Roblox accused of child exploitation

That Roblox has managed to guarantee its publisher stellar income is certainly no secret. In the past, we had already reported the staggering revenues that free-to-play work can generate only in one day. It goes without saying that many have begun to ask themselves questions about the actual effectiveness of the business model of a title which, in fact, is completely free. Among them is the YouTube channel People Make Games, which did a simple research to better understand how the Roblox publisher generates money.

User explains that Roblox averages 200 million of users connected per month, many of which between the ages of 9 and 15. This means that a disproportionate number of players of the title are minors, much more than other free-to-play games on the market. The questions come to light when we analyze the way in which the levels of the game are created: the players themselves make the maps, therefore the same minors who then use them.

As far as the he idea is interesting, and apparently perfect for guaranteeing fun for the youngest, on the one hand we immediately understand the uncertainties by looking at the percentages that small developers can obtain: it is only 24.5%. The situation is weighed down by a very high difficulty in being able to bring your Roblox game to the rankings of the marketplace, which has over 20 million maps, thus forcing young developers to hope to be successful and make money.

Even worse is the payment method, which takes place in Robux: to transform the virtual currency into real money you need to get 100,000, which should be 1000 dollars in conversion. The problem is that by transferring real money through the platform's rate, only $ 350 would be credited. Not to mention that even just being able to receive real money you must have a premium subscription, at a cost of $ 5.

In short, the People Make Games channel has brought to light the clear defects of a system that, at least all 'appearance, it would seem to really exploit the work of often underage players to populate Roblox even more and, consequently, make money thanks to microtransactions. For the moment, we would like to clarify, they are not class action matches or complaints of any kind, but we hope that the situation will be further investigated in order to clarify some points and protect underage users.

If you like the sandbox games like Roblox but you want more creative freedom on your console, you can try Dreams for PlayStation 4.