This is the heart of Roblox’s success,” says Smith in the video. “Kids working too hard with unreasonable expectations isn’t bad for the company.

Children can’t organize for better working conditions, though in fact, adults in the games industry are having trouble reaching quorum to unionize. Roblox’s gargantuan valuation and outstanding success is in part due to the number of children hoping to strike a vein of gold making games. The company also hosts programs and offers Developer Relations professionals to help developers succeed. Miners were encouraged to spend their money on their employers’ goods because, elsewhere, the scrip was moot.Ī Roblox spokesperson tells WIRED that “building experiences on Roblox teaches the fundamentals of coding, digital civility, and entrepreneurship and has helped many begin their careers in STEM.” Roblox gave developers $129.7 million in the second quarter of 2021, and according to the spokesperson, over 600 developers earn over $85,000 a year from their Roblox creations. They’re devalued off-platform, so why not spend them on other Roblox games? Smith compares Roblox’s currency to mining camps’ company scrips, a now-illegal currency used by miners to purchase goods at company stores. Smith believes this setup disincentivizes users from withdrawing Robux. Published Thursday by People Make Games, a YouTube channel by independent games journalists, “ How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers” takes a deep dive into the promise of “making it” on Roblox and alleges that the platform actually sets kid developers up for failure. Some of the most popular experiences have received billions of visits and earn their developers millions annually.Īccording to a new report, however, this model-which powers much of Roblox’s enormous success-may take advantage of young game developers.

Every day, 43 million people play those games, mostly kids. Tens of millions of these games live on Roblox’s browser-hundreds of times more titles than exist on Steam. A new report argues that success is built on exploiting young game developers, many of them children, who are making content for the game.Īs a platform, Roblox provides gamers the tools to both create and play an almost unfathomable array of “experiences,” from climbing an enormous stairway to running a restaurant to escaping a prison. Roblox has become a video game titan, in recent years dominating the world of kids’ gaming and earning $454 million in revenue last quarter alone.

How to create your own game in roblox