Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail.

Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make games for them strike it rich!!!! They don't mention that to do so, you first have to become popular amongst millions of competing titles, and the easiest way to do it is to pay them so they'll advertise it for you.

Oh, and the company scrip - Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money. They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden. This is on top of the 75% cut they take!

In all, approximately 17% of the real-world money paid into Roblox is paid back out to creators. What a scam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

▲

anileated 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

CEO of Roblox was once asked whether he would ever put prediction markets inside Roblox, he gave a straight face answer: https://youtu.be/XpIXRgMlPo4?t=2122

	▲	tovej 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Jesus Christ. This man is just a sociopath who doesn't bother to mask anymore.

▲

stavros 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't there a secondary market for Robux that then sells for much better prices?

	▲	sghitbyabazooka 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		that also has a cap, you're not getting more than $6 per 1000 robux there, which is a little under double the official rate but still only 2 thirds of what users actually paid for said robux. not including the risk of the platform banning you.

▲

_ink_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money.

Wtf? That should not be legal.

	▲	roysting 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The best you could hope for is regulation of the delta or maybe enforcement of markets. The problem is really that such abuse is a kind of debt bondage, you have no other choices but essentially the Roblox company store. It’s a newish form of the same abuse due to the nature of tech, game addiction, and the decay of culture and society; but it’s also why society has not developed a response against that particular practice any more than the corrosive and addicting nature of “games” that are essentially not much different than gambling, only more legal and across a wider user base. I have a theory that much of the gambling industry in the USA has atrophied because the “investors”, aka, the corrupts and rotten people of the gambling industry that are/came from organized crime, have moved into “gaming”. I have specific reason to believe that was a general trend beyond specific cases. For example, people who’s job was to develop extremely addicting slot machine “games” both visually and in their manipulation of addiction patterns, i.e., how to push and milk someone to the limit before they can be pulled back into the gamblers fallacy. But now I’ve gotten way off topic…but not really. It’s all dark, evil patterns; using game addiction to exploit the capture through debt bondage.
	▲	wvbdmp 39 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It would be legal to never pay it out in real money at all, if other marketplaces are any indication. Like “store credit” or gift cards. You can’t get it out of the walled garden and the walled garden unilaterally controls the value.

▲

Heliodex 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible:

The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because

1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee, and the mean price of Robux) which isn't representative of what the average developer is earning and barely appears in the actual cash flow on the platform,

2. it's using the DevEx rates and sales fees from 2021. Today, DevEx rates are higher and fees are lower. Engagement-based payouts are not accounted for here either (which are also much higher than they were in 2021).

3. it's profit, not revenue. The expenses are paid for before the money is paid out. Comparing this to other platforms that offer revenue shares instead is misrepresentative.

The 2nd video hinges more on moderation, showing how children are exploited by bringing them off platform, namely to Discord, where most of the evidence referenced in the video takes place. Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's.

They then suggest Unity as an alternative platform, which I personally think is a much worse option. I used to be more cynical about this and believe the video creators were clearly being pushed by companies that had a financial incentive in the downfall of Roblox, though nowadays I just attribute it to bad journalism and watchbait.

I suggest reading EcoScratcher's brilliant response <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493> and follow-up articles <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4>, of which their 2nd video briefly mentions and claims it misquotes (it doesn't) and misrepresents (it doesn't) their position.

Edits in response to parent comment edits:

> They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden

Specifically through the DevEx programme, Roblox pays a small amount less than it costs to buy Robux to enable them to pay for server upkeep, platform hosting & support, and app store fees (when a developer's game is available through an app store, the app store fees for purchases are paid by Roblox). The rest (any Robux taken out of the economy, including that spent on advertising or first-party avatar items) goes towards platform investment and employee costs.

> This is on top of the 75% cut they take!

The DevEx rates have already been factored into this inaccurate "75%" figure. Taking the DevEx rates out a 2nd time (which, emphatically, never happens on the platform) makes it more inaccurate.

The actual figure, calculated at <https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences>, is 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent, making for a near industry-standard 33% cut. And even this is underrepresentative due to being published before the September 2025 DevEx increase.

▲

Retric 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> making for a near industry-standard 33% cut.

LIES, from that link:

“On average, 67% of all spending in experiences supports OR goes to developers.” Supports here does not actually mean they get paid that money.

Later it mentions the actual money going to developers as: “This enables us to return 28%* directly to the developers.” And yes that 28% includes an asterisk.

That’s a 72% cut to the platform.

▲

bhawks 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You're missing the parts where:

1: Roblox hosts your multiplayer gameservers in its pops for free, with a generous amount of free persistent storage and memory

1.a: Roblox handles scaling and SRE work for you for free - you're not going to be able to support millions of concurrent users yourself at that price point

2: when people buy robux on their phone the app store takes 20-30% of the dollar - but the player still gets 1 robux for each penny.

2.a: your game immediately is playable on iOS, android, PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, questvr, etc etc - no fees for you to get this distribution.

3: Roblox pays out creator rewards - a redistribution of revenue - to experiences that reengage dormant users or are played by paying users even if your game itself has no purchasable items.

Roblox's economic model has a redistributive nature that isn't common in other economies. If you're just looking at the devex rate and not building on the platform you wouldn't immediately appreciate it.

▲

Retric 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

None of what you said counters anything in my post.

> Roblox hosts your multiplayer gameservers in its pops for free > free > no fees

A middleman that takes a huge cut isn’t doing anything for free. Can you at least try and have an honest discussion here.

▲

fragmede 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

72% cut's still pretty steep for all that. Like, these aren't large corporations Roblox is working with, it's kids. It's their platform, and they get to charge whatever they want, and kids can choose not to use it, but 72% still seems exploitative to me. Not a parent tho.

▲

WaxProlix 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Post-appstore cut it's 42%, which is high but doesn't seem crazy. The unsuccessful attempts and idle piddling all need to be subsidized to allow the successes to exist in the first place, and I suspect we all know better than to undercount cloud, hosting, SRE, and staffing costs. They're all ongoing and pretty painful, and getting a shot at creating something with effectively zero downside risk (vs making a game in Godot and building/buying all of the other parts yourself or with staff) will always come with a lower upside.

	▲	Retric 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Post-appstore cut it's 42% That’s ~60% of the post AppStore cut or 42% of the total. If they took 42% of what remained developers would be getting more money than them. Further there’s no App Store cut when people buy this stuff on PC. The platform is ridiculously exploitive.

▲

jameson 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent

This is misleading because for every dollar spent, $0.67 is not what developers get paid. The link (https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences) you referenced clearly says 25% is the "Developer share".

The cost to run the platform is the platform's cost."Platform hosting & support" and "App stores & payment processing fees" should not be considered as developer operational cost

▲

bhawks 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Roblox games are all multiplayer - you get a game server running in their POPs and a generous amount of persistent storage and memory. How is that not a developer operational cost?

Creators don't have to pay any hosting - Roblox will serve their content even if a game doesnt monetize their users for free.

The way this economical is thru the redistribution of games that do monetize their users

	▲	jameson 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Wording Roblox trying to sell is deceiving. Compare with other platforms. Payout model is as simple as platform takes % or fixed fee, rest is dev to keep. There's no verbiage that says dev share is 67% but you they actually get paid less. What exactly goes behind the platform is platform's business, not the user. If developers are getting paid out $0.25 per dollar spent, that's the developers profit and rest is spent running the platform which is Roblox's concern.

▲

Sebguer 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲

vzchmidt0 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Holy hitpiece!

	▲	3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]