Allowing a proliferation of different currencies sounds like a great way to bring back scrip.
@@aidanwarren4980 Crypto is 100% gonna become scrip one day, you are gonna go into work and your manager is going to say "hey you guys can get payed in the new KingCoins if you want, its burgerking's new crypto-currency" and they will talk up all the benefits like you will get paid more if you switch and your Kingcoins will be able to get you better food on your lunch break because they are "worth more" than money at BK and of course you can swap your king coins for real money. then one day it wont be optional and new hires will only get paid in kingcoins unless they fill out 50 extra forums that somehow mean its not legally a scrip, and congress will do fuck all because BK and Apple and everyone else who is doing crypto scrip will bribe the Republicans and Democrats to ignore it, and anyone who wants to maybe update the script regulation is gonna get accused of being a "socialist" who wants to hinder the free market.
@@kazmark4611 6000 languages in the world and my man chose to speak facts 👌
As Indie Dev, hearing that kid speak just sounded like a fellow indie dev speaking lmao
Scrolled down to this at 4:11, talk about luck lol.
Idk he sounds he use free model in his game , just my opinion
@@KlutchMeister there are stupidly popular games made with free models so
@@Ilovetoes6996 what game ?
@@KlutchMeister dunno if someone using free models really discredits the rest of the work they did to make what ever game it was they built no mater how simple. My point is more in his demeanor towards the roblox alagothrim makes him talk in a similar way to fellow dev friends I have lol.
Either way he's a kid, give him credit where it's due. He spent time at his age to try and make a game and even spent time to learn how to do so. That impressive non the less.
as of 2024, (this is an educated guess) a good chunk of popular obstacle course games, shooter games, tower defense games, etc. can be almost guaranteed to involve "skibidi toilet"
This is the worst part of every game platform. The skibidi toilet games
what do you expect if roblox's playerbase is children under 13? obviously people would make games based on what kids are interested in
If Erik Cassel was still alive, he would have not let this happen. R.I.P. Erik
"Powering imagination" turned into "Powering capitalism"
Imperialism
"Powering children exploitation"
powering greedier mode
@@Fractalure powering tainted keeper
@@siduxjxhdgzhdjxhxuuxxyhgg1079 powering tainted keeper + swallowed penny + piggy bank
Hi, veteran player here and I have to say that all arguments in this video are legitimate. However, I must add that all this seemed to happen after the death of one of the creators, Erik Cassel. Before, tickets were a way to get free stuff, and games had VIP t-shirts costing 10-100 tix (you earned 10 per day). ROBLOX still made money from developers, but developers didn't rip off children via "boxes" and "crates" that can be purchased with real money and only robux, so it didn't seem as bad. ROBLOX was more of a start for up-and-coming developers to start to learn how to code. It wasn't an actual job, more of a pass time. After Erik died, DevEx was introduced, tickets were removed, and free unsponsored gear from ROBLOX were stopped. Now it's more like ROBLOX making money off devs who rip off children with manipulative gambling for children.
How extremely fucking sad. Dancing on this man's grave they are.
Exactly
I used to blame every problem with ROBLOX on Erik Cassel no longer being with us, but now I'm not sure. ROBLOX is a corporation, and I feel like it would become successful regardless of his death, and success under capitalism encourages infinite growth, and the desire for infinite growth encourages unethical business practices. It really hurts to type this, but I feel like Erik Cassel would either leave, end up booted, or become another corporate ghoul, like David Baszucki.
@@TheNinja94a highly likely he would get the boot from roblox. You also gotta remember correlation does not equal causation. It may seem like roblox went downhill after he died, but we don’t know what went on behind closed doors.
@@joshuaberger65 that's definitely a good point, but I feel like Erik just had the soul David is missing. He cared about ROBLOX, and kids having a mega fun time messing around in it. Call me delusional, but I do think Erik would've kept ROBLOX in line to be more of a free platform as opposed to a "freemium" platform.
When I was younger, I SUCKED at making games at roblox. I was still excited and I was like "I can't wait to make so much money and become a millionaire" (I'm swedish btw). But then I realized, roblox developing and everything is just a huge scam. Now it's not a scam but the way they say to kids about developing is awful. 100K robux is almost never achieved by anyone under even 15. Only traders sometimes do. But you can't even transfer robux earned from limiteds into real money. This is a big problem. I'm thankful I got teached that it's fake back when I was younger
When the kid broke out Microsoft Paint the biggest smile appeared on my face. What a bright kid.
ah yes Microsoft paint so intelligent
@@d0k0night The kids a young developer, give him a bit more credit will ya?
It’s disgusting how roblox has run their company. This is a great video. The amount of work that some developers put into their games is astonishingly high and they get nothing from it.
Wellcomme to roblox spend robux and earn nothing
Roblox wasn't what it used to be.
Their listing on the New York Stock Exchange was not good for optics either
FYI I have several ties with big roblox group owners who got mysteriously *terminated* when they got close to the 100k mark...
That's the truth of marketing.
This is a great vid!!
6:55
Him: "Hundreds of thousands of *developers* trying to make games"
Subtitles: "Hundreds of thousands of *children* trying to make games"
The moment Roblox removed genre search, it was dead to me.
Roblox used to be pretty fun in 2009 and now it's just a soulless cash grab.
Edit: Big ups to you for giving these young developers respect and treating their work seriously, some people think there's nothing that goes into making these games, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
I got warned just for messing around in a game with my friends
Can you tell how was it there in 2009?
Yeah, same! I always used to have genre search and look for new games!
And hoo boy there were a lot of good games with just a few players in it. You could've found so many cool new/old games through the genre search. It's like a hidden corner of Roblox games, but now that the genre search is gone.. you can no longer find such games. Until you find them by a miracle or when big TH-camrs play them. You'd have to wait till they get popular to find them, which I find very annoying. This is why there are barely any new, interesting, and unique games. Every games you see on the front page are boring and uninspiring tycoon games and simulators. Back then in 2014, I didn't mostly care about accessories because I was in Roblox to have fun and I did have real fun. I just miss those games. Honestly, it's really sad that few games no longer get popular anymore. I can name a few games that I used to play that were really fun during those years such as "Ripull minigames, The insanity, Zombie Tower, Dragonball Imploding galaxy, Flood escape, Guest Defence, Death Run 2. I found all of them by either genre search or front page. I just wish Roblox would add back genre search.
Oh, and the currency was never a problem during 2014 because tickets were actually a thing and helped new users with their character customization. Hell, you could convert Tickets to Robux, which actually was a very cool feature. But nowadays it's like they are forcing you to buy Robux.
@@ka-md8ue 2009 was definitely worse than modern Roblox in terms of game quality, minus all the cash grabs you see. There’s still really great games out there, entry point, notoriety, arsenal, robot 64 to name a few. Anyone who says Roblox is now worse id argue are blinded by nostalgia
this is crazy. the similarities that so many digital platforms have to scrip is terrifying :/ thanks for shining a light on all this. hope change comes soon
Roblox is so messed up. The saddest part is no one realises. I had no idea until I watched this.
A new, massive issue that is slowly rising on Roblox is corporations coming on, with all their money, and hiring the best of the best to make games for them. Driving Empire was bought by a company recently and they’ve already spent millions of dollars licensing car companies, which is obviously something that smaller developers can’t do.