Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers

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?

Written and presented by Quintin Smith:

Design and art direction by Anni Sayers:

[BoopaKing]

"It would be illegal if it wasn't online"

This sentence describes way too many company practices.

[RubenSim]

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.

[clonemace]

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.

[coldsoup]

That 11 year old is so well spoken and put together. Sad that the platform has his so disheartened

[sleipnir_]

The kid just did the indie developer speedrun at 11.
The industry is harsh.

[ukasa]

The kid literally drew a graph in MS paint to prove his point. Mad respect

[YamamotoGenryusaiShigekuni]

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.

[williamhabberjam]

is this not illegal? it feels like child exploitation

[The_Horizon]

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

[PolyMars]

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

[therealnav]

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.

[roxyhart]

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!

[JoshStrifeHayes]

Roblox youtubers often do much better than roblox game developers.

[philippestomponfoot]

The fact that roblox YouTubers 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.

[doonasaurus]

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.

[novalinnhe]

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.

[AbdallahAhmed-qzuu]

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.

[onion]

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.

[fruit]

I love the way the kid describes the difference between small game developers and big ones, amazing explaination mate, and very true.

[marc]

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 YouTube tutorials, our dads Pc, and this weird thing called Java. There was no monetisation, just the motivation to make something cool.