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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

> But to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux.

It's even worse than that. They sell robux at one rate and cash them out for developers at a very different rate. That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it. So they're taking cuts twice, once on the actual sale and again whenever you try to turn it into real money instead of their scrip.

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> That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it.

Knowing nothing at all about Robux I’m not sure I follow. When you say “$1,000 worth of Robux” here you mean $1,000 USD, right? And not 1,000 units of Robux?

So if I’m a developer on the platform and I’ve earned however many Robux equal $1,000 USD and I initiate a transfer then my actual cash receipts will be ~$350 USD? Am I understanding that correctly? Because that seems nuts. Especially when they’re targeting kids as their primary “developers”.

Yes, you understand correctly. The minimum amount to withdraw is an amount that would cost 1000 USD to buy. When withdrawing that amount, you would get 350 USD

Ah, thank you. One follow-up question: if I don’t cash out my $1,000 USD worth of Robux can I spend them in game at their full $1,000 USD value?

Yes, you can spend it in-game at the full value.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but it's also important to note that not all Robux is equal. There's more information at https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005718246 under section 3.B.

3.B “Minimum of 100,000 earned Robux in your account. In order to protect against money laundering and comply with applicable law, we limit all Cash Outs to "earned" Robux. Robux are considered "earned" if you receive them by receiving payments from a bona fide third party transaction through the Services for (a) virtual items (such as clothing for an avatar) that you created or (b) virtual things in your game or for your game or experience. This means that Robux acquired in other ways (e.g., receiving Robux as part of a membership plan or referral bonus, a purchase of Robux or gift card, or trading/selling virtual goods that you did not create) are not considered "earned". We will determine how much you are eligible to Cash Out by totaling the amount of Robux earned (over the lifetime of the account) and subtracting the amounts previously paid out to you through DevEx;”

Also note that there is a comment in the video that you need to be careful how you spend your Robux for buying development, because if you are not then a cut gets taken, which maybe relates to 3B for the person you are paying?

Ugh. It feels like Roblox is the MLM of gaming.

Do anti trust laws apply in this case? Is there any way to tip the investigating authorities to investigate in the predatory practices of Roblox?

Wow, that is pretty awful.

I believe it is like Forex but with a really bad spread. You can buy Robux for $X USD, but when you sell robux you only get $.35X USD.

> my actual cash receipts will be ~$350 USD?

Yes, ignoring any tax requirements because I'm not a tax attorney. You have to have 100k Robux (Rb) to initiate a withdrawl, that 100k Rb costs 1000 USD (ignoring any bulk deals they may run) to buy if you just purchased it from Roblox, but when you sell it to Roblox for USD you get 350 USD. So depending on how you look at it it is worth either 1k or 350 USD. The article was using 1k as the frame and it's what it would cost you to get that much buying directly so to me that's the most accurate.

That is insane. How are they even getting away with such a scheme? Did they start out at a 1:1 ratio and change it once network effects and lock-in happened.

They get away with it because it's all kids that doesn't know any better.

In literally all other games I know of the ratio is 1:0 since you can't cash out their in-game currency at all. Do you have any of example of a game or a platform where you can sell the in-game currency for the purchase price?

The closest I can think of are systems like Eve, where players can trade in-game currency for game time tokens purchased by other players. 1:1 ratio, but the real money is proxied by game time so that no one can actually remove cash.

Secondlife have a fair spread and is player to player.

They take 3.5% of fee when you are transfering it to USD. (Sellers)

Buyers are charged charged a 7.50% transaction fee with a minimum of US$ 1.49 and a maximum of US$ 9.99 per transaction

------ The current spread on Lindex (SL Forex) is :

BUY: L$242 / US$1.00 (L$14,816 Remaining) SELL: L$249 / US$1.00 (L$29,411 remaining)

Can you transfer it? If so, seems like it would be hard to prevent secondary markets from forming.

No, they don't have a way to move anything other than games. Probably specifically to avoid the chance of a secondary market forming. Trying to police real world trading is hard so they just cut off the chance for it entirely.

https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/203313090-Can-I...

I was wrong there is a trading system this is just about moving items between accounts. Some places implement balanced trade requirements to get around RWT.

You can sort of transfer it via trading. There is a black market that exists, but it is FULL of scammers.

Section 3.F of Terms of Abuse:

“the following will make you ineligible for a Cash Out:” “attempting to exchange Robux for real currency other than through DevEx”

https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005718246

They need a stable-coin.

Sounds like they already have one.

I was thinking something more stable than "buy for X and sell for X/10". Probably something not controlled by Roblox at all (USDC or DAI?). That would be giving up a lot of control, but it would solve the problems they're giving the kiddos.

Yeah Roblox doesn't want that. They want to be able to take a cut every chance they get and also to encourage people to just keep their money in Roblox to keep it moving through purchases so they can keep taking 75% cuts instead of the /only/ 65% they taken when someone cashes out.

Classic case of trying to use technology to fix a regulatory issue. You can’t use technology to fix the fact that Roblox wants to extract value from its creators twice. Either they’d create a crypto currency with the same exploitive structure, or you’d have to fight to legally force them to pay out fairly using whatever crypto they settle on. And by the time you’ve done the latter, you could’ve just forced them to pay in USD.

They can already solve that problem, it’s literally a rate they program. They don’t need a shitcoin to do that.

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