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.
My kids play Roblox and get often get gift cards from friends for birthday presents etc. I've always hated that a gift card for $20 can't be redeemed for the equivalent Robux. Instead you get options to purchase Robux and the most you can redeem is about ~$16, so then you have left over cash and have to get another gift card. Dark pattern.
Not really. The lower tiers are only less efficient on platforms that require purchase through an app store or other payment processor that takes a large cut. Buying through a gift card or through the Roblox website or non-Microsoft Store PC app gives more Robux for the same price <https://www.roblox.com/upgrades/robux>. These increased rates are also balanced to prevent the lower tiers from being less efficient: the package for 800 goes to 1000, whereas 10 000 goes to 11 000.
There's an option buried somewhere in there to convert left-over real dollars into robux. They don't make it too prominent else no-one would be sitting there looking at the expensive robux options that offer (mostly, but NOT always!) a better exchange rate.
I mean, League of Legends does that as well. For example you can buy X RP, but a champion or skin or whatever costs either less or more, never the exact amount. I have seen this in hell of a lot of places as well.
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
In case you don’t want to watch the video: his answer is yes BUT he needs to figure out how to do it legally in the different jurisdictions that control kids gambling.
And well, and he wants it done for a "educational" purpose without Robux (which I assume is the in-game currency), slightly missing context from your TLDR there.
And then of course he continues (although won't make for a good social media rage point so understandable you didn't provide full context):
> Well, I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal.
> no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the dress to impress predictor where it's not like trying to get kids money or anything like that.
Still, probably what he sees in his mind is "more money yay" as always, he is a CEO of a for-profit company, that's what they do. But still felt disingenuous not to include the full context, doesn't even make it "that much better", he still seems like a scumbag with it.
We can mince his words. In the end anyone who organize gambling for profit is scum. If you do it for charity I know form experience it is massively profitable, but.. I am not sure it is worth it for society.
Hey now, silent auctions and raffles are great for small communities and aren't prone to degeneracy. I know a lot of fire departments that get a majority of their funding from a mix of these attractors and things like cookouts and public events.
I believe it just enables and validate the bigger actors. I do not know where the line should be drawn, if gambling is ilegal you build an illicit trade, if it is legal that trade just become more evil.
We should be careful with gambling especialy when CEOs are talking about it and only caring about the legal frameworks.
The problem once again comes when you decide to hyper optimize for profit. Ada and William will rely on word of mouth, maybe a few posters to drum up attention to their raffle.
Meanwhile large gambling orgs will run ad spots non stop with celebrities enticing you to join their app with free bonus bets and once you're in they will send you daily notifications to nudge you to place "just one more bet".
Easy to see how one would be relatively harmless while the other could cause widespread addiction.
I don't understand why that isn't regulated to hell by all sorts of securities and banking laws, with reporting requirements and background checks and eKYC and mandatory reserves and all that. If the poker chips can be transferred and then cashed, I don't think that's allowed in most gambling laws. That's way past gambling.
Are you using gambling as an example here? I don't fully understand the relation. There isn't any way to gamble Robux for more Robux on the platform, and in the cases which are arguable (such as on-platform item trading), the money must be transferred through Roblox's Developer Exchange programme, which can't be done for Robux not earned directly from experiences.
If I understand what you mean correctly, then any Robux transferred between 2 users wouldn't be able to be cashed or exchanged for fiat for the same reason as above. If they can try to fake it by selling avatar items or experience products to another user, they would immediately be hit with the usual 30% marketplace fee, then have to attempt to get through manual DevEx review with what is very obviously a suspicious set of transactions.
The reason they're not scrutinised by security and banking laws is because the Roblox platform and economic system are carefully designed so that such abuse is neither profitable nor feasible, and as such there's nothing to uncover in any potential investigation.
It’s depressing how many lucrative big tech (FAANG/Unicorn) jobs are effectively scams with business glitter on top. And it’s not always obvious unless you really sit down during the interview process and scrutinize the business model.
> (...) 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.
Sounds an awful lot like the AppStore, to be honest.
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.
> 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.
“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.
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.
Hosting, storage, and scaling aren’t free; costs scale with active users, data egress, and state. In-app purchase splits and platform fees erode margin, so “free hosting” rarely survives at millions of concurrent players. Model revenue net of ops costs and, if needed, use a hybrid backend with careful risk budgeting, auth, and anti-cheat.
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.
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.
> Further there’s no App Store cut when people buy this stuff on PC.
Plenty of PC Roblox users use a version of Roblox downloaded through the Microsoft Store, whom charge a 12% cut on all money spent on gaming apps <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/publish/publi...>. The only place where no app store cut applies is when purchasing Roblox products through the non-Microsoft Store PC app or through the website. Surprise, doing this gets the user ~20% more Robux than buying through an app store <https://www.roblox.com/upgrades/robux>.
If a user buys Robux through a platform where the app store fee isn't charged, then it isn't charged to developers either because the user will receive, and thus spend, more Robux. Creator rewards work differently to ensure that developers owning experiences played primarily by app store users aren't unfairly punished by this <https://create.roblox.com/docs/creator-rewards>.
The default app store cut for most other platforms (Google Play, Apple App Store) that Roblox operates on is 30% (and similar for other distribution platforms, such as Steam), so in the grander scheme 12% isn't even that ridiculous. Including payment processing fees, this averages out to the 22% mentioned at <https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences> for all of Roblox's sales.
> 1 / 0.7 = 43% more money.
Can you clarify where the 0.7 is from? My assumption is that it's from the 30% fee charged by some app stores, though not every app store charges the same fee so not using an average figure isn't truly representative of how much more money Roblox & its developers would actually earn in the event that there were no such fees.
> except it clearly show the kind of Hollywood accounting going on in their other posts.
Do point out mistakes if you see any, I would be happy to correct them (-: I made another comment on how different methods of purchasing Robux affects the value at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340570> if that helps clear things up.
First no mention of the float between purchase of Roblox and transactions, but whatever platforms regularly pull that one.
As to Hollywood accounting. There is no single exchange rate between dollars and Roblox on a platform, a 5$ purchase = 5:4 on App Store, but a 100$ purchase is a 1:1. https://www.roblox.com/upgrades/robux
Of course they ignore this only saying app stores and payment platforms get a 22% cut. Ok sure you have some average numbers of Roblox per dollar and then work out an exchange rate sure that’s reasonable.
But wait on that page: users can now receive up to 25% more Robux when purchasing through gift cards, computer, or web. This extra Robux translates into higher revenue shares on Robux purchased on those channels. (As high as 25% or less than 7%) So now they aren’t averaging the exchange rate instead doing yet another calculation even though a 20$ purchase on their store has a worse exchange rate than a 200$ purchase on the App Store…
Meanwhile an account with 6k Roblox at time of purchase may have been filled by some gift cards and some App Store purchases at different ratios over time while the user is spending money on the platform meaning that 6k doesn’t actually correspond cleanly to either App Store or gift cards Roblox…
But like trust US bro even if we aren’t saying what the actual formula is it’s fine. I can’t help but wonder what the actual numbers look like if such a lopsided deal is still presented with such weasel wording.
> I was being sarcastic with my how ridiculous post.
I see. I apologise for failing to pick that up.
> There is no single exchange rate between dollars and Roblox on a platform
> Meanwhile an account with 6k Roblox at time of purchase may have been filled by some gift cards and some App Store purchases at different ratios over time while the user is spending money on the platform meaning that 6k doesn’t actually correspond cleanly to either App Store or gift cards Roblox
Indeed there is not any single fiat -> Robux exchange rate, nor has there ever been. I don't have any reason to believe this is a bad state of affairs, and you've provided most of the reason for why there isn't. Even on platforms with no app store fees, there will still be payment processing fees, which the larger "better-value" packages exist to reduce these fees to give more money to developers in the case that there's a flat fee for each transaction.
> Ok sure you have some average numbers of Roblox per dollar and then work out an exchange rate sure that’s reasonable.
If the target is to have a consistent exchange rate, maybe this is doable for new Robux entering the platform. Perhaps moreso given that the price of Robux has remained remarkably consistent over the years, in no small part due to the various fees on the platform (mainly the Marketplace fee and experience pass/product fees) protecting it from hyperinflation. Yet there are billions of Robux already in the economy that don't follow these rules.
The Robux spent on an experience is probably earned from the purchase of Robux or Roblox Premium at a variable package exchange rate, also dependent on the currency of purchase. But it could be from Creator Rewards <https://create.roblox.com/docs/creator-rewards>, with the amount differing depending on when the player joined the platform and how many experiences they played that day. Or it could be old Robux from a package with an exchange rate that no longer exists. Or it could be from the Robux already paid out to an experience, which the experience developer decided to spend on another experience, thoroughly blending any previously distinct exchange rates. Or it could be from the legacy pre-2016 currency exchange system and not have any defined exchange rate. Or it could be from a user who previously owned a lifetime Builder's Club subscription, which is now grandfathered in to Roblox Premium, and receives Robux monthly despite only making a one-time payment.
My point here is to demonstrate that attempting to create such a fiat -> Robux exchange rate figure isn't really feasible, or that if one did exist it wouldn't be accurate. Nor would I think it to be particularly useful either; the main exchange rate that matters to developers is the Robux -> fiat one (for how much Robux is going into their experiences and how much they can DevEx from it), which is very clear and very well-defined – since September 2025, it's 0.0038 USD per Robux <https://create.roblox.com/dashboard/devex>.
> even if we aren’t saying what the actual formula is it’s fine. I can’t help but wonder what the actual numbers look like
The chart on the monetisation section of the creator documentation represents the "estimated utilization of each dollar spent in an experience on Roblox". Roblox has calculated this from their total user spending on Robux, the total Robux spent on games (which has also been through the experience pass/product fees clearly mentioned at the bottom of that page), and their total other expenditure (developer costs & support + their own share & investment), because as seen above, they don't have a consistent exchange rate to calculate player purchases based solely on the amount of Robux in circulation.
We don't have to trust them. We can make an educated guess right here based on the analytical data Roblox provides, both for the entire platform & tailored to each experience, the price of Robux, and the DevEx rate. This is far from the data we need to make a precise prediction, though we can still get a ballpark estimate and check it against Roblox's own figures.
The most popular Robux package is the 1000 Robux one. Well, not really, it turns out it's actually the Premium 1000 subscription, which for the same sales price provides 1000 Robux alongside Creator Rewards for the experiences they join for the next 60 days. This could be anywhere from 0 to 3 * 5 * 60 = 900 Robux <https://create.roblox.com/docs/creator-rewards>, alongside a 35% share of what they spent on the package if they're a new or returning user.
The price for Premium subscriptions and Robux packages differs regionally. For me, it's 9.99 GBP for Premium 1000, whereas in the US, where most Roblox users are based <https://create.roblox.com/docs/production/roblox-user-base>, it's 9.99 USD. We'll go with the 9.99 USD figure as it's most likely what a paying user is actually spending and it's in the same currency as the DevEx return rate.
Assume a user that purchases such a subscription then spends all 1000 Robux on one or more passes or products inside of an experience. We'll assume that the creator of the pass/product is the same as the creator of the experience, so the 10% affiliate fee + 60% creator earnings makes for 70% for the experience developer, with the remaining 30% taken by the platform. This could just as easily be substituted for anything else with an equivalent 70% fee, such as Marketplace products at their lowest fee rate, or plugins/paid access priced in Robux (pricing these in local currency wouldn't be subject to the DevEx fees). This deposits a total of 1000 * 70%, or 700 Robux, into the accounts/ownership groups of the experience creators. Assuming the developers immediately take this Robux and exchange it, this will give them fiat. This results in a total of 700 * the DevEx rate of 0.0038, or 2.66 USD. This is profit for the developer.
Now for the Creator Rewards. We'll start with the maximum possible Daily Engagement Rewards of 450 Robux. This goes directly to experience creators, with no Marketplace/product fee, who will DevEx it to produce 450 * 0.0038 = 1.71 USD. This is the maximum possible figure and is almost never actually achieved on the platform. Next up, the Audience Expansion Rewards, which will be 9.99 USD * 35%, or 3.50 USD, if and only if the user is new or returning to the platform.
To sum it up, this is 2.66 from DevEx + up to 1.71 from Daily Engagement + maybe 3.50 from Audience Expansion. The DevEx figure is now correct, whereas the Daily Engagement and Audience Expansion figures could use some work.
From the most recent statistics available, Roblox has 36.7 million paying Monthly Active Users, or Monthly Unique Payers <https://ir.roblox.com/financials/quarterly-results>. However, only about 37.7%, or 13.8 million of these, are Daily Active Users. Thus we'll assume our average Premium subscriber is active 37.7% of the time, or about 11.5 days each month, so 22 of every 60 days. If they play only 1 experience a day, this is 5 * 22 = 110 Robux, or 110 * 0.0038 = 0.418 USD, and if they play 3, that's 3 * 5 * 22 = 330, or 330 * 0.0038 = 1.254 USD. To reiterate where these numbers came from, Daily Engagement is 5 Robux per day for 60 days after purchase, given to each experience played for more than 10 total minutes, with a maximum of 3. We're multiplying this by the DevEx rate as we assume that's what the developer does with it upon reception.
So 2.66 + 0.418 = 3.078 USD for the lower average, which we'll use for these calculation purposes, from DevEx specifically. That's the best estimate I can give with the time I have, the Audience Expansion figure I'll leave off entirely as it doesn't go through DevEx and I can't give any specific statistics for when it happens other than "sometimes".
So, normalised per in-experience dollar spent, that's a rough estimate of 3.078 / 9.99 = 30.8% which is exchanged through the Developer Exchange programme to be given to developers as profit. Compared to the 25-28% that Roblox shows on their Monetisation documentation page (pre-increase, this would be 27-31% now, also given there's some overlap with the Creator Rewards section of the chart which we also calculated the figures for), it's pretty close, without having to trust any of their figures (apart from their own earnings reports, which are heavily scrutinised and legally required to be sufficiently accurate). The remaining portion is split between Roblox and the developer, at a rate probably similar to that shown in the same chart. The same could be done for any developer which has a more accurate figure of Audience Expansion Rewards or Extended Services usage payments to work out more of the areas in the same chart.
> such a lopsided deal is still presented with such weasel wording.
It is very clear to any developer with experience with Roblox's economic system that this isn't at all lopsided, and is in fact fairly balanced. Based on an educated perception of an average user, I've derived similar figures to what is shown on their monetisation documentation, so I have strong reason to believe that they're accurate. If we want our very own estimates, the amount taken by the developer through DevEx is "about" 30%, and the amount taken by Roblox for their own investment is similar. This leaves "about" 40% to be spent on the developers for their own infrastructure. No real developer needs to calculate these figures for themselves, I've just done so here solely for demonstration purposes.
The combined payment of services and profit is the full package of what's provided by Roblox and it would be uninformed to claim it as anything else or try to say that the developer paying for their own similar services would be far more cost-effective. None of this is weasel wording nor exploitative of developers on Roblox's part. It's just a different deal with more supportive ways of earning and different parties paying for the same resources. If one were to prefer this deal, they should use the platform. If they don't, they shouldn't. It's not better or worse for either party, it's just different.
> Or it could be from a user who previously owned a lifetime Builder's Club subscription, which is now grandfathered in to Roblox Premium, and receives Robux monthly despite only making a one-time payment.
> My point here is to demonstrate that attempting to create such a fiat -> Robux exchange rate figure isn't really feasible, or that if one did exist it wouldn't be accurate. Nor would I think it to be particularly useful either; the main exchange rate that matters to developers is the Robux -> fiat one (for how much Robux is going into their experiences and how much they can DevEx from it), which is very clear and very well-defined – since September 2025, it's 0.0038 USD per Robux <https://create.roblox.com/dashboard/devex>.
If there is not some USD -> Robux calculation then there’s no way to say what percentage payout 0.0038 USD per Robux represents.
Ultimately the company can create Robux from thin air, what matters is the total amount created year vs the total money coming into the system each year. IE company could give every player some free Robux it’s just adding 0$ USD -> X Robux to the average.
Which is why the statement about treating some exchanges differently is so sketchy in terms of calculating what percentage a developer keeps.
I suppose it could be considered steep for anyone making a multiplayer game while managing the hosting for themselves on a tight budget. Developers with strong knowledge of monetisation strategies can make good revenue streams from games with self-hosted or self-managed servers. Maybe these developers wouldn't be able to get the same amount of revenue if they used Roblox instead.
What Roblox provides is a platform to upload experiences to with minimal risk or skill required, and services that are heavily subsidised by money redirected from their most successful experiences. The barrier to entry is lowered to the floor, and most kids using the platform to learn game development wouldn't have otherwise learned about it if they had to manage servers, study networking, etc.
Cloud services are a thing, but they're usually expensive and Roblox is paying for them for you. Free cloud services are a thing, but they're usually very limited and what Roblox is providing is essentially unlimited.
For me, the killer app for Roblox is none of this. It's Creator Rewards <https://create.roblox.com/docs/creator-rewards> (previously Engagement-based Payouts (previously Premium Payouts)), a programme where any player that pays for a Roblox Premium subscription (or is a new/returning user and buys anything on Roblox in the future) results in money earned for the developers of the experiences they play. This happens without requiring any monetisation strategy, microtransactions, or paid in-game products to be created by the developer. Nothing similar is provided by most other popular game engines or platforms.
For myself as a smaller Roblox creator with no interest in creating such monetisation strategies on my own experiences, Creator Rewards makes up a much bigger income proportion than it does for most large developers on the platform. Instead of ~10%, it's more like 90% for me, and I suspect that most kids learning to code games on Roblox without having good marketing skills are in the same bucket, and so the cut won't be nearly as steep for them.
> Supports here does not actually mean they get paid that money.
What 'supports' here does mean is that the difference between what Roblox takes as their share to pay their own expenses and what is paid out as profit directly to the developer via DevEx or Creator Rewards, namely incoming app-store & payment fees (paid when Robux goes into the platform, mainly from purchase of Robux or Roblox Premium, in the case of Roblox Premium then Creator Rewards also should be accounted for) and platform hosting & support costs would, on a platform that pays a revenue share instead of a profit share, have to be paid by the developer instead of by Roblox. It's true that developers never receive this money for themselves. However, it would be the same if they developed their experience outside of Roblox – this money to pay for their operating expenditure would come out of whatever revenue share they earn before it becomes profit. I personally feel it's disingenuous to attribute these costs that Roblox pays on behalf of the developer to profiteering or that the money goes towards their own investment. The share that is taken by Roblox for these purposes, and by consequence not directly to developers or support of their experiences, really is 33%.
I'm taking greater pains here to clearly differentiate between the profit-share model used by Roblox and the revenue-share model used by most other platforms in the industry because of the unique way the Roblox platform operates. This is one of the most widely misunderstood aspects of the entire platform, and Roblox also makes this clear on the same page:
> If you develop outside of Roblox, you may have to pay for hosting, servers, moderation, and customer service on your own. You also have to dedicate time to managing these services; on Roblox you can focus on building your experience.
The tradeoff here is not Roblox taking a draconian cut to suck developers into their walled garden so they can have access to Roblox's exclusive platform and market. They're just paying for what the developer would have had to pay if the same experience was on a platform that didn't provide the same services or was selfhosted. This is, in essence, the same normalised tradeoff that most large technology companies make today through cloud services. This makes a lot of sense given that Roblox is using the cloud (primarily AWS) to provide some of these services.
Roblox is extremely clear and accurate about what these costs are and what tradeoffs the developer is making by using the platform, and that the developer is accepting a profit share rather than a revenue share.
The ONLY exception – the sole, singular exception to the 'profit share' rule that applies across the entire platform – is for experiences that surpass Roblox's default service limits (these default limits are never hit for 99.9999% of experiences). This is 30-50 experiences <https://devforum.roblox.com/t/announcing-roblox-extended-ser...> across the entire platform (for context on this number, >200 experiences have reached 1 billion visits), almost all built by huge teams. These experiences need to apply for Roblox's Extended Services solution <https://create.roblox.com/docs/en-us/cloud-services/extended...>, and pay extra based on the quantity of services they use. This is done so Roblox can heavily subsidise smaller experiences on the platform and give them each a better chance at success. It's the kind of thing people advocate for in real societies and I'm glad it exists on Roblox.
> And yes that 28% includes an asterisk.
The asterisk here is that this is the minimum possible profit share – the cost for both Roblox and developers is higher if the money is taken outside of the platform because of the various taxes, currency exchange fees, and transfer fees that need to be paid by Roblox (or by their payment processor, Tipalti) before the profit ever gets given to the developer. These are detailed at <https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/27985018895124>.
I do not work for Roblox. These links are to profiles I control, and I have been a developer on their platform for several years. It's given me great programming experience and a lot of strong connections, helping me kickstart my career pretty well. Overall I've been pretty happy with my 'exploitation'. :-)
Nowadays I work more on open-source Roblox-related libraries rather than developing on the platform itself, as game design and development isn't a strong area of expertise for me.
Fair enough, and you certainly shouldn't feel any shame for it. I apologise if I came across as if I were a shill or paid promoter (not the first time I've been accused as such), I've just been part of this debate for a long time and have written a lot on this particular topic.
> 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
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
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.
The main reason this argument exists is because of Roblox being difficult to compare with other platforms. For the most widely used platforms/engines/storefronts in the industry, the main payout model is that the percentage (for storefronts ~30%, smaller for smaller platforms, for commercial game engines ~5%) or fixed/variable fee (per month or per seat in the client organisation) is taken as payment for using the distribution platform or a royalty for using the game engine. The remaining quantity (60-80%) is given to the developer of the game.
To make it clear, this is not profit! Any money earned after paying the storefront and the engine still needs to be spent on server hosting & maintenance, as well as moderation & legal compliance if a game is popular enough to need it. There also is a risk that the expenses taken away in this area could outweigh the revenue and the developers end up with a loss. Unless all expenses are negligible, the resulting revenue isn't just for the developer to keep.
Roblox pays for an experience's server hosting, maintenance, moderation, legal compliance, discoverability, engine development, app store fees, etc. As results, there is no risk of such loss, though Roblox's operating costs are much higher than a typical game storefront. I would consider these costs as developer operational costs. As far as I can tell, the key difference is the fact that one party is having their costs paid by another rather than one party giving another the money to pay for it themselves. This, to me, is an arbitrary distinction.
Other platforms don't have clauses that need to differentiate between money given to developers as profit and money given to developers as infrastructure/upkeep costs because these other platforms don't deal in the kind of broad integration that Roblox has from the storefront to the datacentres. In almost all cases, the final payout a developer gets from Roblox is pure profit.
The services Roblox is selling might not be using a standard industry pricing model, though it's still very clear and not at all deceptive what the product is the developers are paying for and what the profit share is after operating expenses have been paid for on their behalf.
Your response explains why Roblox might charge such a steep fee but that isn't my issue as I said earlier.
> 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent
Profit given to dev is $0.25 per dollar spent, not $0.67. It's as simple as that. I understand Roblox needs to maintain infra, support regional regulation, etc, but that's Roblox's business operational cost and shouldn't claim the delta of $0.42 is "given to developers" because developers never received it
I'll admit I read deeper into your argument than what you actually wrote.
Comparing with a platform like a digital distribution storefront, the infra & support & other OpEx still has to be paid. Could be argued that the developer has more choice on what to spend it on in the case they are given revenue directly, and in that case it would be their OpEx. That's why I think it's equally reasonable to consider it either as developer operations cost or a business one.
Other platforms routinely state that this money is given to the developers directly, which I suppose is true (given they also often host offline singleplayer games with generally much lower ongoing costs than multiplayer, which Roblox doesn't). Their communities also routinely refer to the money interchangeably as a "profit"/"revenue" cut, which I think is less forgivable and probably an indication of larger terminological clarity problems in the game industry regarding these cuts than just Roblox.
other platforms don't give you unlimited game servers, near-infinite scalability with no initial cost, a potential player base in the hundreds of millions, etc
Yes—the 24.5% figure is suspect because it multiplies three numbers, ignoring how revenue shares vary by tier, price, and region. A credible estimate needs the full sale distribution: tiered take rates, refunds, taxes, and processing margins; a single mean price isn't representative. With transaction-level data, compute the weighted take: sum(take_rate_i * sale_i) / sum(sale_i), or present a bounded range from the observed distribution.
I'd like to hear your reasons for this. From what I see, most discussions on child exploitation on Roblox eventually make clear that the exploitation happened outside of Roblox, most commonly on Discord. Moreover, it's a lot more difficult to censor a few messages talking about alternative platforms than it is to stop a long-running logged chat conversation where child exploitation usually takes place.
Roblox connects them in the first place, what does it matter that it progresses outside of Roblox? That would necessarily be the case if they were to ever meet IRL anyway.
Oh it's difficult for Roblox? A $42billion company? Whose entire business model is based around kids? It's difficult for them?? Boo fucking hoo.
The problem is that the external platforms that the children progress to generally have much laxer protection systems than Roblox does, and thus end up more vulnerable. I just chose Discord as an example as they're the most commonly cited chat platform that exploitation beginning on Roblox ends up on, and they also have problems with their trust & safety team that allows this to occur.
Meeting IRL is a problem as well, it just makes up fewer of the cases.
>The problem is that the external platforms that the children progress to generally have much laxer protection systems than Roblox does, and thus end up more vulnerable.
So? Discord is a problem too. But they aren't finding the kids on discord because Discord is not a social network that links pedophiles with children. Roblox is that.
>Meeting IRL is a problem as well, it just makes up fewer of the cases.
Again... and? By your logic IRL is the problem too because for some reason you think we should not expect Roblox to do anything about the fact that it connects children with pedophiles. But IRL isn't a platform. And if Roblox was IRL, it would've already been sued into oblivion because it facilitates pedophiles predating on children.
> But they aren't finding the kids on discord because Discord is not a social network that links pedophiles with children. Roblox is that.
If being more open and public correlates strongly enough with "links pedophiles with children", then yeah, true. I expect Roblox to do plenty to improve its platform safety with their track record. The recent introduction of their ID verification system to prevent communication between users outside of specified age buckets, solely in the context of improving child safety, is working and significantly reducing cases of child exploitation both on and off of the platform.
> it facilitates pedophiles predating on children.
I don't agree that it facilitates this kind of behaviour, nor does there exist enough evidence to make such a claim. Try red-teaming it: take the place of a bad actor that aims to cause harm to a child on the Roblox platform.
First, the actor will need an account. Next, they'll need to join a game (one with a low content maturity rating) and find a vulnerable child. Of course, they can't actually communicate with each other, so the actor needs to verify their age. For this, they will need either the face of a child, a verifiable ID document of a child, or the ability to defraud the system (likely by forging an ID document).
Assume they can get past that, and are now considered in the same age bracket as the child, and can thus communicate with them. They now need to direct the child off-platform to avoid them being caught very easily by Roblox's safety teams and systems. They won't be able to use a social media link, as the actor isn't permitted to send them and the child isn't permitted to receive them due to them both being classified as minors by Roblox. So the actor will need to use chat or private messages to give them specific instructions, which will of course be heavily censored due to both parties being minors.
Okay, perhaps an easier way would be to have the actor create an experience with some unfiltered messaging system and let the child join them in it (if they don't have parental experience restrictions available, in that case the actor will be out of luck). They'll of course need to get the experience approved with a sufficient content maturity level. However, any unfiltered messaging system is going to be caught quickly by automated checking; all experience communications must go through TextService:FilterStringAsync(). Roblox's text-filtering is industry-leading, and much more protective than almost any other platform that allows free-form text communication.
Regardless, we'll assume that the actor is able to direct the user off-platform successfully somehow. In the case that a member of the safety team does follow up on any chat/message history and finds a Terms of Service violation, they'll request that the alternative platform take action, which will of course have no impact as the communications aren't against their Terms of Service.
> And if Roblox was IRL, it would've already been sued into oblivion
I hope I've effectively demonstrated that it's much more difficult to abuse or exploit users on the platform after recent updates. If Roblox was IRL, they wouldn't be able to implement any of these safety checks or features, and they probably would be sued into oblivion.
>If being more open and public correlates strongly enough with "links pedophiles with children", then yeah, true. I expect Roblox to do plenty to improve its platform safety with their track record. The recent introduction of their ID verification system to prevent communication between users outside of specified age buckets, solely in the context of improving child safety, is working and significantly reducing cases of child exploitation both on and off of the platform.
What are you, their PR agent?
>I don't agree that it facilitates this kind of behaviour.
It doesn't really matter if you agree that it does. It is a fact that it does.
To clarify, no <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47334849>. I don't have any affiliation with Roblox Corporation, and I hope this will be able to make clear to you that my intention is to debate this matter in good faith.
> It doesn't really matter if you agree that it does. It is a fact that it does.
This isn't particularly constructive. Roblox publishes monthly updates on their safety status including statistics on the whole platform <https://about.roblox.com/newsroom>, and more in-depth statistics are also available for specific experiences <https://devforum.roblox.com/t/4028415>. There isn't any similarly concrete evidence to claim that Roblox directly facilitates links between child sexual abusers and children, so the difference between opinion and fact from that side of the argument is moot.
> There isn't any similarly concrete evidence to claim that Roblox directly facilitates links between child sexual abusers and children, so the difference between opinion and fact from that side of the argument is moot
No. Many legal cases were brought against Roblox due to these claims. Roblox implemented their new safety and age checks, and since then, none of these cases have progressed since because the evidence the provided by them for such is no longer relevant.
If there's any such evidence that I've missed, please do bring it to my attention by providing it.
Yup, so many people focused on sexual exploitation that they ignore the traditional exploitation. Doesn't look any better when you realize ALL sexual exploitation is downwind of this financial one.
I'm not sure what it would take and/or how the reaction would be to 3rd party "bank" player(s) inside the game offering real exchange rates sitting in between and suing if Robox killed their account and took their "Robux" with it. Assuming players can exchange Robux inside the game without issue.. I'm guessing they take a cut on all transactions, which is kinda sus/garbage itself.
> 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.
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.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
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.
The point of the discrepancy between purchasing Robux and converting to fiat is to allow Roblox themselves to be able to pay for the infrastructure and support they provide to developers. If the rates were equal, there would be an effectively equal amount of money going into the platform as going out of it, which wouldn't leave enough to pay for their expenses.
This system is known as the Developer Exchange programme <https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/articles/203314100>. The differing exchange rates are a necessary part of how the platform works and should 100% be legal. Analogues to "company scrip" or the like commonly used to unjustify the system are propagated by people that don't have a coherent enough grasp on the platform's economic system.
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.
i picked the 10k robux for $100 package as the baseline - the grey market has never reached that ceiling. no, when cashing out, 1 robux is 1 robux, doesn't matter what currency you paid for it. an exception was if the robux was old, from the period where you could trade tix (free) for robux, but i don't think that applies anymore
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