The trouble with Roblox, the video game empire built on child labour
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's like letting kids play with LEGO, and then being able to share their creations online (which is a thing). LEGO is not an empire built on child labor. It's an empire built because kids like playing with LEGO.
Roblox is no different. Calling it "child labor" with all the bad connotations that go along with it is simply designed to grab headlines or spread fear mongering.
That kids can make money, which not all kids want at the ages Roblox is really popular, is a plus. If I could have sold LEGO designs as a kid I would have loved it.
It also lets kids learn a lot of entrepreneurial skills if they have that bent, which I view as a massive plus.
Roblox sells classes as a type of tech education after school activity, where they teach kids to build stuff in their game engine. Parents like it because they are often worried that regular school curriculums don't prepare their kids for a tech centric economy. HOWEVER, the material for these classes are entirely un-subtle about the prospect of making money.
Even worse, the game will guide you to spend in game currency advertising your game.
It's using the same dynamic as a multilevel marketing scheme on children.
Disgusting
Yes, there’s a lot there to be worried about.
If, as a parent, you don't want your kids to play Roblox, don't let them. My kids (and seemingly all of their friends) love it, have played it a lot, have spent time creating and learning how to create, and interacting with other kids.
>It's using the same dynamic as a multilevel marketing scheme on children.
I've never seen where my kids are asked to recruit more kids to follow them and filter money up the pyramid. Maybe you and I have different views on what a MLM is?
Have you even played Roblox? Interacted with the culture of it?
Including BASIC on a Commodore 64 wasn't exploitative. It was a boon, even though it burned millions of kid-hours of labor.
The reason child labor is illegal is not because we’re under the wrong assumption that work experience itself is bad for them.
Roblox is encouraging kids to develop games for a platform they make money off from. They are then paying them with in-game money to compensate them. This looks very much like a subcontractor relationship, but with payment in company store money.
They are also aware that large groups are collecting and behaving like game dev studios, and these new child developers are getting pulled in by those organizing them. There are reports that abusive behavior is occurring in these groups, but because they are not on Roblox, the company sees no problem.
You can still develop software for Roblox and never see a problem. Still, it doesn't mean that problems are non-existent.
But if LEGO started coming with lottery tickets in the kids sets, had adds for exploitative devs that ran real businesses with 7year olds on payroll in “pretend money” that can be exchanged on black sites that LEGO approved of by not taking any actions, well you start to get in to problems.
The thing is that Roblox is not just a unsuspecting pawn here. They are deliberately fostering this, they know about the toxic development environment, so they closed their own forums to avoid legal implications, they knowing promote gambling to kids, they allow sites that exchange in game currency for money because it helps grow their game.
> It also lets kids learn a lot of entrepreneurial skills if they have that bent, which I view as a massive plus.
I’m sure the experience of working as an underage kid for a grown man sexually targeting underage girls will very valuable in the startup world, especially the part where the company gets informed and doesn’t do anything more than the bare minimum because his child labor ring is making them money.
It’s a game for kids, but it’s not made or owned by kids. We can hold them to a higher bar of responsibility.
1. What kind of "lottery ticket" are you referring to? Lottery ticket, by definition requires random element. Does Roblox provide any such mechanics? No. A platform that you can buy and sell is hardly considered "lottery ticket" platform.
2. The forum is closed because of the toxicity of the posts, not because of the development environment. For development communication, they could use Guilded which is owned by Roblox, it's not like there is no legit alternative. If people choose to communicate out of the platform, how do you suppose Roblox to take any actions? They can't even verify if the provided evidence is true or not. Should Google ban a user's gmail account if that user did sexual harassment in their own company?
It does seem like the Roblox ecosystem is currently designed to encourage and capitalize on bad decisions by minors.
It's too bad, I like the idea of an open world that people can develop and extend.
My opinion about what I remember: Completely agree regarding the gambling accusations and terrible exchange rates (definitely a platform issue). The "game studio"/abuse claims seem a little cherry picked and fear-mongering, however (I used to be in a Minecraft community in which some strange things happened. Does it have anything to do with Mojang?).
Essentially, Roblox has made the decision that they are only responsible for interactions that happen on their platform.
Parents may be letting their children develop games thinking that it's a cute hobby. Roblox knows that there are game companies wooing child devs and doing shady stuff that can be potentially harmful to them.
They are not doing anything to stop the practices because they aren't technically on their platform. But the whole interaction is around making games for their platform.
So they may potentially not be legally be at fault, but it does seem that they are making a lot of money, albeit indirectly, from turning a blind eye to companies extracting labor from young people, and in some cases abusing them.
As a parent who is a developer and has kids who love Roblox, I think it's important that the situation be discussed and not swept under the rug. I like the idea of being able to develop and extend and open world like Roblox. I also think that when you market to kids, you have to meet a higher bar of responsibility in protecting them.
These groups are being formed to take advantage of the incentives that Roblox has put in place. They control the incentives. If groups are doing things that will harm people or give the community bad PR, they should change the incentives and/or punish those behaviors.
The onus is on Roblox to make sure their name is not synonymous with child developer sweatshop.