[HN Gopher] Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unpr...
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Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 422 points
Date : 2024-08-19 01:45 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.matthewball.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.matthewball.co)
| amitlevy49 wrote:
| reminds me of the path Minecraft could have taken - they also had
| a massive amount of community developers building servers, but
| instead of encouraging monetization and taking a cut, they banned
| it and cracked down aggressively
|
| Of course, unlike Roblox, Minecraft was profitable
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I appreciate how they left Java edition alone and chose Bedrock
| edition to dump all the MTX bullshit on.
| HaZeust wrote:
| For now.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| i've been thinking that for 10 years. they forced msft
| accounts, which is annoying. other than that, hasn't been
| too bad
| HaZeust wrote:
| So they're empirically making progress towards it.
| zamadatix wrote:
| MTX?
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| microtransactions
| Gigachad wrote:
| What is the Minecraft online experience like these days? I only
| ever hear about people playing self hosted servers with
| friends. Are there still big servers with unique game modes
| kicking? Seems like it would be hard to keep sustainable
| theshrike79 wrote:
| There are "Realms" that are essentially MS/Mojang hosted
| massive servers.
| skerit wrote:
| I've been running my own (not-for-profit, for people over the
| age of 21) server for the past 5 years. We're basically just
| a Vanilla+ server, we have no problems finding new people to
| join (thanks to /r/MinecraftBuddies)
| xrd wrote:
| My kids love Minecraft. They often run a curseforge mod
| (create?) and then open a port so they can play together
| inside the home LAN.
|
| But, I don't really understand how this works, and I would
| love to host it in a way that their cousins in another
| state could join. Do you know how I research this?
|
| I get a bit confused between the curseforge mods, the java
| edition. Should I start by downloading a JAR of the server
| and host it on a cloud server somewhere, and then firewall
| it off to only permit my NAT IP and the cousin's NAT IPs?
| At some point maybe I can run it all within a
| wireguard/tailscale network.
|
| How do I get started in my reading? I'm worried I'll get
| overwhelmed by reading /r/MinecraftBuddies, but perhaps
| that is a better place to ask?
| password4321 wrote:
| This may be enough to get the ball rolling:
|
| https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/post/how-to-set-up-
| and-r...
| HaZeust wrote:
| First off, it's generally a good idea not to port-forward
| your own home router outside of defaults (Even if it's
| just 25565; I created a nightmare scenario for the ISP
| guy back at my parent's house when I was around 13 doing
| this).
|
| There's tons of options to host servers in the cloud with
| near absolute control. I used to use a SaaS company
| called Minehut (https://app.minehut.com/) before I got
| into cloud computing and using AWS EC2
| (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/setting-up-a-
| minecraft... - like $8/month).
|
| If they're interested in learning the nitty-gritty on
| cloud computing and hosting (they probably do if they're
| already learning Curseforge), then get them into the AWS
| method. If you want something one-and-done, opt for
| Minehut.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Minecraft took the moral approach of allowing independent
| servers and mods (in the Java edition.)
|
| Roblox took the scummy approach of monetizing child labor and
| taking a cut.
|
| I am so glad, despite the other bad things Microsoft has done
| with Minecraft, that they haven't taken the Roblox path.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Toxic corporate culture isn't helping
| wavemode wrote:
| > Though Roblox isn't profitable, there are some significant
| caveats to the situation. Over the last twelve months, operating
| cash flow--a far more important measure than accounting-defined
| profits--were $650MM, about 20% of revenue. Roblox has been cash-
| positive for at least twenty-four quarters.
|
| This feels like an example of the phenomenon highlighted in
| another recent post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263855
|
| Namely, that as long as Roblox's cash flow is increasing year-
| over-year, they probably don't care about profit. (And if cash
| flow ever does stop increasing, they can always get back to
| sustainability by pumping the brakes on reinvestment spending.)
| Guzba wrote:
| Roblox is dilution-maxxing, stock based comp is up 10x since
| EOY 2020 whereas revenue is only up 3x. SBC is also ~ 1/3 of
| revenue.
|
| It's pretty cool to get shareholders to pay your employees so
| you can be called "operating cash flow positive" as if their
| comp isn't an expense.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| IDK about the stock but I've interviewed there and their cash
| comp is legit FU money. Am I misunderstanding you?
| Guzba wrote:
| I'm referring to companies financial statements where these
| numbers are reported. It doesn't mean the cash comp isn't
| high or that a specific job offer won't have a lot of cash
| comp.
|
| What it does mean is that, in aggregate, Roblox has issued
| $1B in new shares to employees in the last 12 months,
| diluting shareholders by 4% or so. This is the most
| significant factor making the company cash-flow positive
| while remaining not profitable. It's essentially the same
| as investors putting more money into the business
| constantly.
| endtime wrote:
| I'm a pretty senior IC at Roblox, and my new hire offer was
| 40% cash / 60% RSUs. It's now closer to 33/67 with
| refresher grants.
|
| Roblox pays very competitively (see levels.fyi). The
| apparent strategy is to try to hire lots of long-tenured
| L6+ Googlers (seriously, it's crazy how many former
| Googlers I work with).
| ckdarby wrote:
| Not a good sign for Roblox. Yes, many smart people, but
| they weren't industry changing (Google almost never
| loses) and they didn't get or turned down Google's
| renewal program to retain talent.
|
| Looks like a lot who wanted the high pay, but coast along
| and leverage their past experience to not be dared
| questioned.
| eru wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a fully generalised argument against
| ever hiring anyone who ever worked at Google?
|
| (Btw, some people also leave Google for other reasons.)
| Jensson wrote:
| If you want people who know how to build stable large
| scale infrastructure it is hard to go wrong by hiring
| people from Google. Google rewrites all their products
| all the time, they shut down and launch new internal
| systems just as often as they do external, and it is
| still stable, so the people from there has probably been
| through a few rewrites of some infrastructure part and
| knows what are required for that to work.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| For some definitions of 'stable'. As a user having to
| swap apps and lose functionality randomly makes it all
| feel very tenuous.
| endtime wrote:
| > coast along and leverage their past experience to not
| be dared questioned.
|
| This has not been my experience at all.
| pm90 wrote:
| Having lots of ex Googlers could honestly go either way.
| I wouldn't automatically assume thats a good thing.
|
| A former mid size company that I worked at had the same
| scenario and it was definitely not good. They over
| engineered not just the systems but literally everything
| else, including the promotion process which involved the
| whole horse and pony show and was a constant distraction
| to shipping features while the companys finances
| struggled.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Roblox 's salary ranges from $140861 in total compensation
| ... Levels.fyi collects anonymous and verified salaries
| from current and former employees of Roblox._
|
| does not seem like fu to me
| outside415 wrote:
| They pay very well for senior roles . Like $700k+ tc
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| what's " + tc"?
| dflock wrote:
| Total Compensation
| iosjunkie wrote:
| I'm reading that as $700,000 or more total compensation.
| rvba wrote:
| What's total compensation?
|
| Doea this mean 700k base salary (real cash) + bonus
| (stock options)?
|
| On a side note, do senior engineers get company cars?
| erehweb wrote:
| Total compensation means $700K, some of it being cash,
| some of it being stock. Company cars are pretty rare in
| the US, since basically everyone has a car already.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Company cars are really common in some industries, very
| rare in others. Ive never heard of it in tech, but I know
| people in sales that its just part of the gig.
| Arrath wrote:
| I've not owned a car in 7 years thanks to my engineering
| gig coming with a work truck for getting around
| construction sites. Quite enjoy that aspect of it.
| dnissley wrote:
| Total Compensation is the sum of all the different ways
| you are paid monetarily. This includes, but is not
| limited to: Base salary, Bonus, Equity (stock)
| compensation, Benefits
| acchow wrote:
| Roblox will not be issuing stock options now and likely
| stopped doing so for 4+ years already. The equity
| component of compensation now will be actual stock
| (shares) and not options.
|
| Another commenter mentioned that cash/equity now has a
| 33/67 split meaning $700k tc would likely be $230k cash
| and $470k stocks
| ryandrake wrote:
| Every company pays well when you look only at the very
| top of the engineering pyramid where there are fewer
| people.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Beginning to see how they aren't profitable...
| SkittlesNTwix wrote:
| That's $140k for an administrative assistant. Look at the
| software engineering roles. IC1 starts at $234k and goes
| significantly upwards from there.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > SBC
|
| stock-based compensation
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Glossing at their financial statements, about half of that is
| due to deferred revenue (stuff they sold but haven't delivered
| on, which I'd guess is sales of their currency that haven't
| been redeemed). No particular insight on that either way.
| hansvm wrote:
| > if cash flow ever does stop increasing, they can always get
| back to sustainability by pumping the brakes on reinvestment
| spending
|
| This is a point that's sometimes less obvious with cash flow
| games. It's possible to have positive cash flow even with
| negative unit economics, _even when no economy of scale can
| sufficiently improve those unit economics_ [0], so long as you
| have enough growth and a good cash flow situation.
|
| That's one of the criticisms Uber has had over the years; are
| they capable of sustaining their apparent pre-reinvestment
| profits if they cut out that spending? It's potentially a bit
| different from the Amazon situation because most of the money
| is going straight into speculative bets, acquiring competitors,
| ads, ride subsidies, and other activities designed to lock in
| the market, and it's unclear if that will give them a
| meaningful moat, as opposed to, e.g., capital investments in a
| fantastic, in-house distribution and shipping mechanism.
|
| Can Roblox actually become sustainable by cutting spending
| somewhere?
|
| [0] Imagine a product with -50% unit ROI. For every dollar in
| revenue you have two dollars in guaranteed costs. However,
| suppose the product is paid for fairly early relative to those
| costs (e.g., the business offers a steep discount on yearly
| subscriptions if you pay up-front, the costs are incurred
| linearly throughout the year as the subscription is used, and
| there's a till-the-start-of-next-month plus 30 days lag on
| billing for computing resources used). You haven't actually
| used enough resources to be in the red till 6 months after the
| subscription starts, and you're not actually on the hook for
| that last payment till 7 months have elapsed. If you're also
| able to hit a 2x annual growth rate in your paid subscriber
| count (not realistic for large companies, not uncommon for a
| few years with good product-market-fit in gaming or some SAAS
| products), you've paid for the year's losses before the year
| has ended and still have an extra month at the end where the
| money is sitting in your account. As your company doubles its
| subscribers, your coffers will continue to double as well, even
| if you have indefinitely negative unit economics.
|
| In the real world you usually have smaller numbers being
| considered (smaller losses, less growth), allowing the game to
| go on for many more years.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Isn't uber is profitable these days with no qualifications?
| hansvm wrote:
| Sorry, yes, it's too late to edit, but I perhaps wasn't
| clear enough about "over the years" vs "now."
| golergka wrote:
| If you struck gold, don't stop digging. If you hit growth, don't
| stop reinvesting.
| nradov wrote:
| Any game has an inherently limited and temporary TAM, unless
| you can license the engine to other companies.
| kamikaz1k wrote:
| Why is that true of games but not other businesses?
| nradov wrote:
| Almost all games have an inherently limited lifespan. How
| many games released 20 years ago are still selling well
| today? Games aren't like other software where you can keep
| enhancing the product and keep getting new sales. Thus
| games developers have to focus more on maximizing short
| term revenue rather than building a sustainable business
| around particular products.
|
| There are a handful of counterexamples like Madden NFL but
| only very few.
| lodovic wrote:
| That's really not the case. Check the wiki page for the
| top games in 2005. Many of these games are still around
| in an upgraded form.
| teamonkey wrote:
| In most cases, a re-released game is an entirely new game
| SKU using the same IP, just as a movie remake is a new
| movie based on a previous one. And similarly, once
| released, most rereleased or remastered games have a
| short tail.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Maybe not 20, but still long time CS2(CS:GO really like
| Windows 11) launch 2012, DOTA 2 2013, LoL 2009, World of
| Tanks 2010. And more. All still making money and
| surviving...
| lupusreal wrote:
| In 2000, a 10 year old game was positively prehistoric,
| some unrecognizable thing only distantly related to the
| current forms.
|
| In 2010, a 10 year old game was quite old, but a
| recognizable ancestor of new releases.
|
| In 2020, a 10 year old game was kind of old. You could
| tell the difference if you had high end hardware and were
| tuned into certain details, but the new games were
| essentially the same kind of stuff as the 10 year old
| games.
|
| The pace of advancement is slowing and game design has
| reached a mature plateau; games having greater potential
| to last longer each year. If a game can last more than a
| few months then there is a reasonably good chance it can
| survive for several years at least (presuming the
| publisher doesn't decide to cut it off to sell a new
| version, which is a popular tactic.)
| dartos wrote:
| What's TAM?
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| total available market, the size of cake you split with
| your competitors
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Total addressable market
| warkdarrior wrote:
| TAM = total addressable market, meaning, the market size
| for a product or service (typically assuming one company
| owning the whole market)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market
| Tossrock wrote:
| Roblox is not a game, and indeed makes its money by giving
| its engine to developers for free, then taking a cut of their
| earnings.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Future growth won't keep the lights on, unless you sell part of
| your future growth, and you probably won't get a good deal.
|
| Which is why large companies are so ideally positioned to do
| internal ZIRP funding of growth...except they are often
| culturally unable to do it.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Given that they are paying their employees with shares (53%
| of employees compensation are share, only 47% in cash),
| future growth is indeed keeping the light on.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| This feels like reading finance fan fiction (which it kind of is,
| given the author's profession?) and uses a _lot_ of text to reach
| the part that lays out the actual problem: the average operating
| costs based on daily active users are $18 per user per quarter,
| and the average amount made is only $13. so either operating
| costs need to come down, charges need to go up, or they need
| (more, stable) external revenue (e.g. ads).
|
| This article tries to, foremost, sell you on the idea that its
| author is someone you should listen to for financial analyses.
| fl0id wrote:
| Yeah. Pretty sure most of the numbers mentioned are irrelevant
| in this case.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| You're right. What else? Roblox games absolutely utterly suck.
| Little else matters.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| 50+ million daily active users pretty much instantly
| invalidates that claim (hell, even a million daily actives
| would have, AAA games dream of these numbers =)
|
| It's not for you and me, we just see a garbage "game", but
| holy shit is there a large demographic that loves what Roblox
| gives them.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Just because something that sucks is popular doesn't
| invalidate the claim that it sucks (and Roblox does suck
| hard). Junk food is terrible for your health and is also
| very popular.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Except "bad for your health" is an objective biological
| fact, whereas saying something sucks is entirely
| subjective, so that argument too is invalid from the
| outset. You think it sucks, vastly more people don't.
| You're welcome to your opinion, but that's all it is.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Except the detrimental impact of Roblox is objectively
| and widely documented in various links in this thread and
| elsewhere on the inter webs. Kids don't think junk food
| sucks, I guess millions of parents trying to keep them
| healthy are just going by their "opinions" as well?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Right, and now you're pretending that you said it was
| bad, not that it sucked.
|
| Of course it's bad: it's factually and objectively bad,
| there's plenty of investigative journalism that
| unequivocally demonstrates it's absolute garbage and
| enables the worst kind of crimes the US can imagine. But,
| and this is important: that has nothing to do with
| whether it sucks or not. In fact, it "doesn't suck"
| enough for millions upon millions of people to use it
| every single day. Roblox is terrible BECAUSE it doesn't
| suck: the whole reason it's so bad for humanity is
| PRECISELY BECAUSE it's awesome enough for a large enough
| demographic to keep using it, while being opaque enough
| to the demographic that should be correcting this
| behaviour to not get it so that Roblox can keep getting
| away with it.
|
| The absolutely biggest problem with Roblox is literally
| that it _doesn 't_ suck. If only it did, kids would stop
| playing it!
|
| Roblox has, objectively, a terrible effect on the world.
| This is demonstrably true. It's not an opinion. But
| saying it sucks is. Words matter.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Has the definition of "sucks" drifted? When it came up as
| slang in my childhood, it basically meant "not cool /
| unpopular to associate with". Roblox seems the exact
| opposite.
| evanmoran wrote:
| Yes, I'd say "sucks" means "bad" more than uncool.
| Clearly using stuff that your friends think is bad is
| immediately uncool so I can see how these can seem to
| mean the same thing :)
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > Roblox games absolutely utterly suck
|
| There are hundreds of millions of users a month who strongly
| disagree with you.
| jandrese wrote:
| $18/player is a staggering operating cost. I feel like there
| must be some easy optimizations to be had that would greatly
| reduce the overhead. Roblox games are user made! They aren't
| building the most sophisticated game engine. Sure there are
| server costs, but that should be pennies. Where is all of that
| money going?
| hipadev23 wrote:
| It's unclear to me how $18/player was arrived it. It's not
| correct. We can simply look at Q2-2024 pg. 7 [1]:
|
| * Total expenses: $1,131,492,000.
|
| * Average daily active users: 79.5M, or $14/DAU/qtr.
|
| * MAUs are closer to 375M, QAUs likely somewhat higher let's
| say 400M?
|
| * So if we're talking about how much they spend per quarter
| per unique player, it's closer to $3.
|
| * Last quarter they brought in $955M in bookings (revenue is
| pointless to look at due to the required accounting
| practices)
|
| [1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001315098/785c
| b7e...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| TL;DR; if you discount the way their accounting is done (which
| artificially lowers their profits), it's not profitable because
| Apple and Google are eating 30% of their sales on their App
| stores.
| echelon wrote:
| No innovation / monopoly tax levied on real innovation.
|
| The DOJ needs to crack down on Apple and Google.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think you missed the news...
| snihalani wrote:
| Where is the money coming from if they are not profitable?
| harry8 wrote:
| It's an accounting trick.
|
| 1) Make tons of cash.
|
| 2) Invest the cash back in the business.
|
| 3) Record this investment on the financials as an expense.
|
| 4) The expenses inflated by investment spending means you
| declare no profit and probably pay no tax on that profit you
| just hid.
|
| The alternative is:
|
| 1) declare profit
|
| 2) Pay tax on it
|
| 3) Reinvest what's left after the taxman took a cut.
|
| Which would you choose if you were raking in loads more money
| than it was costing you to run the business and you had growth
| opportunities?
|
| Should this be a choice?
|
| If not, how would you "fix" it?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Are these troll posts? "Investing cash into a business" is an
| expense, no different than any other business expense.
| harry8 wrote:
| Advertising, to grow sales can be expensed, for example.
| Buying new plant, not so much.
| tr_user wrote:
| https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-
| accountin...
| Nursie wrote:
| I mean, it's not even profit hiding is it? Corporation tax is
| pretty openly an incentive for companies to invest in growth
| and people, rather than either sitting on cash or paying out
| to their owners.
|
| It's entirely normal and above board. Desirable even.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Sorry but I'm an accountant and I can't abide such a terrible
| and incorrect description of how this works. Dunning Kruger
| in full effect on HN today.
| harry8 wrote:
| Shame you couldn't manage an explanation and just went with
| abuse.
| blindriver wrote:
| I came in to say exactly the same thing. What OP is saying
| is literally a lie, accounting is much more sophisticated
| than that.
| harry8 wrote:
| Everything on this earth is more sophisticated than a 4
| point thumbnail sketch of a general principle.
|
| You also have not managed any explanation at all, which
| is a shame. Could be interesting.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Care to explain what's wrong/inaccurate with it?
| svnt wrote:
| The accountants can't be bothered because your comment isn't
| even using basic terms correctly.
|
| Your comment suggests that reinvested cash is being "hidden"
| as expenses, but in reality, these reinvestments are usually
| recorded as capital expenditures (CapEx) rather than
| operating expenses (OpEx), depending on the nature of the
| investment. While CapEx can be depreciated over time, it is
| not typically expensed immediately in the way operating costs
| are.
|
| The implication that companies can completely avoid taxes by
| reinvesting is misleading. Even though reinvestments may
| reduce taxable income through depreciation or other
| deductions, this is a legal and common accounting practice,
| not necessarily an attempt to "hide" profits. There are also
| tax laws in many jurisdictions which limit the extent to
| which such deductions can offset income.
|
| Your understanding also conflates profit with cash flow.
| Profit is an accounting concept that reflects the net income
| after all expenses (including taxes). Cash flow, on the other
| hand, reflects the actual cash generated by the business.
| Reinvesting profits does not "hide" cash flow but rather
| allocates it to future growth.
|
| Companies don't simply choose between declaring profit and
| reinvesting to avoid taxes. The decision to reinvest is often
| driven by strategic goals, such as expanding operations,
| developing new products, or acquiring other businesses.
|
| Reinvestment reduces the company's taxable income and thus
| the taxes owed, but it does not eliminate taxes or "hide" the
| profits. The company benefits from reinvesting by potentially
| generating more revenue in the future from the new product,
| which should generate more tax revenue down the road instead
| of restricting growth now.
|
| Here is an approximation of your comment translated from
| accounting into software development, minus the part where
| you misunderstand essential terms:
|
| > It's ridiculous that software developers waste so much time
| writing tests for their code. If the code is written
| correctly in the first place, you wouldn't need tests at all.
| Instead of wasting time on tests, developers should focus on
| just writing perfect code from the start. It's clear that the
| whole idea of 'unit testing' is just a way for developers to
| justify their jobs and take longer to finish projects.
| Shouldn't we just hire better developers who don't need to
| write tests?
| harry8 wrote:
| This is the whole point:
|
| When you're expanding rapidly and want to grow market share
| above all. Growing that market share with customer
| acquisition is economically an investment in the future
| revenue of the business. Advertising is one example of how
| this might be done.
|
| You can classify investing in your business through
| advertising spend as an operating expenditure for
| accounting purposes. And potentially for tax purposes as
| well.
|
| Now your large positive cashflow does not generate an
| accounting profit. Because you spent it on something that
| won't be capitalised on the balance sheet.
|
| There it is, the answer to OP's question.
|
| Note you can't do that buying property plant and equipment
| (but some structured finance and leasing people might like
| a word - airlines don't own their aircraft.)
|
| Perhaps you can think of some examples where you've seen
| huge, massively cash-flow positive businesses in our field
| that weren't generating accounting profit. Facebook,
| Amazon, ..?
|
| The only other way you could sustain repeated loss ina new,
| growing business is capital raising.
|
| Someone else on the thread mentioned Aswarth Damodoran's
| "Free cash flow to equity" IMHO it's worthwhile avoiding
| jargon when explaining things simply and concisely.
| rented_mule wrote:
| Free cash flow and GAAP profit are not the same thing. Jeff
| Bezos explained Amazon's commitment to this idea 20 (and 27)
| years ago when many were saying that Amazon could never turn a
| profit, yet they were already generating enough cash to
| initiate big bets like AWS and Kindle...
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312505...
| modeless wrote:
| The bigger question about Roblox is how and why they got their
| special treatment from Apple. The whole concept of Roblox is in
| blatant violation of Apple's App Store policies. I believe they
| are significantly shielded from competition because who else can
| get that kind of ongoing and reliable relief from Apple's
| famously picky and capricious App Store reviewers? Maybe Roblox
| is happy to pay Apple their 30% in exchange for that protection.
| And this is not a small matter: Roblox is a public company worth
| 25 billion dollars based in no small part on this special
| treatment. The SEC ought to be investigating this.
| eru wrote:
| Why the SEC specifically? Are you suggesting investors are hurt
| by this?
|
| If you want any part of any government to investigate,
| shouldn't you suggest some agency that's supposed to be working
| for consumer welfare or so?
| modeless wrote:
| If there is any kind of undisclosed arrangement between Apple
| and Roblox then there's a clear case for securities fraud
| IMO. There's a huge risk to Roblox were any such deal to
| unravel, both from the threat of competition being allowed
| and from the possibility of Apple starting to enforce their
| published policies on Roblox. For public companies, risks
| like that must be disclosed.
| chii wrote:
| > undisclosed arrangement between Apple and Roblox then
| there's a clear case for securities fraud IMO
|
| not all undisclosed arrangements constitute securities
| fraud - only those whose intent is to defraud investors do.
|
| As for anti-competitive measures, the investigation ought
| to be from the consumer protection agencies, like the FCC,
| or from the justice department regarding anti-trust.
| modeless wrote:
| You are right that not all undisclosed arrangements are
| securities fraud. However, an undisclosed arrangement
| _that represents an existential risk to the company were
| it to ever change_ would be securities fraud. You can 't
| go public with huge undisclosed risks like that.
| impulser_ wrote:
| They disclose risks under Risk Factors in their quarterly
| filings.
| modeless wrote:
| Obviously, like all public companies. But have they
| disclosed the specific risk that Apple might stop giving
| them special treatment and stop protecting them from
| competition or start enforcing the policies they violate?
| I believe I read their S-1 some time ago and didn't find
| any mention of special treatment from Apple. It's
| possible they started disclosing it later, but even that
| would still expose them to shareholder lawsuits from IPO
| investors.
|
| Edit: They are also vulnerable to insider whistleblowers.
| Any whistleblower would be eligible for rewards of 10-30%
| of any penalty ultimately assessed by the SEC. The SEC
| has paid tens of millions to single whistleblowers in the
| past.
| jameshart wrote:
| Apple can and does change even the written terms of
| AppStore service on a whim without warning. The risk that
| Apple suddenly changes its unwritten enforcement policy to
| your detriment is not that much different than the risk
| that they just change their Ts and Cs entirely. Apple's
| walled garden, Apple's rules.
|
| ANY publicly traded company that relies on the Apple
| AppStore for a significant portion of its revenue has an
| implied 'so long as Apple continue to allow us to do this'
| caveat hanging over their revenue forecasts.
| saint- wrote:
| Curious, why is Roblox in violation of Apple's App store
| policies?
| modeless wrote:
| > Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not
| read or write data outside the designated container area, nor
| may they download, install, or execute code which introduces
| or changes features or functionality of the app, including
| other apps.
|
| Roblox is in clear violation of this clause, downloading and
| executing entire games written in Lua. Apple does have an
| exception to this policy for HTML5 games and streaming games
| but Roblox does not qualify because it is not HTML5 and not
| streaming. Many people have had their businesses destroyed
| for far less serious violations of App Store policy.
|
| I believe there are also other rules against putting an app
| store inside your App Store app. Clearly Roblox is an app
| store for games, with its own currency. Apple has not been
| reasonable on this point with other companies: they
| originally didn't even want to allow cloud game streaming
| apps to play multiple games in a single app. Their ridiculous
| plan was to require a separate Apple App Store listing for
| each game that a streaming platform supported, and they only
| relented under pressure after Microsoft went public with
| their complaints:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/11/21433071/microsoft-
| apple-... And after that debacle they explicitly added
| exceptions to their policies for game streaming apps. They
| have never done so for Roblox-like apps, which are still
| plainly forbidden under their publicly posted policies.
| chad1n wrote:
| You can make the same argument about Minecraft since
| servers download you texture packs, data packs or skins. I
| don't think that Apple should stop these apps, that's their
| game model.
| modeless wrote:
| Roblox games are not comparable to texture packs or
| skins. They are complete games with assets and executable
| code, or at least the fancy ones are. Maybe data packs
| are more similar but it seems like Minecraft for iOS does
| not support them.
| darknavi wrote:
| Minecraft Bedrock (iOS and all mobile/console versions)
| do support assets and executable code as well.
|
| They are called "Behavior Packs":
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/minecraft/creator/document...
| modeless wrote:
| Seems like they use JavaScript and this might qualify for
| the HTML5/JavaScript exception that Apple has. Also it
| seems like they are a lot less powerful than Roblox
| scripts, and there isn't an in-game store allowing you to
| purchase them without using Apple's in-app purchase flow.
| darknavi wrote:
| For transparency I lead the Minecraft Scripting team.
|
| You can purchase content that runs behavior packs from
| the store, but it's all through soft currency purchased
| with per-platform stores.
|
| Link to some of the content:
| https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/catalog
|
| As for the "not as powerful as Roblox", we're working on
| it :)
| modeless wrote:
| Neat! And you can do those purchases inside the iOS app?
| darknavi wrote:
| Yup! Soft currency (Minecoins) travel with you with your
| Microsoft account and can be used on what ever device you
| sign into (including iOS). You can also purchase more
| Minecoins in the game its self each platform.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| also https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Redstone
| _compute... ;-)
| vintermann wrote:
| Speaking of hated network effect companies, that's the
| fandom wiki roach motel.
| jorams wrote:
| Here's the same page on the better wiki:
| https://minecraft.wiki/w/Tutorials/Redstone_computers
| tasoeur wrote:
| It's a gray area. If you look at apps like Snapchat,
| instagram and TikTok, they all have this concept of
| filters/lens/effect which are effectively <8mb bundles
| running JavaScript / lua scripts for visual effects and
| whatnot (see lens studio, meta spark and effect house). The
| key seemed to be to not use any JIT compilers and make sure
| it does not change the code of the app itself but mainly
| just act as a static runtime / engine for the effect.
|
| One app effectively violating that policy is WeChat with
| their mini programs, but they get away with it due to the
| fact that iOS without WeChat would be doa in China.
| modeless wrote:
| It's not gray. Your examples do not violate policy
| because Apple has an explicit exception to allow stuff
| like that when specifically running in WebKit's
| JavaScript engine. That's why they use JavaScript, to
| qualify for the loophole. But as I said, Roblox does not
| use JavaScript or WebKit for running games and does not
| qualify for that exception. There is also an exception
| for "plug-ins" which seems like it could cover the case
| of camera filters, but definitely would not stretch to
| cover an entire embedded app store full of complete games
| purchased with a third-party currency.
| tasoeur wrote:
| Going back to my prior example, selecting an AR
| Effect/Lens on TikTok/Insta/Snap and is kind of akin to a
| mini app store if you think about it:
| https://sh1ftdigital.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_8904...
| modeless wrote:
| If you think about it, a scrollable list of tiny free
| camera filters is not that similar to an enormous
| searchable catalog of complete and individually
| purchasable games.
|
| Apple clearly doesn't think these are the same thing
| either as demonstrated by their explicit policies
| allowing the former and their attempt to block cloud
| streaming apps from providing the latter, later turning
| into explicit policies specifically allowing it for cloud
| streaming apps and _only_ cloud streaming apps, _not_
| Roblox-like apps.
| Drakim wrote:
| Maybe to us technical folks, but for everybody else on
| the planet it's night and day different.
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| What's doa?
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Dead On Arrival
| actualwitch wrote:
| Have you heard about codepush? Apps are routinely ignoring
| this requirement and apple does literally nothing, as
| recently discussed on hn:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41146779
| brunoarueira wrote:
| It's allowed if the app doesn't change the main purpose
| based on the review process! In the past, I'd worked with
| a company which makes whitelabel apps for churches and
| does use codepush to fix bugs and implement small
| improvements, so through codepush the company can not
| change the app to be about casino games.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Is any Lua run on iOS devices at all? The majority of the
| Lua code is sent to the server, which then tells the client
| what to do.
|
| There are Lua scripts intended to run on the "client" (such
| as camera scripts) but I was under the impression (I could
| be wrong) that even they were converted by a server into
| instructions sent to the client, not run as a Lua scripts
| in a local Lua interpreter on your iPad.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Surely the user interface runs locally ? Or has Roblox
| been careful to ban interface development in LUA ?
| teamonkey wrote:
| My assumption is that the server either directly tells
| the client what to display or it converts the "client"
| code to some kind of bytecode that doesn't require a lua
| interpreter.
|
| Or perhaps the lua code is sanitised by the server such
| that the lua code run on the client is not the same as
| submitted by the user. Many App Store games do have an
| embedded scripting system of some kind, just not one that
| can run code directly inputted by an end user.
| Rohansi wrote:
| Bytecode or not it is still running code inputted by an
| end user on iOS devices.
|
| The whole point of Apple's rules here are to force app
| functionality and features to be reviewed when submitting
| an app to the app store. Anybody can go and make complete
| games ("experiences") in Roblox and they will immediately
| be available on iOS without being reviewed by Apple. It's
| a full game engine that lets you write custom code, use
| custom assets, and replace everything. Take a look at
| Frontlines
| (https://www.roblox.com/games/5938036553/FRONTLINES) as
| an example of a game that looks nothing like Roblox.
|
| If you were to release an iOS app and push new features
| and content to it OTA then you risk being kicked off the
| store if you get caught because you bypassed their review
| process and the store page may not be accurately
| describing the app anymore.
| a2128 wrote:
| Roblox actually changed their wording in response to
| Apple's policies at some point. They no longer call them
| "games", they call them "experiences"
| thomas34298 wrote:
| I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The app
| stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow pornographic
| material, yet the app is full of it. Once you're big and
| important enough, the rules mostly don't apply for you anymore.
| Of course, if they tried to circumvent the app store tax
| directly within the app, there would be consequences, but as
| long as Google/Apple can make a profit, it's okay it seems.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Can an aggregator/distributor be liable for user created
| content? You can find porn in Reddit or Google Search and
| these apps are still in the app store so I don't think they
| are getting any special treatment.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| There are some protections for hosting illegal data (real
| illegal, not EULA-disapproved), but they tend to go away if
| the host does any kind of editorializing (like showing the
| data through an algorithmic feed).
|
| Google Search is different yet, since they aren't the
| primary host.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Even Tapatalk had to filter out "adult" forums - and it's
| just a client to connect to 3rd party forums.
|
| On Twitter you can find actual porn straight up.
| XlA5vEKsMISoIln wrote:
| Didn't work out for Organic Maps. Merely allowing to access
| map data makes you un-family-friendly. Or at least that's
| what we can assume, since Google won't indulge in
| specifics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41272925
| hoseja wrote:
| I don't think I've ever actually seen any porn on eXtwitter.
| (Well, on main.)
|
| Why was a perfectly fine Unicode Blackboard X filtered out of
| my post.
| kevindamm wrote:
| HN strips out emoji and other non-language characters, may
| be related to that
| Quarrel wrote:
| > I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The
| app stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow
| pornographic material, yet the app is full of it.
|
| Reddit is allowed too. imgur, snap, etc.
|
| I assumed you're fine as long as your raison d'etre wasn't
| porn and the content was user generated / supplied.
| judge2020 wrote:
| To add, Tumblr was lambasted for them not properly policing
| their porn[0], accidentally allowing CSAM, and Apple being
| the one to inform them of this error. it's what led to them
| banning all 18+ content, arguably sealing the platform's
| fate of irrelevancy.
|
| 0: https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-
| app-...
| abirch wrote:
| I thought Yahoo's acquisition was what stopped their 18+
| content
|
| But perhaps the most catastrophic misfire of all was the
| notorious 'porn ban' that came into place on December 17,
| 2018 - a policy partly driven by a US law [1] that made
| websites liable for sex trafficking that might take place
| on their platform. The ban covers 'female presenting
| nipples', genitals, and any depicted sex acts. Until
| then, the platform had remained a refuge for a devoted
| community of users, but this decision affected swift and
| dire consequences.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-sold-to-wordpress/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSTA-SESTA
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| And who determines that reason? Twitter seems to work fine
| with no restrictions but Discord basically has to lock down
| any server marked as 18+
|
| (regardless of the content of 18+. Don't know how mobile
| has had 15 years to do granular content warnings based on
| decades of other medium but app stores still assume 18+ =
| porn).
| Quarrel wrote:
| > And who determines that reason?
|
| the exact language of their T&Cs?
|
| Not to be too flippant, but we can guess all we want, but
| the individual apps signed up to specific terms at the
| time, and you can almost guarantee that Apple (or anyone
| else) reserves a lot of leeway to themselves as to how
| they enforce or otherwise police those T&Cs.
|
| All the conjecture in this bit of the thread seems a bit
| pointless given none of us are reading it, let alone
| reading the specific bit that whichever app in question
| might be held to.
|
| Hence my start to it, as well, these seem to be allowed
| ...
| ec109685 wrote:
| Roblox gets away with this due to the framing that it's a
| single platform with many different experiences:
|
| "To start, Roblox is not a single game. It's a platform that
| hosts millions of user-generated experiences, such as
| historical roleplaying games or virtual labs to simulate
| physics experiments. Because of the diversity of content you'll
| find on Roblox, we use the term experience to refer to what you
| play on Roblox."
| https://create.roblox.com/docs/education/resources/frequentl...
|
| From the epic trial, Apple addressed why it allows them in a
| pretty tortured manner:
| https://www.polygon.com/22440737/roblox-metaverse-game-exper...
|
| I think the best argument is that you're a single player across
| games, kids speak of "playing Roblox", there are portals
| between worlds, etc. This comment makes the point that all
| games feel the same:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41287780
|
| It's pretty different from what Epic wanted to do by offering
| completely separate games in their App Store without paying
| apple commission.
| modeless wrote:
| How were they getting away with it for the 10 years before
| that when they were still calling them games and were still
| clearly in violation? It's pretty clear that the name change
| is just a retconned excuse and has nothing at all to do with
| the real reason.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Well, they actually _did_ get banned from the App Store at
| one point, but successfully appealed.
|
| Here's a key part of this: Executives also have kids and
| they want to play Roblox on the go!
| modeless wrote:
| Yes, favoritism by Apple execs is the most plausible
| explanation to me. I wonder if Phil Schiller owns any
| RBLX shares...
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| All this happened when Roblox was private, I don't
| believe there was/is any monetary interest beyond
| whatever executives had from their employers. If it's
| anything like the story for getting Roblox on game
| consoles, then it really is executives caring about what
| their kids also care about, and that gives RBLX a huge
| leg up.
| modeless wrote:
| You may be right, but Apple execs are accredited
| investors worth tens to hundreds of millions and as such
| are easily able to invest in private companies, so that
| doesn't rule it out. Nepotism is another possible
| explanation if there are any connections there. And while
| it wouldn't be illegal while they were private, it would
| still be immoral, and it would become illegal when not
| disclosed as a risk at IPO.
|
| It could also further jeopardize Apple's standing with
| regulators, since they profess to apply their rules
| fairly and equally without secret deals (which is
| transparently ridiculous but Tim Cook said it in
| congressional testimony so it would be perjury if proven
| wrong).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Even Apple acknowledged this when a marketing head, Trystan
| Kosmynka, expressed "surprise" that Roblox was approved for
| the App Store in 2017 in an email. Kosmynka then defended
| this decision during the trial by saying Apple did not
| consider Roblox to be a place where people go to play games.
|
| >"I look at the experiences that are in Roblox similar to the
| experiences that are in Minecraft," Kosmynka said. "These are
| maps. These are worlds. And they have boundaries in terms of
| what they're capable of."
|
| Wow. The damage control was even worse than I thought. So I
| guess the new UE Fortnite Network would be approved no
| problem since "it's not a game, it's a UGC platform" (not
| that Epic cares about app stores anymore). Because Epic isn't
| making the games anymore. Just offloading the labor to others
| a LA VR Chat.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > I believe they are significantly shielded from competition
|
| I think you're onto something. All of the nieces and nephews of
| mine that play Roblox do it on an iPad.
| samatman wrote:
| This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what an App Store
| policy is.
|
| You're reasoning as though the policy is for Apple to follow.
| No. It's for developers to follow. Apple can put whatever it
| wants on the App Store, the policies are guidance for
| developers to give them a fighting chance that their apps will
| be accepted. If Apple wants an app, it'll go on the store. If
| they don't, it won't.
| modeless wrote:
| So Apple's decisions are arbitrary and capricious? Tim Cook
| testified to Congress that Apple's policies "are transparent
| and applied equally to developers of all sizes and in all
| categories". Did he commit perjury?
| jrm4 wrote:
| There's something weird and sad about Roblox for me as an old-
| timer who still has silly dreams about free/open software
| internet utopias for just fun? There's so much creative
| (programming etc) energy in that place and, for what?
|
| short rant over
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| In a lot of ways it reminds me of BW/War3 custom maps.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Sorta, except that everyone is racing for money.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Turns out supermarkets don't take pull requests, and not
| everyone wants to live in a community farm, doing NGO like
| work.
|
| Or placed in a less snarky way, capitalism spoils ideals.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Evil capitalism where people want to live nice and system
| provides means to do so.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I haven't said otherwise, only that people coming from
| FOSS like backgrounds might not get what they want.
| treyd wrote:
| I've had this half-idea for recreating something like Garry's
| Mod in Godot for a while now. It seems like something someone
| would have created by now but it doesn't exist yet for whatever
| reason.
|
| Like, a framework for building first-person FPS-ish game modes
| and handling all the asset management, sync, etc, like GMod
| being built around Source does and just letting developers
| build the game modes without worrying about the annoying tricky
| stuff.
| billyjobob wrote:
| Like The Mirror? https://www.themirror.space/
| treyd wrote:
| This is interesting, but
|
| > allowing you to own everything - unlike Roblox,
| Unreal/Fortnite, and Unity.
|
| makes me worried it's not in the same spirit that GMod is
| in. Specifically the use of the word "own" there.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I took "own" here as "you have control over the entire
| stack". Seems like the idealized version of Garry's mod.
| Garry doesn't even own all the assets in Garry's Mod.
| MaPi_ wrote:
| That seems to be exactly what Garry (the creator of Garry's
| Mod) is trying to do with s&box https://sbox.game/
| treyd wrote:
| They're using Source 2, which isn't foss.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I get you perfectly (I play Roblox with my kid almost everyday)
| but I have another opinion. When I think about what it
| accomplished, I think Roblox is pretty amazing; actually one of
| the most amazing software ever made. It accomplished in
| practice basically what lots of people have been trying to do
| for decades, since the MUDs from the 70s, and what Zuckerberg
| wasted billions of dollars with. Sure, most of its content is
| total crap, but the same could be said of many other great
| things (the internet for ex.) If you dig a bit you can find
| really nice puzzle games ("obbys") for example that require two
| or three people to collaborate, and there are _actually_ kids
| there waiting to collaborate with you. So the point is, yes it
| needs active filtering, but the engagement of players and
| developers is unprecedented and pretty exciting.
|
| My main criticism right now is this idea of jumping on the LLM
| buzzwagon. It's sad that they don't understand that their
| success is 100% human-driven, and that using LLMs beyond QoL
| stuff will be their downfall. The moment we get fully AI-
| generated games and worlds, it'll be over.
| itomato wrote:
| "...is total crap"
|
| Why are people OK with this? Because there's a place to spend
| "money" inside this virtual space?
|
| The paradigm could be replaced with literally anything, yet
| the prevailing mode of "play" in these spaces is convert
| meatspace credits to in-game "virtual property"; costumes,
| weaponry, etc.
|
| These kids arent' making anything, they're aphids.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Nice reference to aphids (which are used like cows by ant
| colonies). So kids make games which require currency from
| other kids?! Why would they do that? Do they get a cut?
| crim1 wrote:
| Yes. Like $105 for every ~43,000 robux (~$350-$490,
| depending on the tier of robux purchased) players spend
| in your game. Not including the money you get for free
| just by retaining players with a Roblox subscription in
| your game.
|
| Top Roblox devs are making millions of dollars. [0]
|
| [0] https://okmagazine.com/p/teen-ceo-brandon-
| millionaire-throug...
| watwut wrote:
| Top Roblox devs are adults.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yup. I imagine those millions are the ones I see on
| LinkedIn offering 50-60k for a "Roblox game developer".
| Even in a UGC platform, the biggest money makers are the
| ones doing it as a legitimate job.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Why are people OK with this?
|
| Because like it or not, this space has basically become a
| "third place" for many kids. In that regard it has to
| compete with console games about as much as a lonely arcade
| machine in some old bar does. They aren't coming for the
| games alone.
|
| >The paradigm could be replaced with literally anything,
| yet the prevailing mode of "play" in these spaces is
| convert meatspace credits to in-game "virtual property";
| costumes, weaponry, etc.
|
| Yup, but as we know from growing up and seeing the rise of
| social media: the best, sleekest solution isn't always thr
| Victor. It's all about network effects.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Looking at the founder's bio, he _has_ kept trying to do this
| since at least the 1980 's.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| My kids have recently become interested in Roblox. I
| installed it on the PS5 but honestly I don't get the appeal.
| The games we tried are of very low quality. It doesn't have
| the complexity or interest of Minecraft. It doesn't have the
| polish of Astro's Playroom (or Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart,
| which they are too young to play). It reminds me a little of
| Fortnite's non-battle-royal games, but much worse. Can you
| give some advice on how to approach it as a parent? I suspect
| there are some good games in there that we missed.
| auadix wrote:
| I play with my kid and my advice is to not look for a game
| in Roblox, but to play Roblox as it is. It's not going to
| be about the quality, it's not polished and there are
| probably 8 game types to it: Clicking, Obby, Tycoon,
| Survival, Farming, Sports, Shooter and Story.
|
| All the games in one of those categories are a variation of
| itself, some are better balanced and the grind is fair,
| some will reach a point which the kid will give up and some
| have a very interesting trick that will soon be copied by
| all the others.
|
| Why do we play it? For him, because it's familiar, he knows
| what to do and how to master it. For me, mindless gaming
| that I don't have to put any effort to it.
|
| The time that I spend with him is very valuable, and there
| is a reversal here because its me entering to his world and
| not him to mine. He feel proud when he is better than me
| into something, the obbies are challenging even for someone
| who spent his life playing platform games, I just can't
| make the jumps and he can, so he comes to recue me taking
| my iPad and going for it.
|
| I do enjoy some of the games, Islands is very well done but
| the devs quit it, Wacky Wizards is very quirky and with
| endless potion combinations, Death Bumper Car is really
| crazy and frustrating, but fun to play together, The Space
| Simulator is a space mining that is really hard in some
| places and interesting challenge... there is a lot to find.
| Sometimes I just can't play the game and I will tell him
| that I didn't like it, he feels defeated because he was
| trying to invite me in to his world and I shut it down,
| sometimes I just suck it up and play the bad game, I think
| the important part is to remember that this is a world that
| they have more control than you, let them lead. :)
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Your take sounds about right. It's minigames. You can play
| an exact equivalent minigame in minecraft 98% of the time,
| but it's easier just to pick one ready from the browser and
| get started immediately with people doing the same and
| nothing else. If I was a parent I 'd try to skim ideas from
| Roblox yourself, make it happen for your kids and their
| friends in Minecraft, join yourself, talk about it, record
| yourself playing it, share it with strangers; for full non-
| Robux-driven wholesome non-mindless experience.
|
| Essentially Roblox store is built upon outsourcing game
| making to kids and so the games themselves are appealing to
| kids, but also they carry as much merit as a 4th grader can
| put into them.
| maxsilver wrote:
| It's less about the games being high-quality, and more the
| games being community-created and user-driven.
|
| Roblox isn't a competitor to Astro's Playroom or Ratchet
| and Clank. Roblox is like, the next generation of
| ActiveWorlds, or like a user-generated version of Uru. It's
| a 3D Chatroom that solved the problem of _" what do you do
| when people want something to do, while standing around
| chatting in the 3D chatroom?"_ by saying, _" we'll give a
| bunch of tech tooling to the players, and maybe 0.1% of
| them will do something interesting with it"_. And that's
| enough.
|
| The closest PS5 equivalent would be something like, the
| Dreams game from Media Molecule.
|
| ----
|
| As a parent (with a kid, who loves Roblox), I totally get
| it. I _lived_ on ActiveWorlds as a kid, I saved up paper-
| route money to pay for my own "P-10 World" back in the
| day. The next summer, I used paper-route money to buy a
| "catch-a-call" device, so I could be on ActiveWorlds via
| Dial-up without tying up the phone line from my parents. I
| had an entire alternative identity and active social life
| on there in middle-school & high-school. I would bicycle
| all the way downtown to local community college, to take
| VB6 classes with college students over the summer, to learn
| how to program against their ActiveX control API to write
| my own ActiveWorlds Bot, to interact with folks in my
| private ActiveWorld. I ran an ActiveWorlds "TV Station" (in
| AW, you could set a JPEG image to 'refresh' regularly like
| a webcam, and I would point the URL at a custom PHP script
| I ran on an old cPanel-based shared hosting plan, that
| would rotate JPEG images out in appropriate order every 1
| or 2 seconds, in pre-programmed ways, so you could have
| 'shows' broadcasting, and you could switch to 'live'
| (screenshots) on 'air' and such)
|
| I treat Roblox similarly for my child. (They can play on
| it, but never use real names, reveal no personal
| information, there's some time limits to ensure you don't
| go crazy, talk through appropriate content and what stuff
| warrants adult intervention, etc. And gently prod them
| that, if they're ready to deep-dive on Roblox, all the
| tools people use to make their favourite "obbys" are things
| they could actually learn and write themselves, with some
| time and patience and practice...)
| simpaticoder wrote:
| It sounds like the platform really matters for Roblox, if
| it's that much of a creative tool. BTW the first time I'd
| heard of "ActiveWorlds" (or Uru) was just now from your
| comment. And it also sounds like my kids don't have the
| problem Roblox solves! (And I don't really want them
| standing around in a chat room looking for things to do;
| absent a compelling reason to look at a screen, I
| encourage them to do real-world things.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| > It's less about the games being high-quality, and more
| the games being community-created and user-driven.
|
| There's also the socialization part. My kid's friends are
| all on Roblox. They don't get together IRL because a lot
| of them moved away when their parents had to move, and
| others just live way across town and "meeting at the
| park" is so 1980s. When new kids come to school, they
| share their Roblox and Fortnite usernames and that's
| where they hang out after school to socialize.
| Biganon wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning ActiveWorlds. The French
| speaking version (Le Village 3D) was extremely important
| to me in my teenage years
| axus wrote:
| Looking at the pages and pages of crap games in Roblox is a bit
| reminiscent of a long list of horrid software on a dialup BBS.
|
| Everything popular seems to start as a clone of non-Roblox
| games, and then goes off on it's own direction from there.
|
| Not Roblox's fault, but it's not a good place for kids to make
| friends; any kind of contact information must be censored. They
| can play there with friends made elsewhere.
| consf wrote:
| It's deeply monetized, which can feel at odds with the ideal of
| a free and open digital space
| andyferris wrote:
| > Unlike other social platforms, Roblox's revenue is nearly all
| via user spending rather than advertising. As such, Roblox pays
| 25% of its revenue to Apple and Google (30% of transactions on
| those platforms) whereas Facebook, Snap, et al pay effectively 0.
| Note that Facebook, which has structurally lower costs to service
| users than Roblox and is far more mature, has an operating margin
| of roughly 40% -- if the company had to pay out 25-30% first, it
| would never have "tech company" profit margins, let alone profit
| dollars.
|
| Wow. I've never though about this before, but this is an awful
| second-order consequence of the high app store fees set by Apple
| and Google. It essentially incentivizes App makers to treat users
| as products not customers!
|
| (Not too surprising for Google, but certainly goes against
| Apple's public stance).
| eru wrote:
| Well, the app stores could fix that by also demanding a cut
| from ad revenue.
| pxue wrote:
| Well they did and Facebook refused. Hence the "do not track"
| feature.
| bredren wrote:
| Apple did have conversations about how to profit from
| Facebook's apps.
|
| But there's no evidence that the App Tracking Transparency
| was a direct result of failure to come to terms with
| Facebook on some type of revenue share.
|
| Even if a portion of the comprehensive set of protections
| included in ATT was specifically to target Facebook, Apple
| did not use it to punish Facebook.
|
| Apple's customers did.
|
| Because when given a choice, 85-96% of all people across
| the entire planet did not want Facebook tracking them.
|
| If one was to speculate on The decision-making behind
| platforms' leadership, it follows to consider Google's
| reluctance to follow in the footsteps of Apple with ATT due
| to google's own direct reliance on ad revenue.
|
| Apple is no saint, it's made many compromises on user
| privacy in the face of business.
|
| But there's no doubt in my mind that the position of
| selling products and services, including the distribution
| of others' software is by far more consumer friendly than
| the quiet identification, data collection and targeting of
| individuals.
| andyferris wrote:
| Haha, I am imagining the Facebook response to this! :)
|
| In any case I suspect that is too much overreach and would
| only attract more attention from regulators.
|
| Two wrongs don't make a right, and this is fixing the wrong
| problem. (The problem being that once I purchase a portable
| pocket computer, I want it to be mine to use how I want with
| whatever software I want without asking the manufacturer for
| permission).
| philistine wrote:
| Apple is already collecting a 30% cut when you're buying
| ads on an iPhone:
| https://www.facebook.com/business/help/704141224249342/
| eruleman wrote:
| Unreal. Apple's gonna take a 30% off everything they
| possibly can.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Well, yeah. It's probably the major reason Apple can
| afford to design and print their own chips. You don't get
| rich unless you are greedy.
| danielheath wrote:
| I also hadn't thought about it before, but when you present it
| that way it's dazzlingly clear - thank you!
|
| Get money from your users: 25% platform tax
|
| Get money from advertisers: No platform tax
| guiambros wrote:
| More like:
|
| - Get money through the platforms' users and their payment
| methods, without having to worry about asking for users'
| credit card information, billing, chargebacks, or individual
| invoicing: 25% platform tax.
|
| - Get money through your own means, similarly to what Amazon
| did with Kindle books: no platform tax.
| CPLX wrote:
| Not sure what you're talking about, you still can't buy
| kindle books on iOS apps.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Get money through the platforms' users and their payment
| methods, _without having to worry about_ asking for users '
| credit card information, billing, chargebacks, or
| individual invoicing: 25% platform tax.
|
| Fair enough. So I guess _if I don 't mind worrying about_
| all those things, I can simply reach my own agreement with
| a PCI-compliant payment service provider to charge
| customers through my app directly and therefore avoid that
| 25% platform tax, right?
|
| ...right?
| croes wrote:
| You should definitely worry about cashbacks.
|
| You refund 100% but Apple and Google keep their share.
| ainonsense44 wrote:
| Plus the advertising network takes its own tax, right? Then
| it goes into the same or similar pockets again anyways.
| Animats wrote:
| The ad platform takes big fees.
| bemmu wrote:
| I'm a full-time developer of Roblox games.
|
| It's wild that Apple or Google make as much from my games as I
| do. Obviously it still works out well enough since I'm not
| abandoning the platform, but strange anyway.
| itake wrote:
| why is it wild? Microsoft keeps 30% of xbox store sales.
| Apple, Google, MS, etc. play a massive part in attracting
| users to the platform.
| ninepoints wrote:
| Console user spend and user acquisition costs are not even
| remotely similar to the corresponding values in the mobile
| ecosystem.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Wild meaning unfair, perhaps?
| bemmu wrote:
| Absolutely, it's better to have a smaller slice of a bigger
| pie, which is why I'm OK with this.
|
| What I meant by "wild" is that in this case, the dev of the
| game is the one receiving that ~30% slice. Apple+Google get
| about the same as the dev does.
| justinclift wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard provide entire global payment
| platforms, yet only (generally?) take a small fee per
| transaction.
|
| Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every
| transaction.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| > Apple seems to do a lot less
|
| Not suggesting that this warrants a 30% cut, but unlike
| payment gateways Apple also provides discoverability and
| distribution.
| justinclift wrote:
| > also provides discoverability and distribution.
|
| Apple seems to be _incredibly poor_ at discovery, so that
| 's not a point in their favour.
|
| Distribution could be done by any number of other CDNs,
| as will likely be done by the new EU based App stores.
|
| What's the bet those won't be charging ~30% transaction
| fees to cover things? And they won't even have the same
| scale as Apple. ;)
| tjoff wrote:
| They lock their users in a walled garden where only they
| can provide discoverability and distribution.
| cenamus wrote:
| But doesn't that have way more to do with (EU)
| regulation? I thought that they take quite a significant
| chunk in the US
| justinclift wrote:
| That a bit unclear. Are you meaning Visa/Mastercard
| charge less in the EU due to EU regulations?
|
| If that's what you're meaning, then I simply don't know
| as I've not heard that before. :)
| nottorp wrote:
| Someone in the food chain does take less in some EU
| countries. Not all.
|
| The commissions are capped by law in some parts, but not
| others.
|
| As a small sample, in RO i think a large store chain pays
| like 0.5%. The consequence is credit card reward programs
| are either non existent or something like 0.1% cashback.
| The other consequence is you can pay by card almost
| anywhere.
|
| On the other hand I've been to NL and small stores simply
| did not take Visa/MC because it was too expensive for
| them. Guessing the visa/mc charges weren't capped there.
| com wrote:
| They're all covered by identical regulations.
|
| Culturally, though, small retailers may still believe
| that credit card fees are higher than they actually are.
|
| They may be concerned about refund and chargeback
| processes.
|
| Or, their gateway either cannot offer credit cards on
| their POS terminals for technical or compliance reasons,
| or the retailer simply hasn't enabled the payment
| methods.
|
| It's not regulation in NL that blocks small retailers
| from taking V or MC.
| nottorp wrote:
| High fees is what they told me :) But then I was that
| weird tourist with a Visa and a MC...
| ccozan wrote:
| Not sure if you actually been to RO but every small shop
| has 3-4 payment terminals, each bank branded, and based
| on the card they use a different terminal thus ensuring
| minimal charge or even 0.
|
| In DE or NL, you operate via an intermediary ( like
| payone, etc ) and a single terminal. Maybe here comes the
| difference.
|
| PS. Larger shops/markets ( like kaufland, carrefour, etc
| ) have also just one, but I guess they negociate the fee.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Not sure if you actually been to RO
|
| No, I was born and live there.
|
| My groceries kiosk has just the single terminal.
|
| Where I shop, only Dedeman, Altex and the eMag showroom
| still ask me what bank is the card from, and they're
| nowhere near small...
|
| Edit: Hmm. Cozy? Small world...
| ccozan wrote:
| ha, Torp! Nice!
|
| But yes, is a mix/jungle of options. But I find
| fascinating that paying with cards has a far more
| adoption than some places in western world.
| nottorp wrote:
| They made it compulsory by law to accept cards for B2C if
| you sold more than like 15k eur/month. But I think you
| were already in DE.
|
| I _think_ that law also cames with caps on card charges.
| Or at least there was so much competition between banks
| for the new market that purchase charges dropped on their
| own.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Not really. They still take "only" up to 1-2% in the US
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Steam also takes 30% despite all platforms it operates on
| being entirely open. So it doesn't seem to be that
| unreasonable
| justinclift wrote:
| Steam reportedly puts in a bunch of effort to earn it
| though.
|
| Whereas Apple's relationship seems more
| predatory/antagonistic (at best).
| dagmx wrote:
| You think Steam puts in more effort than providing
| graphics APIs, system frameworks for everything from
| networking to controller handling, UI libraries,
| educational sessions and security critical updates?
|
| Like, one may argue that the 30% isn't valid (and it's
| 15% for the majority of devs) but to say Steam does more
| is absurd.
|
| I'm curious if people who hold this opinion have actually
| been involved in the process of releasing apps on either
| platform.
|
| And to be clear, I know valve does contribute to gaming
| on Linux but that's single digit market share, so is
| definitely a far cry from the 30%.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I mean, Steam did release the Steam Deck, so yes it
| provides everything you described.
|
| I'm not sure why we are focusing on the 30%, the problem
| is that facebook, a very rich company, get charged 0.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Steam Deck is mostly standard Linux (although most stuff
| Valve does is gets merged into the kernel/free packages
| etc. so it's hard to disentangle the these, but not
| exactly comparable to building a platform almost from
| scratch)
|
| > the problem is that facebook, a very rich company, get
| charged 0.
|
| Just like every other company using the same business
| model (i.e. ads instead of IAP)?
| justinclift wrote:
| > building a platform almost from scratch)
|
| Are you meaning iOS there?
|
| Of so, please remember they pulled significant amounts of
| code from Open Source Software in order to lighten their
| development load. :)
| dagmx wrote:
| But they also contribute significantly to that same open
| source so how do you balance that out?
|
| Again, I'm not saying they're above criticism but I am
| saying this feels like a very one sided presentation of
| facts.
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... how do you balance that out?
|
| Not sure what you're asking?
|
| "Significantly" doesn't seem to be correct. At least, not
| for the (GPL licensed?) stuff that's been stuck on
| ancient versions for many years.
|
| Though they have (from my rough memory) made some
| contributions back to FreeBSD where it seemed to make
| sense.
|
| All that aside, the point is that they didn't build their
| platform "almost from scratch".
|
| They assembled a lot of pre-existing pieces (many OSS),
| then built on top of that. It's a common way of doing
| things.
| dagmx wrote:
| What I'm suggesting more than asking is, when you say
| that open source has lifted their development burden, it
| makes it sound like it's a unidirectional taking.
|
| And sure, some might be freeloading. But they also do
| contribute quite a bit to open source.
| https://opensource.apple.com/
|
| I know your response was more to correct the "developed
| from scratch" but I still think it's important to note
| that it's not unidirectional. Even in the development of
| their own platforms, you can find old Usenet discussions
| of how they were feeding things back. I think they could
| have gone their own route but Unix compatibility was
| important.
|
| The history of Next, Apple, and the open source community
| is very intertwined and unfortunately cannot be reduced
| so easily.
| dagmx wrote:
| Literally the last section of my comment addressed that.
| It's a single digit market share. How does that play into
| windows/mac sales then? And what about the decade+ of
| sales before the SteamDeck?
|
| And in that case, no, Valve didn't provide all of that.
| They provided some of it, but AMD did the graphics
| driver, arch did the OS. Valve still offer less for the
| 30%. I'm not trying to diminish the effort they put in,
| but just pointing out the totality of what each store
| offers behind it is very different.
|
| To your last point, that's not really relevant to my
| point. I'm just pushing back on the other person about
| whether Apple or valve offer more for the 30%. You're
| interjecting a completely different argument.
| actualwitch wrote:
| > valve does contribute to gaming on Linux
|
| They only do it because they are painfully aware their
| rent-seeking behavior is entirely at whims of ms/apple
| and they want to have some moat.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| What do you mean by "only"? You can really expect
| companies to behave irrationally. Pretty much every
| company funding Linux development do it because they
| expect this to benefit them somehow.
| actualwitch wrote:
| "I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the
| PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier
| PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will
| be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then
| it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against
| that eventuality." - Gabe Newell
|
| https://www.neowin.net/news/valve-co-founder-
| windows-8-is-a-...
|
| Take a wild guess when they started pushing steam on
| linux, and which version of windows introduced a store.
| dagmx wrote:
| Yeah, the existence of SteamOS, Steam Machines and
| eventually Proton were a hedge against Microsoft's
| perceived shift into locked down distribution .
|
| I think a lot of folk have a hard time reconciling that
| there may have been non-altruistic intentions behind
| something that is enjoyed today.
|
| Similarly, Steam itself was a hedge against physical
| distribution to cut out the middleman. It wasn't
| originally envisioned as a store for anyone but Valve.
|
| But here we are today, and both have positive side
| effects that actually have outlived the original design.
| sitkack wrote:
| Those APIs are _paid_ for by the owner of the phone.
| Charging developers (and the consumer) 30% to allow
| someone to distribute an app is utterly ridiculous.
| Framing it like Apple built these things and you are only
| paying 30% is in deep sycophant territory.
| dagmx wrote:
| 1. You assume they're paid for by the owner of the phone.
| That's not necessarily reflective of a companies income
| stream. Microsoft also charge for commercial access to
| their SDKs for example, and every company has different
| business models.
|
| 2. Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn't just
| distribution? The majority of steam games do not use
| Valves tooling for matchmaking or their engine.
|
| 3. Can you go without name calling? Or are you that
| childish that it's the only way you can feel like you
| have the upper hand in a conversation?
|
| 4. I'm not defending a 30% cut and already mentioned
| that. I'm saying that saying steam offers more for the
| 30% is absurd.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Or are you that childish
|
| :(
|
| > Microsoft also charge for commercial access to their
| SDKs ...
|
| Is that a new thing, or just for specific products?
| Asking because I've previously used some of their Azure
| SDK stuff before and that didn't seem to have a charge
| for SDK access.
| dagmx wrote:
| Microsoft have charged for non-individual use for longer
| than they've had the free version. I should have perhaps
| used commercial non-individual use rather than just
| commercial.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/visual-studio-
| enterprise-s...
|
| Meanwhile Xcode is free and has been since the Project
| Builder days on Next.
|
| I'm not personally saying one is better value or not.
| Just that the companies have put different values on
| different parts of their developer flow for many decades
| now, and one can't simply say that the money comes from a
| single source.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Did MS ever make any significant amounts of money from
| selling VS/MSDN compared to how much the availability f
| 3rd part software benefited Windows sales/increasing
| market share?
|
| Also you didn't actually necessarily need it to publish
| software on Windows.
|
| While if you want to develop for iOS (and even macOS
| these days) you still need to pay the $100/300 yearly fee
| (which is there entirely for gatekeeping and not an
| actual income stream).
| dagmx wrote:
| To your question, that's exactly my point. Without access
| to a companies books, you don't know how they fund
| things. Take this as my response to your other reply as
| well.
|
| You don't know if Microsoft chose to fund certain parts
| of their development with the profits from VS enterprise
| or not. None of us do.
|
| Even, for arguments sake, if we say that they could make
| it all free and still afford it, it would still affect
| priorities of what gets developed.
|
| Again, I'm not saying one is right or wrong. I'm just
| arguing that it's a lot more nuanced than any of the
| comments here suggest. Nobody has enough facts outside
| the companies bookkeeping and leadership to make these
| hardline claims.
| Sylamore wrote:
| Xcode is free if you don't consider the platform cost of
| needing to have only apple hardware to use it, however
| (generally) the hardware is cheaper than what MS charges
| for MSDN/VSE.
| dagmx wrote:
| In the politest way, that is exactly my point.
|
| Different companies fund things differently and put up
| different barriers.
|
| Again, for the umpteenth time, I am not making a VALUE
| judgement. I am just saying they all do things
| differently and without knowledge of their books, nobody
| here can say what funds what internally
|
| That's it.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > That's not necessarily reflective of a companies income
| stream
|
| It is. Anything MS or Apple ever charged for SDKs and
| development tools was just peanuts compared to their
| other income streams.
|
| At the end of the day open consumer platforms benefit
| much, much more from maximizing the amount of 3rd party
| software that's available on them than from anything
| else.
|
| > Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn't just
| distribution?
|
| Discoverability, consumer protection, relatively very
| good UX etc. of course that is much more valuable to
| smaller/medium developers than to companies like
| Epic/EA/etc.
|
| Even the App Store and the 30% cut was a great deal for
| developers and consumers when it came out initially
| compared to all the alternatives available at the time.
|
| The issue is that at this point Valve/Steam has to
| actually provide real value to consumers/developers and
| innovate. Apple can just do nothing and collect free
| money (consequently the App Store itself sucks immensely
| as an app/platform) since they don't have to compete with
| anyone anymore. What are you going to do? Buy an Android?
| : D
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > You think Steam puts in more effort than providing
| graphics APIs, system frameworks for everything from
| networking to controller handling, UI libraries,
| educational sessions and security critical updates?
|
| Sure. But this has absolutely nothing to do with
| fairness.
|
| They charge 30% because they can and because developers
| have no other options.
|
| Anyway consumers paying for HW/OS are the ones that are
| funding the development of those tools/apis etc. Apple,
| MS, etc. provided all of that stuff for free (or a
| nominal fee) for decades because they always needed
| software developers more than the other way around. Any
| platform without third party apps would be mostly
| worthless.
|
| Apple is in an interesting spot because when they
| released the app store initially 30% was a very good deal
| compared to how much it cost to publish apps on other
| phones.
| dagmx wrote:
| Without an insight into how a company pays for its RnD
| internally, one cannot conclusively say that the
| consumers are the ones who pay for the HW/OS.
|
| I'll also reiterate that the majority of devs pay 15% now
| on the App Store. Not 30%.
|
| And then this gets into every other market choice as well
| if we're saying all the stuff is paid for up front by the
| consumer.
|
| What does Steam offer for its 30%? The majority of games
| on steam don't use any steam services unlike apps on the
| AppStore. Valve doesn't do educational sessions for
| developers or provide support for system issues. So is
| Steam not a terrible deal at double the cost?
|
| But then we get to consoles, where the consumer not only
| pays for the device but also pays a subscription for
| online play. If we say that Sony/Microsoft are funded up
| front by the consumer and then recurring for online fees,
| then what the value to developers for the 30% (in
| addition to devkit costs)?
|
| I'm not defending apples cut here. That's a subjective
| argument that goes nowhere, but I am saying: if we say
| Apple's cut is unfair, why are we okay with the others
| that are arguably more? And why do people defend the
| other marketplaces ?
| vasco wrote:
| Effort has nothing to do with it. There's two things that
| matter, supply and demand.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| There is competition in that space though. A PC game
| developer can self distribute, can use alternative
| storefronts (e.g.: GoG, Epic), etc.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Exactly, but paying 30% stills seems like a very good
| deal for most developers.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| As shown in Roblox case, it obviously is not. Especially
| as Apple also wants to take a cut from in-app sales.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Well it is for most developers on Steam.
|
| Small/medium developers of course benefit much more from
| the increased reach/discoverability and PC games have a
| very different business model than mobile ones of course.
|
| But even for iAP, yes 30% is very step but as a consumer
| I'm significantly more likely to spend money on an app
| published by a non-major company if I can use Apple as an
| intermediary (refunds, subscription management, no cc
| hassle etc.) I don't think I'm unique in that way so
| there is some values we'll just never know what % it's
| actually worth until Apple stop restricting third part
| stores.
|
| Large companies with a "sticky" user-base of course gain
| absolutely nothing from it.
|
| Not that I'm trying to defend Apple, on the whole they
| hardly offer anything useful in return for the 30% to the
| developers at least because they don't need to. The App
| Store as an app/platform is a complete pile of worthless
| garbage compared to Steam..
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > But even for iAP, yes 30% is very step but as a
| consumer I'm significantly more likely to spend money on
| an app published by a non-major company if I can use
| Apple as an intermediary
|
| Such an odd take.
|
| I begrudgingly use a Macbook for work - that is the
| laptop my employer issued for me. I pay for IntelliJ,
| because I think it is an excellent IDE.
|
| Following your logic, Apple should somehow bite 30% of
| that yearly subscription, when in truth, I am a customer
| of JetBrains, not of Apple.
|
| Your logic would be fine if, and only if, there was the
| option to buy the game outside of the AppStore, and you
| still chose to buy it through the AppStore. That proves
| you prefer going through Apple's channel and are their
| customer after all.
|
| In the Steam case, especially for small/medium
| developers, there are multiple options to buy their games
| - I generally prefer GoG.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > Following your logic, Apple should somehow bite 30% of
| that yearly subscription, when in truth, I am a customer
| of JetBrains, not of Apple.
|
| No, that's not even remotely close to what I said or
| implied.
|
| > In the Steam case, especially for small/medium
| developers, there are multiple options to buy their games
| - I generally prefer GoG.
|
| Yes. The overwhelming majority still use Steam due to
| various rational reasons.
|
| > Your logic would be fine if, and only if, there was the
| option to buy the game outside of the AppStore,
|
| I never said that I think that Apple should have a
| monopoly on app distribution on their platform.
| diatone wrote:
| Apples to oranges. Card networks have more than three
| stakeholders to work with per transaction, apply fees
| indiscriminately from milk to digital music
| subscriptions, and operate at truly staggering volumes.
| justinclift wrote:
| You're right. Visa and Mastercard seem to do a lot more,
| yet charge a very small fraction of the amount.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Yet Canada has Interac and India has UPI which
| nationalize all digital transactions while charging even
| less. In Europe they're much more heavily regulated and
| this charge even less than in the States.
|
| So if within their own industry Visa and Mastercard
| overcharge like crazy, especially when they can, what
| makes you so sure that they're a good counter example for
| a completely different industry? Especially when
| competitors seem to be charging a very similar rate for a
| similar service?
|
| That being said, it is a fair point when you consider
| that retailers and other similar product middle men tend
| to charge 1-3%, but it's important to also consider that
| Apple position's itself as a luxury product and brand
| where 30% markup isn't actually out of line.
| diatone wrote:
| Exactly right. I'm not against competitor analysis here.
| But let's at least compare against a basket of
| structurally similar offerings instead of cherry picking
| companies whose rake happens to be an order of magnitude
| lower in percentage terms.
| diatone wrote:
| My point, which hasn't really been addressed, is that
| "more" isn't a meaningful term when comparing card
| networks and software app stores, because the markets are
| structurally different.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You mean they provide actual value to users unlike two
| parasites that hold whole world hostage?
| booi wrote:
| > Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every
| transaction.
|
| I would bet Apple has put more into R&D for iPhones,
| iPads and iOS than the entire enterprise value of visa
| and mastercard put together. If anything, they've worked
| for it more than visa/mastercard who are merely rails
| with distribution. Most of the heavy lifting, risk and
| work in the card ecosystem is done by the issuers (banks
| et. al.)
| thorncorona wrote:
| I think you underestimate the difficulty of competing
| against visa or mastercard.
|
| Visa and mastercard are logistical masterpieces.
|
| Think of how much legal work needs to be done in order to
| be compliant in every country in the world.
| netsharc wrote:
| Since they're giants, I wonder how much of the compliance
| is the other way: countries being strong-armed to comply
| with their terms.
| lukan wrote:
| "countries being strong-armed to comply with their
| terms."
|
| I suppose that is just another way of describing "legal
| work" in this context.
| croes wrote:
| The high margins of iPhones and iPad gets already already
| justified with Apple's R&D costs.
|
| And it would be morally wrong to put that costs on the
| app developers, without their apps the store is useless.
|
| The lack of apps killed Windows Phone.
| conductr wrote:
| If desktop pc users saw Microsoft taking a third of every
| transaction from yourmoms.com to Amazon.com because they
| did the heavy lifting of popularizing the home pc and web
| browser usage, I think you'd realize how ridiculous that
| argument sounds.
|
| They built it to sell something else, operating systems
| and then some ancillary stuff. They became one of the
| most valuable companies in the world off just that.
|
| Just like the iOS was built to sell phones. They make
| plenty off phones. They've made Apple one of the most
| valuable companies in the world too. Access to an App
| Store has become a requirement of a modern phone, so they
| wouldn't sell many without it. But it doesn't mean they
| should be able to tax the entire economy so heavily. Just
| like how running a browser is a requirement of modern
| browsers for an operating system, but that doesn't mean
| the operating system should be allowed to tax the entire
| economy of activity that takes place on said operating
| system.
| tpm wrote:
| > I would bet Apple has put more into R&D for iPhones,
| iPads and iOS
|
| And you pay for that when you buy the device. That does
| not justify paying Apple huge percentage each time when
| you are paying for an app.
| myspy wrote:
| Only 3% of the 30% go to payment processing. Hence why
| they still want 27% when developers choose their own
| payment system.
|
| The 27% are seen similar to Sony and Nintendo as fees to
| be on a platform which has wide reach but also gives
| tools and does stuff to enable app distribution.
|
| Is that too much? I don't know but it's what all appear
| to do. The platform politics didn't evolve as fast as the
| tech though. So what about apps like Patreon, Netflix,
| Spotify, that was never on the table in 2008.
| maccard wrote:
| The 3% payment charge is the transaction fee, but that
| doesn't take into account the actual handling of the rest
| of the transaction lifecycle, like managing refunds, or
| chargebacks. A single chargeback will cost you $25
| whether it's successful or not (plus refunding the
| transaction if you lose), but on google play and co it's
| just refunded.
| Jensson wrote:
| > but that doesn't take into account the actual handling
| of the rest of the transaction lifecycle, like managing
| refunds, or chargebacks
|
| They do, which is why credit cards take that much, cost
| of chargebacks is a part of the transaction fee.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| Google gives you an App Store and maintain the OS that
| other hardware vendors (and sometimes themselves) implement
| hardware around. They take a 30% cut for distribution in
| their special app store and not much else.
|
| Microsoft and Sony take similar cuts for access to their
| game consoles. In return they provide: - High quality,
| robust developer APIs. - High quality debuggers, graphics
| debuggers and CPU+GPU profiling tools with in-depth access
| to hardware counters - Networking libraries for
| matchmaking, and a network backend for tunneling network
| traffic via their online services - True development kit
| hardware with expanded resources for debugging tools - High
| quality documentation and direct support - GPU drivers that
| actually work - Payment processing - All for a hardware
| platform that is typically sold at or below BOM cost for
| the initial launch of the device
|
| Google provides distribution via the Play Store, and only
| for about ~4GB of app before they force you to use your own
| CDN because they have a limit on the size of the app bundle
| they'll distribute. There's likely things I'm not aware of
| that Google provides for app developers rather than game
| developers, but if we're comparing to game consoles then
| I'm going to compare tool for tool.
|
| Apple's tooling is better, largely because they have way
| more control over the target hardware and software
| environment, but they take an additional cost via their
| highly restrictive app guidelines.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| The contrast is stark compared to another of Google's own
| projects: Stadia.
|
| Much of this comes second hand as I wasn't on this
| particular team when they were working on Stadia bring-up
| for proprietary AAA engine (I joined about 2 weeks before
| Stadia was officially canned).
|
| But the quality of support from Stadia for developers was
| leagues above what you get from Android. Every few weeks
| I'll hear from other team members how good it was working
| with Google for Stadia. The tooling was great. We got
| developer kit hardware. We had documentation and direct
| support channels and Google was actively managing
| outreach and development on tooling to ease transitioning
| into their systems (Google was one of the biggest driving
| forces behind DXC's SPIR-V target).
|
| Compare this against the same people commenting on the
| Android experience and it's the complete opposite. We're
| left out to dry with poor support while trying to target
| devices that barely work.
|
| What's the difference? Google actually had to fight to
| get us to come to their store. They had competition and
| weren't acting as a toll collector to a captive market.
| Game developers had the choice to tell Google to kick
| rocks, Xbox and PlayStation aren't going anywhere. Google
| had no choice but to play ball with good support and fair
| pricing. No such pressure exists on Mobile, and they
| crank the toll as a result.
| Tanoc wrote:
| For the difference between mobile and consoles, it
| depends on if you have publisher or port team backing or
| not. Many indie developers do not get devkits, do not get
| proper access to Nintendo Switch Online, PlayStation
| Network, or Xbox Live networking, do not get performance
| monitoring tools, and do not get any documentation or
| support. For them the most that happens is they export
| the necessary files in a reviewable archive format and
| send it in for approval, hoping that the game engine they
| chose to use properly functions on the given console and
| that there won't be any major problems that will cause
| them to go through the review process again. This also
| applies to any major updates or patches later on. The
| consoles treat these indie developers the same way Steam,
| Itch.io, and GOG treat their developers -- as vendors in
| a storefront, not as equal business partners vital to the
| operations of the platform. For these indie devs if you
| want the above features you have to hire somebody to do
| the porting for you or you have to go through a lengthy
| and expensive process to be approved to use them. Most
| console releases of well known indie games like Celeste,
| Shovel Knight, and Rimworld are handled by port teams for
| this very reason. On console, if you're below the AA tier
| you're paying for the cost of the privileges others get
| instead of you.
|
| However with mobile storefronts at the start everybody
| gets treated equally since they all have access to the
| same limited number of features and get the same level of
| (some would say neglectful) automated support. For the
| most part Epic Games goes through the same process of
| uploading a game or program and waiting for approval that
| Jimbob does. It's only afterwards that the level of
| access changes. It's this way by design. Not only because
| early on there were no big names in the mobile space and
| so no real tier system was necessary, but also because
| quantity is valued over quality. There are about a
| thousand uploads to Google Play a week (I haven't found
| strict data on how many are only games, but the process
| is the same for games and apps so it doesn't really
| matter), versus between twenty to thirty on PlayStation
| and Xbox. Creating unique avenues and methods would
| bottleneck things horrifically for mobile. As a developer
| you get an informal discount for the relative lack of
| quality control and increased competition you'll be
| facing.
|
| This cost is very evident in the prices of the games. You
| won't ever see games that aren't asset flips or
| shovelware below a non-sale price of $1.99 on Xbox Games
| Store, but you'll see plenty of $0.79 games on Google
| Play and Steam.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo subsidize the development and cost
| of their dedicated gaming system from the 30% cut of the
| store sales.
|
| It's very different on the mobile side: Apple sells iOS
| devices at full cost. With Android, it gets even more mucky
| as Samsung, the hardware vendor, gets 0% of the sales on
| their handset (unless the user, for some reason, uses the
| Samsung store), and Google gets the full 30% for only their
| software work. So the fact that Google gets 30% is wild.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Google gets the full 30% for only their software work
|
| Not that I trust Google (my personal phones are Apple)
| but how do you think a phone with all software made by
| Samsung will work? Every time I lay my hands on one of
| their phones (and I have one on my desk for Android
| development) something annoys me. They somehow think they
| know how to do UI/UX but they still haven't learned after
| all these years of "customizing" Android.
|
| So yes, Google deserves some money. Not 30% but some.
| aikinai wrote:
| So if you sell your hardware at a profit, you forfeit
| your right to profit off the platform post-sale? Nintendo
| never sells hardware at a loss either, by the way.
|
| And your Samsung comment doesn't make sense. Samsung gets
| the operating system for free and then sells hardware for
| whatever profit they can get for it. Plus all of the
| post-sale platform services profit they can manage, just
| like Google and Apple. What is wild?
| wolpoli wrote:
| I never meant to imply that once a company sell the
| hardware for profit, they forfeit the rights to profit
| off the platform. It's really about market power. The two
| dominant mobile leaders have enough market power to
| increase their take to 50%, for example, arguing that's
| how much traditional retailers take, if not for the risk
| of attracting government interventions.
|
| The intention is to point out that simple arguments of
| 'Xbox is charging 30%, so it is fine that the mobile
| platforms do the same thing' failed to take into account
| of the nuances of the situation. Isn't it weird that
| these platforms are all charging 30% even through all
| these platforms have different business models, with
| different cost structure and provide different values? I
| hadn't even talked about how Microsoft has been getting
| no money off sales on Steam when it is their platform,
| because they hadn't (yet?) lock down the platform.
|
| Finally, Nintendo did sell the Wii U at a loss. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-still-
| selling-wii-u-a...
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, there are large publishers which successfully
| negotiate with the ilk of Microsoft[1] and Sony[2] to get a
| better revenue split, as consoles in fact have more
| functional competition than mobile phone app stores: people
| who own a gaming console might could reasonably own a
| second one if they were interested in some game that was
| only available on one console or the other; this simply
| _doesn 't happen_ with phones, as only a small handful of
| particularly-crazy power users would ever carry around a
| second cell phone. If you want to not release on Xbox
| unless Microsoft gives you a better deal, it doesn't sound
| anywhere near as ridiculous to tell your potential
| customers "you'll have to also own a Playstation" as if you
| tried to explain to people that to use your new social
| network they have to also own and carry around an Android
| phone (or, worse, whatever the third option might be... is
| there even a third option anymore that would make any
| sense? ;P). You can tell that Apple has some insane amount
| of fundamentally market-distorting power as they seriously
| charge large publishers -- the ones you would expect to
| have the most leverage -- _more_ than smaller ones; and,
| with maybe a sole exception of WeChat, we have never heard
| of anyone getting a better deal out of them, ever.
|
| [1]:
| https://x.com/tomwarren/status/1671981463040819200?s=46
|
| [2]: https://x.com/twthereddragon/status/167227040717966540
| 9?s=46
| h0l0cube wrote:
| I never get this argument, but following its logic, is
| Apple and Microsoft being really charitable by not
| gatekeeping and taking a cut for every paid-for application
| installed on their respective desktop platforms? To answer
| my own question, it just seems that the status quo has
| inertia. In the way that we don't pay for online news,
| social media, or search, similarly, we've just accepted a
| large chunk of our purchase is feeding the app store.
|
| Also, from memory, Xbox/Sony consoles are loss leaders to
| recoup profits from store sales. I'm not sure if that holds
| for Google and Apple phones, but I'd be more okay with app
| store fees if it did.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Is the "large chunk of our purchase ... feeding the app
| store" or is it going to shareholder profits? Appstores
| seem super inefficient if they cost so much to feed (ie
| run/maintain).
| h0l0cube wrote:
| > feeding the app store" or is it going to shareholder
| profits
|
| Sure. It's all just revenue growth. Sans some anti-
| competition regulation, it's the prerogative of a
| business to charge as much as the market will bear, as
| much as it can be sustained, by whatever legal means
| necessary.
| croes wrote:
| The games and apps play a massive part in attracting users.
|
| That's why MS bought game studios to get more games and
| therefore users to the Xbox.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| They do play a massive part because their platforms are
| designed to lock users in. You do not really have an many
| alternatives to using their stores on console or mobile
| platforms. In case of consoles or Apple there are none.
|
| They don't attract people, they gatekeep
| solutions/entertainment. It is the exact other way around,
| the products on their store attract people into their
| environment.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Apple is not attracting. Saying Apple is attracting with
| their compute platform would be saying Intel is attracting
| with their compute platform. Apple is spending next to
| nothing to attract users to Roblox but is acting as an
| unwanted gatekeeper to users that paid Apple to use their
| products.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Ok why doesn't Microsoft get 30% of revenue of Steam
| purchases or Adobe CC subs? Why doesn't Apple get 30% of
| revenue from purchases through the Safari browser in MacOS?
|
| After all they play a massive part in making those
| purchases possible.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Would you rather do the hardware/OS platform yourself as
| well?
|
| I know, the big ones are always "evil", but...
|
| How about being real?
| katzinsky wrote:
| You mean like most Linux distros?
|
| Yeah it's great.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I'm surprised that Roblox haven't done what Amazon did with
| Kindle books. They just stopped book purchases through Kindle
| iOS app.
|
| At this point it's safe to assume Roblox is as popular as Apple
| so they don't have the problem of discovery. Distribution yes
| for which they can pay the listing price.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| They need 8-year-olds to be able to make unauthorized
| purchases on their parents' credit cards, so the IAP flow is
| important.
| zzou wrote:
| Well, Tencent needs to pay the same Apple and Android tax as
| well for its gaming business, but guess what, Tencent's gaming
| business is very profitable. The real difference is that
| Tencent has a big market share in China(arguably the most
| profitable gaming market in the world) and Roblox has none.
| matsemann wrote:
| It also makes it almost impossible to compete if Apple/Google
| has a similar product. They get 100 % of their own earnings,
| you only get 70 %, so need a much much bigger operational
| margin. And they still make 30 % off you, so if you're equally
| big they in reality make 130 % and you 70 %, almost the double
| of you while having the same sales.
| mfld wrote:
| Makes me think of Spotify
| bentcorner wrote:
| In my (non-finance, parent of a roblox-player) opinion, the
| problem that Roblox has is that _every single_ roblox game has a
| "roblox" essence. Every roblox game is undeniably roblox, and to
| broaden their market and attract higher-paying users, I think
| they need to fix that.
|
| There's a certain amount of jank in every roblox game, and that's
| part of the charm. But it's undoubtedly also a reason why people
| with fatter wallets don't spend more time in roblox.
|
| If you've never played a roblox game this might be hard to
| understand, but those of you who have spent time in these worlds
| with your kids you will know exactly what I'm talking about.
|
| Perhaps more finance-related, but the monetization of roblox
| games is also extremely haphazard - providing more guide rails
| and designing payments more "in platform" would go a long way
| towards spending confidence.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Hard agree on the jank, but it may not be possible to fix that
| while keeping the upsides of the platform.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think there's anything inherent in Roblox that means
| the characters have to look and be animated like janky
| robots.
| gradyfps wrote:
| It takes a huge amount of effort to overwrite & re-animate
| the default ROBLOX characters and their animations.
| bemmu wrote:
| I'm a dev on the platform and agree that there is a lot of jank
| in Roblox games.
|
| There's some indication of more polish coming, as recently many
| games have been rewarded (Pressure, Shovelware's Brain Game
| etc.) from having more polished animations. Devs respond
| quickly to seeing other games succeed and take notes. The tools
| are also getting better. It's gradually getting less
| nightmarish to try to import a working skeletal animation from
| Blender to Roblox Studio.
|
| Could Roblox games benefit from more polish? Absolutely, but
| it's less important than having quick access to a high variety
| of games with consistency in how you play them.
|
| Perhaps the most massive benefit of jank-tolerance is that it
| lets devs "gradient descent" towards a game players want. If
| you released a janky proto on Steam, you'd miss your shot, get
| an "overall negative" review and be done. On Roblox you can
| release a janky proto, see its metrics, improve over time until
| you have something people want.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Sorry to hijack your comment, but could you recommend some
| kind of guide for someone who wants to start? There are lots
| of stuff out there but I need a filter.
| cg5280 wrote:
| I would suggest you start like one would with anything
| programming. Come up with some simple ideas on what to
| build first and give it a try. Their documentation is
| pretty good and Lua/Luau is dead simple to work with.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Sure, but it's not like Roblox is special here, compared to
| Flash games / Blizzard games' custom maps / Valve game's mods
| / Minecraft-Factorio mods / HTML games / dev's own website /
| Steam Greenlight / Itch.io / Unity (yuck)...
| foobarian wrote:
| Roblox got the multiplatform MMO experience dead right.
| Minecraft is atrocious in comparison; just creating an
| account is a painful exercise with Microsofts SSO setup and
| all. And then there is the Java/Bedrock schism which
| prevents seamless coop play. And don't get me started about
| modding scene on the matrix of Java/Bedrock and their own
| version ladders...
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I'm not sure... maybe. But at the same time, I think that
| having access to thousands of games that more or less look and
| play the same has its advantages and might be a big part of its
| appeal. If you had Fortnite reimplemented within Roblox, why
| would you play the Roblox version? I don't know.
|
| On the other hand, as a Roblox-father also, I do enjoy some of
| the more polished games, but I almost always fail to get my son
| to be excited about them enough for us to spend our shared
| playtime in them instead of the other crap. No free lunch I
| guess.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| There's been a few high polish games that aren't Robloxlike.
| There's just been very few that are breakout hits on the
| platform or offer any incentive to an external audience. You've
| got to remember that the main audience right now is kids on low
| power devices who can't run a lot of the more polished games so
| they tend to fall off the discovery cliff.
|
| Also if you look at the return potential, revenue from most top
| games is very small compared to the costs of high quality
| games.
| jjmarr wrote:
| I've been getting randomly flung by the terrain in Roblox since
| 2008.
| cg5280 wrote:
| I get the impression that they are actively trying to attract
| older players, perhaps at least teenagers or young adults. I
| assume because so many young kids play Roblox they are running
| out of new users on that front. And I agree with your comment
| and others here; the extreme majority of Roblox games are poor
| quality and it is very hard to sift through and find anything
| interesting. I think if Roblox could fix that they could
| continue to grow even more. Perhaps they could begin to compete
| with "real" platforms like Steam for attention.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I can't recall the exact company name (Edit: it was TCI), but
| this was a smart accounting move that made one of the big US
| telcos frogleap the competition in the race for connectivity.
|
| Basically, the company invested sufficient into long term assets,
| big infra investments like cabling, towers, etc. Because of
| accounting rules, they could choose to amortize all of that
| investment in a straight line over 30 years, OR accelerate
| depreciation in the short term.
|
| I believe the company always chose the latter, and the net effect
| of this was that every year the company would show a loss, 100%
| related to said infra investments. However, when you carved out
| depreciation, the company was clearly making increasing amounts
| of money. Further, all that fiber was capturing new clients,
| which was free cash flow which they would turn around and capture
| even more customers with a new round of investments. In effect,
| the use of accelerated depreciation helped the company manage its
| tax obligations while expanding aggressively. By deferring tax
| liabilities and reinvesting capital, the company was able to
| capture market share and grow its customer base.
|
| Eventually they had to show income and therefore pay the IRS, but
| by that time they were at the leading edge of the race and
| investors rewarded this company's CEO handsomely.
| jld wrote:
| Sounds like John Malone at TCI Cable
| parpfish wrote:
| John Malone at TCI?
|
| (I learned about it from HN here a couple days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41263855)
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| wow, that is correct.
|
| I read this in a book over 10 years ago, and now 2 articles
| about the same trick within the same week.
| xNeil wrote:
| Cable Cowboy, I'm guessing. Great book!
| devsda wrote:
| I think Amazon also had a similar strategy.
|
| They had lot of profit-less years of growth and they have
| captured a big part of the market share.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I had one of my wife's relatives in 2013 tell me "I'd never
| buy Amazon stock. They've been in business for 15 years and
| still are not profitable!" I tried to explain that it's
| because every dollar of potential profit was funneled back
| into R&D and company expansion, and that revenue has been
| growing steadily, but he just didn't get it.
|
| If he'd bought stock then, he'd have ~10x'd his money in that
| time, whereas the S&P500 has ~3x'd.
|
| I would have bought stock myself back then, but I was a broke
| college student.
| mst wrote:
| HN hivemind has already delivered but I've found that for "I
| can describe it but can't remember the name" an LLM will have a
| decent chance of surfacing the name given the description (and
| is usually a very simple case to verify unlike much LLM
| output).
| password4321 wrote:
| 20240404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39935526
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 (Roblox executive
| says children making money on the platform is 'a gift' )
|
| > _Arguing that it 's a "gift" when they're taking a 75% cut is
| just offensive._
|
| 20220707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 (Problems
| at Roblox)
|
| > _Roblox is horrendous. It is as dangerous as any dark corner of
| the Internet, except that it appears child-friendly to parents._
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Try doing the math of accepting payment (Apple and Google take
| 30% off the top), then building, operating, and moderating a
| globally distributed auto-scaling gaming platform with 350M+
| MAUs.
|
| 75% may be too high, but comparing it to say Steam's 30% cut
| for distribution only is a grossly imbalanced comparison.
| password4321 wrote:
| Is 75% the minimum taken, only if you don't cash out Robux?
| Extra yikes.
|
| > _the company taking 75% of profits and having a pretty
| massive minimum bar (100,000 Robux / $1,000 USD) which must
| be passed before the person gets to withdraw anything at all,
| which is then effectively double taxed because the company
| will then only give $350 for 100,000 Robux when cashing out
| to actual money_
| hipadev23 wrote:
| It's a $105 minimum payout, not $1,000.
|
| And that 75% math is how much you earn, not a minimum or
| whatever you're talking about. If players spend ~$1,000 of
| Robux in your game, you get paid ~$250.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Really interesting talk from Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought
| Leaders podcast.
|
| 2018 but its still worth listening to.
|
| https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/when-the-platform-is-y...
| OuterVale wrote:
| Good content, but I must say that the site made it a difficult
| read. It seems serviceable on a phone, but on anything larger,
| it's questionable.
|
| The width of the text seems odd. It's too narrow on a medium
| viewport but too wide on a large one. Around 75 characters per
| line is usually the sweet spot for legibility. The font sizes
| also seem to be quite peculiar, being done with seemingly
| unneeded complexity: `font-size: calc((var(--normal-text-size-
| value) - 1) * 1.2vw + 1rem)`. Not quite sure this is necessary?
|
| My computer also seemed to really struggle rendering the page as
| it stuttered constantly while scrolling or resizing.
|
| Additionally (and this is moving into nitpicking territory), the
| navbar strikes me as a bit busy and overwhelming with its 15
| items. Perhaps some culling or drop-down menus are in order. I
| can't say I'm a huge fan of what looks to be a distorted AI-
| generated header image either.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| Why can't they just issue their own device to minimize app store
| fees. it seems to me the amount money going to app store real
| estate is more than enough to justify some sort of method of
| allowing their users to play the game without app store
| intervening. The total amount spent so far is astounding if
| viewed in figures. Minus half or quarter of the total time since
| appearing in app-store for it to be served to the large audience.
| The other half would have to be too much time spent content. Rest
| of that half of paid out fees could have more than enough to fund
| a plan B.
|
| Another reason why having the current ecosystem, where app stores
| pretty much dictate the destiny for a growing company. creating
| another device assuming it magically becomes a success, there is
| most definitely not a long lasting venture either. Bypassing the
| app store to achieve what exactly? okay this device plays roblox
| 'and what else can it do?".Discouraging to see companies like
| this be dictating how they grow and succeed. Only to grow in this
| manner and be topped out as there is no next phase after this
| growth, the atmosphere they're in is polluted and cloudy. The
| next phase in BIG tech is most likely not going to resemble this
| depiction, for more reasons than i can list here. The big players
| in tech are losing their ground day by day. Epic Games is
| relisted back on to the app store, not long ago they were
| fighting apple over the very same hurdle that Roblox is facing
| today. Epic Games did however get their way with Google and went
| on to send a clear message to the rest of the big tech players
| out there.
|
| I think a big change is near and if not than its needed.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Why can't they just issue their own device to minimize app
| store fees.
|
| Lmao.
|
| _Microsoft_ tried that and failed. _Amazon_ tried that and
| failed. The market has enough room for iOS and Android and
| _nothing else_.
| stavros wrote:
| > Why can't they just issue their own device
|
| That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Don't worry,
| though, your iPhone will soon be your own to do whatever you
| want with, thanks to the DMA. It already is, if you live in the
| EU.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| What are you talking about? Last I saw apple mostly won their
| lawsuits in the US and our government is so captured by late
| stage capitalists I doubt we're going to see any serious
| revision of their monopolistic behavior.
|
| Lucky you that the EU actually does stuff to big tech.
| stavros wrote:
| I think (hope) that what the EU does will spread to the US
| eventually as well.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| Don't forget about the large amount money being dumped
| into lobbying on behalf of big tech. It's effective here
| due to capitalistic society and government benefit from
| it ( taxes, money contributions, competing market like(
| China,EU, etc)). Makes sense for these changes to take
| place in EU, lobbying isn't as effective nor the
| incentives for politicians and government bodies.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Apple just had a fresh anti-trust suit opened in the US,
| and with Google just getting the stamp as a monopoly, I
| would say things don't look good for Apple.
| Aeolun wrote:
| So the real reason they're not profitable is because they're
| doing some accounting magic that counts their income spread over
| the next 27 month, instead of all up front. They are cash flow
| positive, it's just that their income numbers are lagging some 2
| years behind.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Roblox absolutely doesn't want to do this "accounting magic".
| They originally filed their S-1 with more typical revenue
| recognition and the SEC forced to change to this frustrating
| model. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-sec-told-roblox-to-
| chan...
| raister wrote:
| Roblox is a huge problem for me, as a parent of a 8y kid. Let me
| explain: I try to block violent apps in his tablet using Google's
| Family app, however, Roblox internally keeps 'offering' my kid
| almost any game, whatever if there's violence, drugs, killing
| others, and so forth.
|
| It's a headache and a source of fights, so, I thank the
| responsible (/sarcasm).
| Quothling wrote:
| Roblox really needs to create some better parental controls so
| that it includes the option for a parent to be required to "ok"
| what they call "new experiences". The various limits you can
| set on content are great in theory, but they are apparently
| impossible for Roblox to enforce and as such are meaningless.
|
| I do like Roblox from a creator perspective (I'm not a creator)
| since it's rather easy to guide your children into building
| games rather than "just" consuming them. Something which is
| very hard with basically everything else they do digitally.
| endtime wrote:
| My kids use Roblox. There _are_ parental controls you can
| enable through Roblox. When my twins turned nine, I had to
| enable 9+ games for them. I believe the age cutoffs are 9+,
| 13+, and 17+. I think anything with drugs should be 17+, and
| realistic violence/blood might be 13+? Not totally sure.
|
| (Disclaimer: I'm a Roblox employee, but speaking only on my own
| behalf, and don't work on anything related to age guidelines.)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I have my kid's set to "all ages" (the most "restrictive"
| category with the most "appropriate" content) and he does get
| gun violence, disturbing and scary games, and games based on
| non-kid characters (The Amazing Digital Circus).
|
| Sometimes a game is shown and when kid tries to access it he
| gets a "this game isn't allowed by your age category" or some
| such. This is an unbelievably dishonest way to tempt kids
| into content that's not for them. If the content is not
| usable for them it should just not show, period.
|
| If you work at Roblox maybe escalate the fact that content
| filtering by age category is totally worthless and could use
| fixing.
| endtime wrote:
| Happy to route the feedback. Obviously we should be
| filtering out games that aren't accessible to a given user.
| rvba wrote:
| Lots of people here played Doom or Mortal Combat
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| It's hilarious how plain Mortal Kombat becomes without the K.
|
| I'm not calling you out for making a typo, I'm simply amused
| at how much punch (no pun intended) it loses when spelled
| "right". I guess it's true that Ks are Kool.
| learlu wrote:
| One thing the article doesn't touch on is that Roblox has yet to
| tap into the China market, where 25% of the world's gaming
| revenue reside.
| kilolima wrote:
| Given China's experience with the West's sordid attempt to
| subvert them via opium, it seems highly unlikely that roblox
| would ever be legalized there.
| learlu wrote:
| Roblox has a joint venture setup with Tencent to enter that
| market. The Chinese gaming market require a gaming license to
| enter, and it seems they've figured out a way to do it.
| ro_bit wrote:
| > When a user buys $30 in Robux, the platform's virtual currency,
| Roblox recognizes $30 in bookings. An average of $3 of that $30
| is spent on a "consumable" (i.e., a single-user or otherwise
| perishable good), and so Roblox recognizes that $3 as revenue
| right away. The remaining $27 is spent on "durable" goods such as
| an avatar. As an avatar can and often will be used over time,
| Roblox recognizes this revenue over the average lifetime of a
| Roblox user
|
| I'm not sure if I'm understanding this point correctly. From my
| understanding, wouldn't roblox consider their revenue in a given
| month to be 1/9th of this months purchases + 1/27th of last
| month's purchases + ...
|
| If so, why would their revenue recognition make them
| unprofitable? Every month they only realize 1/9th of revenue from
| that month, but that would be offset by the other 8/9ths of
| revenue coming from the last 27 months. Wouldn't it just make
| their recognized revenue a frontloaded rolling average?
| yes_man wrote:
| It could be their active user count is increasing very fast and
| that is eating the rolling revenues via infra costs, customer
| acquisition costs, perhaps they are subventing that growth in
| other ways like discounts to get players into the paying
| segments etc.
| mcherm wrote:
| If there were no growth, that would eventually be true (after
| 27 months). But there is a lot of growth.
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| My kids have started playing Roblox recently and they have
| started asking for some Robux so they can buy crap... I really
| don't get how so many people are into spending dollars on this
| stuff. Everything they wanted was ~$10-20 NZD and it was just
| throw away stuff, like a costume, etc. And then it's only useful
| in that one game you have brought it for. It blows my mind that
| it ever got this popular.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Because kids aren't utilitarian. They want shiny things
| impulsively now in whatever niche game they are playing at the
| moment. Or want to keep up with their friends who got cool
| stuff to keep status. Doesn't matter to them that they'll
| switch games in a week and lose everything.
| jack_pp wrote:
| To add to this, for them money is like ice cream, comes from
| parents rarely and gives them temporary pleasure. That's why
| I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades
| so that they start learning financial responsibility early.
| Sure they'll blow their money on useless stuff at first but
| then they'll have none for some other thing they wish they
| had money for and will learn to choose more wisely in the
| future
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| My dad let me gamble my allowance against himself in poker.
| Lost it all, obviously. Was quite heartbroken he wouldn't
| give it back, but I sure learned a lesson :)
| fifticon wrote:
| I concur with this. Our kid can earn robux doing chores,
| and she only earns them once in a while. It often leads her
| to a period of deliberation, where at first she's like 'I
| so much need this, I must do whatever chores it will
| take!'. Then gradually as the minutes go by, she gets
| doubts, and at some point flips into "No. Way. THAT is NOT
| worth THAT MUCH WORK!" Whenever this happens, I get sort of
| proud or satisfied. A lot of times it doesn't happen, she
| does the chore and gets the reward. But other times,
| especially for costly idiosyncratic choices, she comes to
| her senses.
|
| The insane spending sprees/binges shrink a lot, when they
| are expressed in "how much vacuuming and floor washing am I
| willing to endure?"
| dloranc wrote:
| > That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores
| or good grades so that they start learning financial
| responsibility early.
|
| Have you ever read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn? He
| states that rewarding for the things you mentioned inhibits
| the desired behavior in the long run.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Haven't read it but I remember reading about a study
| where they would watch some kids play with toys, record
| which were their favorite ones and then in another play
| session give them sweets for playing with their favorite
| toys after which those toys would no longer be their
| favorite.
|
| However even though most people don't enjoy their work we
| must learn to get past that in order to achieve our
| goals, might as well learn this early imo.
|
| Personally I hated most of school, pretty much every
| subject that wasn't math or programming. Rewards did
| motivate me to learn those things I didn't like.
|
| So maybe only reward them for doing stuff they already
| don't like doing but would be good for them. If you see
| your kid doing well in math but poorly in history only
| reward them for history.
| squigz wrote:
| Could you elaborate on how that might be?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| So... Paying people to write software inhibits them
| writing software?
| jack_pp wrote:
| Doesn't inhibit them but makes the activity not pleasant
| because your mind is attaching the work itself to
| external motivation. You don't do it because you want to
| (for the pleasure of it), but for a paycheck and humans
| don't enjoy activities like that if they're not starving.
| bitfilped wrote:
| This is how every other job in the world works, you work
| for money.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Honestly, I don't think there are very many people who
| wash dishes for pleasure. If you have a kid who loves
| cleaning for fun, by all means, don't pay them to do it.
| drw85 wrote:
| It's not only kids that buy these. I know a lot of 40+ year
| old men that buy skins and useless junk in video games all
| the time. They spend a ton of money on cosmetic junk in short
| lived video games. It's puzzling to me, but i see it all the
| time.
| joejag wrote:
| I'm a 40+ year old man who buys cosmetics for CS2 (which
| has a resale market). If you are going to spend 200+ hours
| doing something you might as well have a nice environment
| to do it in.
|
| There's a reason everyone isn't driving a Honda Civic.
| matwood wrote:
| > It's puzzling to me, but i see it all the time.
|
| Everyone has their thing. I'm sure you spend money in ways
| that are just as puzzling to others.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Maybe if you earn 10k+ monthly and play a free game you
| don't mind buying shiny things for 50-100$ monthly
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, I'll admit I have and Probbaly will "whale" in my
| share of mobile games. Though "whaling" amounts can vary
| vastly on the perception (I'm not throwing down $1000
| every time a new character releases. But I do spend
| triple digits a month).
|
| Key is proper financial management. If I make $10000 post
| tax (which isnt an impressive figure for a community like
| this), put 15% in savings, 30% in rent/utilities, and 5%
| into food, I still have $5000 left. Spending $500 on
| games won't really phase me.
|
| I 100% agree this isn't something kids would do and
| balance, though. And I recognize others have addictions
| and much worse financial planning.
| J_cst wrote:
| Some time ago I read an article explaining that initially
| games used to sell upgrades which were making the player
| stronger in multi-player games. The net result was that the
| games were loosing players because that mechanic was seen as
| unfair (pay to win). So they switched to aesthetics
| enhancements only and that resulted the correct strategy to
| have in game sales and not loosing players. Unfortunately
| cannot remember further details to prove this memory, sorry.
| MeanwInAsia wrote:
| Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean kids widely DEMAND pay to
| win, and see people who complain about Pay2Win as "Losers
| in life", because, to them, it's just two valid paths, and
| if someone pays to win at a game, then it's just a mark of
| status. Btw, did you also know that parents in central
| china have protested over the right to cheat?
|
| Tons of really great stuff in eastern work culture that I
| miss now back in europe. But that "results-first and call
| it a systematic right" thing never sat well with me.
| J_cst wrote:
| Thank you for bringing a different worldview to the
| discussion. I realize that my comment was Euro (or West)
| centric, but that wasn't intentional. I appreciate your
| perspective, as it adds valuable context and enriches the
| conversation. It's interesting to see how cultural
| differences shape attitudes toward gaming, and your
| insights have certainly given me something to think
| about. Thank you for that.
| gruez wrote:
| >Btw, did you also know that parents in central china
| have protested over the right to cheat?
|
| Source?
| bradjohnson wrote:
| It's extremely easy to find yourself, but here:
| https://qz.com/96793/chinese-students-and-their-parents-
| figh...
| gruez wrote:
| If that's what the other guy was referencing, then it's a
| misleading characterization of the situation. The
| original comment was:
|
| >Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean kids widely DEMAND pay to
| win, and see people who complain about Pay2Win as "Losers
| in life", because, to them, it's just two valid paths,
| and if someone pays to win at a game, then it's just a
| mark of status. Btw, did you also know that parents in
| central china have protested over the right to cheat?
|
| The article says:
|
| >In response, angry parents and students championed their
| right to cheat. Not cheating, they said, would put them
| at a disadvantage in a country where student cheating has
| become standard practice. "We want fairness. There is no
| fairness if you do not let us cheat," they chanted.
|
| The comment is claiming cheating is "a mark of status"
| and "just two valid paths", whereas in the qz article
| parents wanted to cheat because not cheating would put
| them at a disadvantage. Those aren't really comparable,
| because in the latter case they're presumably not
| supporting cheating in and of itself, only because they
| don't want to be put at a disadvantage. A parallel would
| be how in the US, democrats are against voter ID laws,
| because it would disadvantage minority voters. They don't
| (presumably) want election fraud (although republicans do
| think so), they just don't want a regime where their side
| is disadvantaged.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| Ok, I was just providing a link for you. If you wanted to
| discuss whether cheating is good in this specific
| scenario, you should have put that as your comment to the
| parent.
| gruez wrote:
| >Ok, I was just providing a link for you.
|
| And if you read my last comment more carefully, I wasn't
| faulting you, only the original characterization.
|
| >If you wanted to discuss whether cheating is good in
| this specific scenario, you should have put that as your
| comment to the parent.
|
| I think it's fair game to call the claim misleading, even
| if the parents are technically protesting for the right
| to cheat, for the reasons outlined in my previous
| comment. Again, going back to the example of democrats
| being against voter ID law, it would be misleading to
| characterize that as "democrats protesting for the right
| to commit vote fraud", even though they're technically
| supporting making election fraud easier.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| Ok sounds good
| dgb23 wrote:
| It's not kids or Roblox specifically, it's gamers and
| platforms/games with "micro-transactions" etc.
|
| When I was younger and still played online games regularly, I
| was initially stoked about cosmetic micro-transactions in
| (competitive) online games. Not because I wanted to buy them,
| but because these would fund the continuous development of my
| favorite games without affecting their integrity (no "pay to
| win" mechanisms).
|
| Later I found this was a Faustian bargain. It turned these
| games and communities around them into something that I don't
| want to participate in.
|
| These days I don't mind as much. Because among the sea of
| predatory, tacky or otherwise low quality crap there are way
| too many high quality, original and interesting games
| (typically made by small teams) that I will ever be able to
| play.
|
| I don't know anything about Roblox specifically. On one hand
| the comment above is tragic, but on the other hand my
| understanding is that motivates kids to play around with Lua.
| If that's the case, then I'm all for it, because for me and
| many others that kind of thing is how we found our way into
| our profession as developers.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Even if you specifically insist on Lua for some reason,
| there are probably way less predatory options, like
| Factorio.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I don't care about Lua specifically nor Roblox.
|
| And yes, Factorio is great.
| foobarian wrote:
| This is why I don't stress too much about validating game
| state in server scripts. It lets the kids cheat clientside
| if they can figure out how to rewrite and load the Lua
| scripts.
| empiko wrote:
| Yeah, this should be discussed more in my opinion. This entire
| business is just exploiting kids. I'm pretty worried about how
| my kids will behave when they get older and they will start to
| get bombarded by the Algorithm with all this "popular" staff.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Who is "people" here? The children or the parents? The children
| are literally children; to them the funny numbers we use really
| are just funny numbers, they don't know how they relate to real
| value. As for the parents, a few credits here and there to shut
| them up and keep them out of trouble is probably considered
| worthwhile. When I was little they got football shirts, yoyos,
| trading cards etc. Same thing.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| It's fashion. It's the same phenomenon as kids wanting to spend
| $100 to get the coolest shoes (in the real world).
| watwut wrote:
| I do not know why this is downvoted. The principle is the
| same. Likewise fidget spinner, likewise trading cards,
| likewise bag with star wars picture, likewise whatever
| plastic piece of crap is being sold to kids currently.
| Hugsun wrote:
| It is illegal to advertise to children in Iceland because of
| this. They have no means to evaluate purchases like this.
| Modern technology has completely circumvented these laws.
| ryoshu wrote:
| Whales are spending $15k a pop for some in-game assets. It's
| crazy.
| massysett wrote:
| I got my 8-year-old going on Roblox because she asked for it. I
| had no idea what is really involved with it and as I watched
| her play it, it all seemed to me to be a big scam.
|
| She would play games and want Robux. So she would go on her
| iPad and download iPad games that pay out Robux. The iPad games
| are total junk that only pay Robux after my kid watches ads.
| Some of those ads are for crappy games that pay Robux. Repeat
| the cycle.
|
| I was appalled by the whole thing and deleted Roblox. She has
| gone back to Minecraft and does not seem to miss Roblox.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| This is an interesting new level in the system I had not
| heard of before.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My niece was about $1500 into that game before anyone realized
| what she was doing. She had been asking for gift cards and what
| not to get the credits. My sister realized what was going on
| when she added it all up. She thought it was a harmless game
| her kid was playing. It has a lot of dark patterns designed to
| scrape cash. There is nothing more expensive than a 'free to
| play' game.
| ryandrake wrote:
| We limit our kid's Roblox and Fortnite in-app spending to
| Christmas and birthday, and she clearly understands she needs
| to stretch those game-bucks through the whole year. Four
| years in, it's worked out pretty well so far.
| consteval wrote:
| > It has a lot of dark patterns designed to scrape cash
|
| Addiction triggers and reward center abuse. This, to me, is
| no different than bright slot machines.
| kraig911 wrote:
| Eh IMO how is it any worse than a video arcade? I really think
| that's all Roblox is an arcade. Yeah it's the experience is
| fleeing and ephemeral. But these kids are hopefully
| experiencing what I felt in my childhood that I can't achieve
| anymore. I probably dumped 60$ alone over months going to Pizza
| Inn trying to win at Mortal Kombat.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's popular because it's addicting
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Like most games? Mario Bro's. was addicting.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Thats just being a kid. Their $10 digital costume was some $5
| cheap batman figure some 30 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised
| if the skin lasted longer.
|
| Of course the key here is that kids don't always get what they
| want when asked. I don't understand how some kids can just get
| unfettered access to a credit card and spend hundreds on such
| stuff.
| isk517 wrote:
| >I don't understand how some kids can just get unfettered
| access to a credit card and spend hundreds on such stuff.
|
| Easy.
|
| Step 1: Find where your parents leaves their wallet lying
| around because they don't expect their child to attempt
| credit fraud.
|
| Step 2: Punch in the numbers on the card into the appropriate
| boxes in the app because tech companies really don't have a
| interest in putting up any real barriers to prevent kids from
| spending money.
|
| Step 3: Profit!
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's easy when you put it that way. But I suppose that
| implies a breakdown of a lot of barriers that were setup
| early for me.
|
| 1. My parent was careful with money. every transaction
| would be tracked, so anything unusual like Robux would show
| up quick.
|
| 2. 99% of the time a CC would be in a purse or bedroom.
| Both strictly off limits unless permission was granted (or
| emergency)
|
| 3. I was on general pretty much only allowed to use any
| allowance (which wasn't much) for food or the occasional
| school supply. Anything else would require permission.
| Money given was for necessities, not leisure.
|
| It could just be the outliers popping up in news. But I
| just can't imagine so many social barriers breaking down
| over a video game.
| isk517 wrote:
| I think it has less to do with social barriers and more
| to do with carelessness. Parents will give their kids
| video game console and tablets without thinking to turn
| on any sort of parental controls. Additionally there are
| any number of YouTube videos that easily findable without
| any actual effort that will show you the entire Robux
| purchasing process which means children who you would
| think might be to young to figure out the process end up
| figuring out the process. Finally, a lot of people don't
| go over there CC bill unless things look really out of
| sorts.
|
| I don't think this is a major break down of society type
| of thing, more of something modern parents need to be
| aware of since making a lot of ill advised app purchases
| seems to be becoming one of those things all children end
| up doing at least once before being taught not to (or
| finding out the consequences of disobeying).
| alvah wrote:
| "...at a minimum, they will substitute a 30% fee with a 4% credit
| card processing expense..."
|
| Which large corporation is paying anything close to 4% for credit
| card processing? Based on what's available to me in my small
| business, I'd be astonished if anyone doing any significant
| volume was paying as much as half of this percentage.
| nottorp wrote:
| Are you selling something with some utility to adults? And as a
| consequence you have zero to very few chargebacks, because your
| customers aren't going to be overriden by their parents?
|
| I can imagine there are a lot more problems with kids' spending
| on Roblox, which would bring the processing fees way up.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Roblox has INSANE fraud patterns and chargebacks
| Panzer04 wrote:
| w.r.t article. Very wordy, could easily have been summarised.
|
| I guess if your costs are high enough, you can eat any amount of
| profit.
|
| They clearly need to get their expenses under control (if they
| care about generating an actual profit). There's only so much you
| can grow once you get to a certain threshold, and they must be
| getting near it.
|
| Spending 2b on opex seems kinda crazy (3.2b revenue vs 1.2b
| income). Most games are opex-light, capex-expensive. Their capex
| is definitely not cheap either, though that seems to be a
| tradeoff they choose to have.
|
| Of course, this all presumes the people running the company care
| about generating a profit (by no means a guarantee!). I'm sure
| all of the employees are making out like bandits, based on other
| commenters, and if management is happy to spend the money, well,
| that's all there is to it. It would be hard for anyone to argue
| with their success in growing their userbase, if nothing else.
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't understand all those terms in the article, but how much
| of their "unprofitability" is actually creative accounting?
|
| And how is this Roblox better than the (pre MS) Minecraft?
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I do not believe for a second that < 50% of Roblox users are >
| 13. Two of my three kids all have their ages set to 13+ because
| they decided to combine the age-related features you do want
| (limited chat, no tracking etc) with the content lock. I'm happy
| for my kids to play "Tree-house of Horrors" style games but not
| to be groomed by older player. Yet Roblox has no option for it.
| paganel wrote:
| > Everyone knows Roblox is huge.
|
| I had to web search for what this thing was, apparently a game
| for small kids? Why should "everyone" know about video-games
| addressed to children?
| rwmj wrote:
| I'm surprised that if you're doing $billions through one of the
| app stores you can't negotiate some large discount from the usual
| 30% commission?
| shruggedatlas wrote:
| What leverage would they have in those negotiations?
| rwmj wrote:
| That they won't write an amicus brief for the Bureau of
| Competition about the app store monopoly?
| shkkmo wrote:
| Roblox is a destable scummy company that depends on the
| exploitation of children to make money.
|
| They took the exploitative practices of microtransaction based
| games, targeted them at children, then decided to use child labor
| to create content inside an expoitatively taxed monetization
| system, then decided to abdicate all their responsibility for
| responsible community management to protect these children by
| shutting down their own forums and pushing everything to Discord.
| Now we have children working for unvetted strangers with no labor
| protection and no oversight.
| beart wrote:
| Agreed. And it goes beyond jaded monetization. A popular player
| and predator was only recently arrested after initiating
| physical contact with one of the child laborers. The game is
| simply not a safe environment for children.
| gradyfps wrote:
| Pedophilia & child-predation have been an open secret to
| anyone socially involved in ROBLOX for the longest time. The
| amount of random 18+ people interacting often and without
| guardrails with 13/14/15 year-olds is "normalized" to those
| in the communities.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Can anyone explain the business model? Do they take a cut of
| robux purchases?
|
| Is that the main source of income? How do game makers get paid?
| elif wrote:
| I'm sure it makes sense to people smarter than me but I just
| don't get building a software business with <5% margins. What's
| the point? Clearly you failed somewhere along the lines at the
| whole thing you set out for, which is a clear profit engine... So
| how do you end up with numbers that look like you are doing
| easily copyable manufacturing with a tight bottom line? I think
| too much focus on product growth and organizational growth, and
| not enough on efficiency, scale, and profit.
|
| The best times I've had at startups were when we were lean, and
| profiting >50%. The business was easier, we had more flexibility
| for decisions, morale was great... But then they all seem to grow
| into 0-10% profit corporate behemoths where each employee can't
| even tell if the job they do is worth their paycheck, it just
| becomes awkward, slow, uninspiring work.
|
| And then you find yourself robbing more single parents checking
| accounts than anyone on earth, but not even profiting. How
| depressing.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| In start-up spaces you usually don't have stiff competition.
|
| Once you grow, and it becomes clear you have a viable market,
| competitors move in and prices start to get ground down.
| h1fra wrote:
| tl;dr they are profitable, but they don't want to show it. Once
| they want to reach profitability they will fire (layoff) most of
| the R&D department and make billions.
| GNOMES wrote:
| My kiddo has easily spent 500+ on Roblox across birthday/Xmas
| gift cards/chores.
|
| I can't stand that almost all of the games seem to have a pay to
| win aspect, or are heavily advertising every chance they get.
|
| As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play, but
| because they aren't free, his friends can't play. Just drives him
| to keep playing and wanting more Robux. It's compounded when his
| favorite Youtubers play...
|
| Seriously don't understand how Roblox isn't being investigated
| for predatory practices. I imagine they can hide behind the fact
| users are making most of the mini games, and they are just
| providing a platform.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Seriously don't understand how Roblox isn't being
| investigated for predatory practices.
|
| Because if you held game companies responsible for deliberately
| fostering addiction in their customers to earn a profit, we'd
| have scores of industries behind them in line to be brought to
| heel the same way and the stocks for tech companies, game
| companies, tobacco companies, casino companies, alcohol
| companies, etc. etc. would all implode.
|
| There's no danger of that of course because we long ago decided
| as a society that we're fine with vulnerable populations being
| put through an economic woodchipper to fuel our retirement
| funds, and that's been status quo for so long that I sincerely
| doubt there's any way to actually change it.
| GNOMES wrote:
| Understand your point, but Epic (Fortnite) and games like
| Fifa have gotten sued or major slap on the wrists for the
| same practices
| latexr wrote:
| > major slap on the wrists
|
| That doesn't make sense as a concept. The point of the slap
| on the wrist is that it's ineffective/insufficient
| punishment to change behaviour. You're essentially saying
| they got a big small penalty.
| GNOMES wrote:
| Paying fines while still racking in cash. Basically the
| cost of doing business.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's a big enough penalty to be noticed and course
| correct. but not a big enough one to fundamentally hit
| their bottom line. I think it fits.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| They're still doing it though. They stopped whatever
| specific part got them in trouble but in the broad strokes
| they're still exploiting customers because the law says
| they can.
|
| Everything that a business of that size does is legal
| because if the authorities actually wanted it stopped, it
| would be stopped.
| riwsky wrote:
| We did that for tobacco, though? It was a huge public health
| win?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Actually, it's mixed. The states now get such a huge chunk
| of tobacco money that they're incentivized to keep people
| smoking. The more they smoke, the more the state gets.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Also, the companies are doing gangbusters in developing
| countries where people aren't as informed of the dangers
| of smoking.
|
| This is not judgement, to be clear. I enjoy the
| occasional smokable like anyone else, but I do that with
| full understanding of the health risks associated with
| it.
| danans wrote:
| > The more they smoke, the more the state gets.
|
| The state "gets" tobacco tax revenue to help pay for the
| burden of medical treatment for those with smoking
| related illnesses. Lung cancer isn't free to treat.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I've read that smoking related illnesses cost less money
| overall to treat than average. As an extreme example, if
| someone went around disintegrating people with an orbital
| laser, this would clearly reduce overall heathcare
| spending. So in this analogy, smoking is the equivalent
| of an orbital laser that (plausibly) causes people to die
| before they develop an even more expensive-to-treat
| healthcare situation.
| consteval wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure all that money is perfectly tracked and the
| system is perfectly efficient so there's no money being
| burned somewhere along the way to line someone's pocket.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > we'd have scores of industries behind them
|
| Not if they have good lobbyists. In the US we still have beer
| ads on TV though tobacco commercials have been gone long
| enough to barely be remembered.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUY0w2cVAUQ
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| You forgot the most important industry: the food industry.
| But they settled that battle long ago.
|
| And on some level I agree. We shouldn't hold companies
| accountable for raising our children. Simply mitigate their
| ways to target them And exploit their data (something
| Fortnite got dinged hard for).
| _coveredInBees wrote:
| Eh, I dunno. My son plays a bunch of Roblox and has spent a net
| $10 for a few custom avatar mods. While there is certainly a
| pay to win aspect for some games within, there is also a ton of
| "free" games to sift through, and since all of them are
| competing for players, they still have to make the experience
| compelling enough at the free tier. We've had conversations
| about the pay-to-win aspect, and even though he has several
| hundred dollars saved up, he has never once asked to spend
| money on pay-to-win aspects of Roblox. I'd argue that almost
| any modern videogame / mobile game is equally if not more
| "predatory" with the pay-to-win side of things. Just look at
| the menu screens in any modern first person shooter / battle
| royale type game. Those look far worse than anything I have
| seen in Roblox.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| both should be regulated, this type of predatory gambling-
| like behavior shouldn't be allowed for kids under a certain
| age
| _coveredInBees wrote:
| Sure, I don't disagree with that at all. I'd love to see
| that happen. I was just pointing out that most of the
| industry is far worse than what I have seen with Roblox
| personally.
| Aerroon wrote:
| So, no social media and no video games for kids? Man am I
| glad that I grew up before tomorrow when everything is
| going to be restricted.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| social media generally bans kids under 13 in the US --
| there's a good amount of evidence regarding the harms it
| can have at this point
|
| kids haven't been able to buy mature games from brick-
| and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child
| decades ago
|
| kids used to be able to smoke cigarettes too
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _there 's a good amount of evidence regarding the harms
| it can have at this point_
|
| Considering this evidence was produced during a time when
| the public opinion was looking for any excuse to blame
| social media companies _and_ that the field of research
| producing those studies has an accuracy of a coin flip I
| 'm unconvinced. I'd need to see a lot more than out of
| contact quotes from Facebook research or these
| questionable "we asked kids to taste xyz, they're totally
| more depressed and it's totally social media's fault."
|
| > _kids haven 't been able to buy mature games from
| brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child
| decades ago_
|
| They pirated them instead because kids don't have money.
|
| That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the
| internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet
| another watered down place.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Some of this evidence has been produced by companies with
| an incentive to not produce it (internal Facebook
| research has shown negative mental health implications
| for teenage girls on instagram for example -- this is
| known as part of some whistleblowing efforts)
|
| > They pirated them instead because kids don't have
| money.
|
| I mean sure, a kid can break a window and rob a gun store
| too... we're not talking about creating rules that are
| impossible to circumvent, the answer to imperfect
| regulation isn't no regulation.
|
| > That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the
| internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet
| another watered down place.
|
| Content filters have come a long way, this isn't what
| anyone is suggesting.
| consteval wrote:
| > So, no social media
|
| When I was a kid, everyone was absolutely riddled with
| self-doubt and insecurity. Jealousy and bullying was the
| norm. There wasn't a soul in my middle school who didn't
| deeply, deeply hate themselves.
|
| This was before social media. Imagine that, but now kids
| ALSO get to form unrealistic expectations and envy at
| home on their devices.
|
| > no video games for kids?
|
| What are you talking about? You can still get your
| friends together and play mario party or super smash or
| kirby or whatever. That never went away, we still have
| co-op games where it's free to play for the other kids.
|
| We just shouldn't have gambling for the kids. Probably.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _You can still get your friends together and play mario
| party or super smash or kirby or whatever. That never
| went away, we still have co-op games where it 's free to
| play for the other kids._
|
| Yeah, they don't add those free to play mechanics because
| they force you to buy an extra piece of hardware for $400
| to play those games. It works great when you're rich, I
| guess, but then these f2p games shouldn't matter in the
| first place.
| latexr wrote:
| > As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play,
| but because they aren't free, his friends can't play.
|
| Considering how much you said your kid has spent, that money
| could've been spent on buying copies for all their friends and
| you'd still have plenty left over.
| nazka wrote:
| I upvoted you but after thinking about it actually, you will
| find that this will attract kids that are friends for the
| money and start weird dynamics in the social bubble of his
| son. But your idea is right! Maybe he could have done gaming
| sessions at his house or who knows what to better spend this
| money on other games.
| rangerelf wrote:
| LAN parties were/are a thing.
| junon wrote:
| Eh yes. And no. Turn it into a gathering event at your
| house with pizza and bring back LAN parties. That's stuff
| that kids remember for life.
| lolinder wrote:
| > this will attract kids that are friends for the money and
| start weird dynamics in the social bubble of his son
|
| From the amount of money sunk into this one game it sounds
| like there are already weird money dynamics in his social
| bubble.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah, but Roblox weird money dynamics is that he's showing
| up and is overpowered in the games because he's paying to
| win, but fellow kids likely view him as exceptionally
| skilled :P
| jayd16 wrote:
| That's like one console and a couple games so its not
| necessarily the most efficient usage.
|
| Couch co-op is the way to go.... but as the dad be prepared
| to lose control of your living room.
| consteval wrote:
| Many games don't even require separate copies. This is a
| fairly new phenomenon.
|
| I mean, I'm fully grown and I still get together with friends
| and play Mario Party and Smash. I just bought extra
| controllers and boom, good to go.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Really depends on the genre nowadays. Fighters (mostly)
| still support local co-op (Nintendo in General is pretty
| good at couch co-op). Shooters are becoming less local co-
| op friendly, not even having split screen.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| I've mentioned this in other comments, but I sat in with my
| nephews on a Roblox session, then stayed after to check things
| out on my own. There's an astounding number of adults on that
| platform saying some of the most horrible things.
|
| The games are like you say, and there's some that are indeed
| the model of what I expected: games that kids and amateurs made
| with their tools. Car jump games. Simple platforming. Basic
| shooters. But then there are games that seem like they're some
| dark pattern mobile devs side projects lol Games where you do
| nothing but collect stuff or pets and there's lots of
| gratification devices happening and suddenly there's just a
| literal pay wall. Just the worst of f2p gambling addiction
| built right into player built roblox games over and over and
| over again.
|
| But on to the adults, my favorite example was joining a
| 'shooter' game that was really just a shooting gallery of sorts
| but it had voice chat enabled and wtf there's some eastern
| european accent going off on gay people and talking about how
| the targets should have sombreros so 'we' can shoot "lazy"
| Mexicans.
|
| That experience was replicated through a few games and I just
| wrote Roblox off completely as infested with people trying to
| help kids find hate based ideologies or get them addicted to
| gambling. I warned their mother, she didn't listen til she got
| her credit card stolen.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| First thing I do when playing a multiplayer game with
| proximity voice chat is to turn voice chat off. Makes play
| sessions much more enjoyable.
|
| Sure you may miss the 5% of chat that is actually tactical
| and relevant to the game, but it's a very small price to pay
| in order to avoid edgelords and other toxic people.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This sucks because, when used appropriately, prox voice
| chat works really well and adds depth to multiplayer. A lot
| of games feel really dead without it. But finding pubbies
| that use it appropriately is practically impossible.
| jjcm wrote:
| I appreciate Valve for having both an in-game skill score
| as well as a behavior score. Once your behavior is maxed
| out chat becomes an entirely different experience.
|
| Here's a chat log from a game I played yesterday:
| https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7902208511/chat
|
| Some wholesome banter and that's about it.
| streamfan wrote:
| I wholeheartedly disagree as someone with 8k+ hours in
| game.
|
| In fact most people in dota have maxed out behavior
| scores.
|
| You have to try pretty hard to be muted in the game or
| have behavior or communication scores lowered
| significantly.
|
| I can assure anyone that just because you're sitting at
| 12k doesn't mean your experience is going to be good or
| an "entirely different experience"
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Is that simply cultural? DOTA is well over a decade old.
| If everyone's toxic and behavior is self-moderated, then
| toxic behavior is not just normalized but reinforced.
| wredue wrote:
| Games in general have been a target of hate base voice chat.
|
| You get these people everywhere.
| consf wrote:
| I never forget the first time I was bombarded with abuse in
| the voice chat in Apex. After that, I never used that
| feature again.
| draebek wrote:
| I struggle to understand why people are so toxic with chat in
| video games. I don't go to the supermarket, or even the bar
| and hear people just casually chatting about "who hates
| [racial slur]?"
|
| There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which
| says that if you give normal people anonymity and an audience
| then they _become_ (let 's call them) assholes. I feel that,
| in order to buy this, you must accept that there are a
| surprisingly large number of assholes, much larger than I
| want to believe.
|
| Are the number of racist idiots just much greater amongst
| Gamers(tm)? (To be clear, I play a lot of video games myself.
| I prefer to believe I am not a racist.)
|
| I'd love to say that there are a lot more young people
| playing video games, and they're just trying to be edgy, but
| I had a chat with some guy who was talking about getting his
| appliances repaired by "lazy [racial slur]" people. That's
| probably not a fourteen year old, right? I've seen that a
| _lot_.
|
| I understand that it probably just takes one or two people
| per game to make the chat unbearable, but if I'm on a team
| with six or eight people, and I consistently get at least one
| of these fucking idiots per match, isn't that still an
| uncomfortably high percentage of the population?
| dasil003 wrote:
| I suspect it's because angry and disenfranchised people are
| over-represented in terms of hours spent playing online
| games. There's also a negative feedback loop where more
| casual and/or sensitive gamers opt out since they don't
| want to deal with the bullshit.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| > There's also a negative feedback loop where more casual
| and/or sensitive gamers opt out since they don't want to
| deal with the bullshit.
|
| I think there's also a loop where extremes are pushed. Ie
| it's common to celebrate victories in games. This then
| tilts players. Players lean into that tilt, and teabag.
| Teabag eventually is mundane, so you spread verbal
| toxicity. Toxicity then isn't enough, and etcetc.
|
| It seems a loop without external pressures like in-
| person-reputation to inhibit how far it goes. A cycle of
| abuse that's all anonymous, fueled by the general
| competitive arousal of PvP/etc games.
|
| Note that i'm mostly speaking to PvP games where that
| competitive environment also contributes to it. However i
| imagine "cycle of abuse" has it's place in most of these
| anonymous environments.
| gopher_space wrote:
| From my experience any pvp game that doesn't have in-game
| admins attracts these people.
| jachee wrote:
| I think you've run across one of the major, unfortunate
| reasons US elections are so close, from the ... _less-
| progressive_ ... side of things.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Well that's easy to explain. Most voters skew older for
| historical reasons and older people tend to become more
| conservative as they age (again, for historical reasons).
|
| This "gamer rage" is a more recent enabling by
| technological anonymity, as well as instantaneous, cheap
| global communication. Actions without consequences, but
| without needing millions to cover up the petty actions.
| techjamie wrote:
| My boss at my first job was a nice guy, helped me out a lot
| when I was still a fledgling adult. Added him on Facebook
| after a few months and it was covered in Confederate flags,
| Nazi windmills, and talk about certain types of people.
|
| I knew he did some bad stuff and spent a long time behind
| bars, but I didn't see that coming.
|
| Also, if you go to any YouTube video that involves a non-
| white person committing a crime, the comments are stuffed
| with thinly veiled, or outright, racist remarks. People are
| just garbage.
| conductr wrote:
| People revert to their inner twelve year old punk kid self
| when they are there. Bullying and trying to one up others
| in terms of most outrageous thing you can say is common and
| applauded.
| mulmen wrote:
| > I feel that, in order to buy this, you must accept that
| there are a surprisingly large number of assholes, much
| larger than I want to believe
|
| Why? The theory is that they _become_ assholes, not that
| they started that way. The microphone is corrupting.
| Muromec wrote:
| Thankfully multiplayers games without chat exits. It's
| enough to get tea-bagged by a team winning a 1v3 without
| actually hearing them talk.
| burnished wrote:
| Yes, it seems clear that a component of Gamer Culture is
| casual bigotry. It has been changing but that mostly means
| spaces have become more inclusive and new people are more
| inclusive. The pre-existing people didn't stop existing
| they just sort of got shoved out of places that started
| having standards around behavior.
|
| An aspect of the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory is also
| the level of exposure behavior gets in an online context -
| so very many more people are present in a way that invites
| sharing and comment that just doesn't exist in a grocery
| store. Think about how unusual it would be for me to reply
| in depth to an offhand comment like this (that was not
| directed to me) at a bar. Or how many people you might
| socialize with in a tf2 or l4d lobby over the course of an
| hour compared to in a grocery.
|
| There is also a component of self selection when it comes
| to the spaces you are comparing against; you probably
| wouldn't want to go to bars and groceries where that
| behavior was present well before you actually got to live
| examples.
|
| In my experience individual communities can also have very
| different feels. For example I used to play League of
| Legends and eventually switched to Dota2 because it felt
| very consistent that at least one person would behave in an
| awful fashion in the league lobbies. Whereas when playing
| Dota that sort of behavior was the exception.
| oever wrote:
| In games where you're shooting others, how can you justify
| that? Either you are bad or they are bad. When you're in a
| team, it's normal that the team talks about justification.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _Are the number of racist idiots just much greater
| amongst Gamers(tm)?_ "
|
| You have clearly never read the comments on newspaper
| websites back when they still had them. Sturgeon's Law
| applies to human beings in general.
| isk517 wrote:
| I think that unfortunately there are just a larger number
| of assholes than we would like to believe, and they
| particularly manifest when playing video games. Playing
| video games is something people due for a release, and what
| they are releasing isn't always pleasant. For every person
| that openly acts like a asshole out in public there are at
| least 2 secret assholes who understand the society expects
| them to be on their best behavior, but once they are
| anonymous then the vitriol can flow freely.
|
| With that said I think the percentage of assholes by
| percentage of population is always going to be higher in
| video games with voice chat simply because it becomes a
| outlet for a certain type of person.
| celim307 wrote:
| I'd argue its from attention seeking from lonely people
| online. Being a rage troll is the quickest way to get some
| kind of interaction, and being online means theres less
| consequences for it
| akudha wrote:
| One doesn't behave bad to someone stronger than them (or
| wealthier, or in a powerful position etc) because they know
| there will be consequences. One doesn't pick a fight in a
| bar or supermarket because they know there will be
| consequences.
|
| What consequence is there for saying crappy things online,
| in a video game, especially playing with kids? At best one
| would get banned? Then go to some other site/game and
| repeat the same bad behavior.
|
| The truly nicest people are those who are nice even when
| there is no one around to watch them.
| Verdex wrote:
| My hypothesis of civilization is that even the smallest
| child with a blade may with sufficient luck grievously
| wound the mightiest warrior.
|
| So there is a natural mechanism that tends people towards
| some level of civility when they're in meat space with each
| other.
|
| Incivility towards the other not present is then about
| fitting in via tribalism. After all, those others could be
| dangerous so we had better make sure our tribe is all on
| the right page about mistrusting them.
|
| Incivility towards the other who is present is then about
| an attempt at social dominance. "Don't mess with me because
| there are others like me who will avenge me." Perhaps.
|
| Online there is only reputational harm and emotional harm.
| And when anonymous there is only emotional harm.
|
| When the fear of an unexpected stabbing is truly removed we
| see the true heart of our fellows. Alas, not the most
| aesthetically pleasing view.
| K0balt wrote:
| The asshole fraction is surprisingly high. If all kinds are
| accounted for, anecdotally I would estimate that the number
| is between 1/4 and 1/3. If you're on here, there is a good
| chance that you are an outlier in many respects, and
| normally that means that we tend to breathe rarified,
| filtered air...we don't see it except online.
|
| It helps to remember that for every college professor level
| person there is someone out there for whom tying his shoes
| is a significant cognitive challenge. For every really
| smart person out there, there is someone who is cognitively
| incapable of meaningfully participating in society.
|
| The bell curve is a bitch.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Faux-anonymity/lack of consequences.
|
| The same reason that many on the internet are toxic.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory,
| which says that if you give normal people anonymity and an
| audience then they _become_ (let 's call them) assholes.
|
| I don't agree. HN is one of the best examples. We're as
| anonymous as we can be here and still this is one of the
| most friendly online environments I know. Clearly community
| culture plays a big role too. And it keeps offering
| refreshing content, I learn new stuff here daily, unlike in
| the commercial bubbles.
|
| Same on Libera chat. Didn't turn into a cesspool. In fact
| the former freenode suddenly did but the community
| immediately turned their back on it en masse. It was
| beautiful to see.
|
| Also, the early internet.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| This is nothing new or exclusive to Roblox, I recall this
| sort of language in every online gaming platform.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| > As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play,
| but because they aren't free, his friends can't play. Just
| drives him to keep playing and wanting more Robux. It's
| compounded when his favorite Youtubers play...
|
| If there's a paid game your kid really likes, perhaps you can
| talk to his friend's parents and buy the friend a copy of the
| game. ...I say talking to the friend's parents first, because
| just gifting a game to the friends would be creepy.
|
| But buying friends copies of a game we want to play together is
| something my friend group routinely does and we're all adults
| with disposable income.
| wavemode wrote:
| > just gifting a game to the friends would be creepy
|
| lol well this certainly depends on how it's done. Walking up
| to them in a trench coat and handing them a disc? Probably
| creepy. But you could also just, like, send them a gift key
| on Steam...
| amclennon wrote:
| Unless this person is literally Santa Claus, I suspect a
| lot of parents might question the motives of a grown man
| sending gifts to their children without their knowledge.
| account42 wrote:
| Just give your kid extra keys to hand to his friends lol,
| no need to make this complicated.
| Muromec wrote:
| Just talk to parents. Maybe you will have lan party with
| them too.
| mulmen wrote:
| The key is "without their knowledge". Seems like an easy
| thing to explain to a parent. Plus it's reasonable you'd
| ask the parents so they have a chance to say yes/no to
| the game.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Having been a victim of grooming, trust me. It's better to
| talk to the parents than to give a child a gift without the
| parents' knowledge.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yes much better. Send an unsolicited game on steam to a
| minor. Maybe one whose parents have more limits on content
| than you.
| neilv wrote:
| Excellent idea. Two additional reasons: (1) many parents
| would want veto power on what kids spent their time on and
| are exposed to, including video games; and (2) you could
| suggest quietly buying the game through the parents, to avoid
| complicating the kids' relationship with getting stuff.
|
| Some other, more expensive, activities (e.g., tennis lessons
| together, when the family of one of the BFFs isn't affluent)
| are harder for more people to do this, but video games are
| relatively inexpensive.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Buy him DRM free games on GOG.
|
| I Do this for young relatives.
|
| Ive been shown WhatsApp threads of the young teens who play the
| DRM-free games i upload - my google drive ID is effectively
| referenced as some kind of deity lol
|
| Side benefit: No online play or interaction with the outside
| world, only with your own group (usually)
| strich wrote:
| As a game developer it's kind of sad to see such practices in
| stealing my or others hard work.
|
| But I have to keep telling myself those kids or parents
| wouldn't have paid for them anyway.
|
| Maybe consider buying a few copies at least in the future?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's always the risk in a game with no protections. It
| just takes one person uploading it to the internet and it's
| shark bait.
|
| At least this example is limited to a neighborhood.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play, but
| because they aren't free, his friends can't play.
|
| It'd be cheaper to buy games for his friends to play than to
| support his robux addiction.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Moderation is dead, and copyright is the knife.
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| I think I will love this quote if I knew what it meant. Care
| to elaborate?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I should have elaborated more originally.. I suppose part
| of me wanted to be asked.
|
| Moderation used to work well, because relatively small
| communities (forums and game servers) included moderators,
| who were users that also actively participated in
| discussion. That model is incredibly rare today. Instead,
| we have a tiny coalition of corporate giants who own
| (monopolize via copyright) the overwhelming majority of
| discussion content and interaction platforms. On these
| platforms, traditional moderation has been replaced with
| corporate censorship and automation, which in turn are
| driven by corporate goals (advertising) instead of genuine
| participation by moderators.
|
| It's my assertion that this is a natural outcome of
| copyright itself. Copyright demands that content be
| exclusively owned and profited upon; therefore interaction
| must be siloed and incentivized accordingly. Even free (as
| in beer) interaction must bow to this pattern eventually.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| I am a gamer dad too. This is something I worry about. I have
| been playing Minecraft with my son but he is learning about
| these other games.
|
| I have been using some of similar messaging to smoking and
| saying things like that playing too many video games will
| destroy the health. Of course, I am not a good role model when
| it comes to living healthy lifestyle. And kids probably don't
| even understand what health really means.
|
| How does one protect their kids against these predatory
| practices?
| hyperbolablabla wrote:
| > I am not a good role model
|
| Maybe fix that?
| Muromec wrote:
| Saying _we don't play the casino scam_ works pretty good
| here.
|
| Like strict zero money after buying the game. Not on custom
| skins not on early access characters. _We just don't_.
|
| Just don't give the money and don't argue about details.
|
| Alternatively, that one custom skill gets unlocked after
| getting a good grade at the end of the year or for
| birthday/Christmas/whatever.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I'm a gamer and I always play the games my kids are playing to
| see what's up. Roblox was banned in my house after I messed
| around with it on my own for 30 minutes. Most of the games on
| the platform are pay to win skinner boxes and they have a
| pedophile problem.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...
| ciropantera wrote:
| As a new father that will eventually get into that situation:
| how do you ban Roblox in your house? I imagine it's popular
| among your kids' real world acquaintances (school etc).
| Doesn't banning it exclude your kids from these groups? Do
| they feel left out?
|
| Given the current state of gaming and where it's heading I
| would love to ban gaming altogether but I feel social
| pressure from other kids makes it very hard.
| jajko wrote:
| I go against the stream it seems, but even though I grew up
| gaming, I see it now as mostly wasted time. Any benefit
| that came with it is easily overshadowed with literally
| wasting the most precious thing we have - our time in this
| universe which could be spent having serious adventures (or
| anything else like finding/working on love and real
| friends(TM)).
|
| I've gotten into various sports mostly done in mountains
| and some additional filler training like weightlifting and
| running, my quality of life and satisfaction from it
| skyrocketed. Obviously you get much more healthier,
| attractive and happier as side effect, but over time your
| mindset also changes a lot.
|
| These days, displays in our home are kept to the minimum
| since content is mostly toxic and made as addictive as
| possible (as mentioned all over this thread). As time
| progresses we will gradually ease it off, but games will be
| last thing on a long list. There is not much skill to learn
| so they are not missing out, clicking all around can be
| done by infants.
|
| It helps that we are surrounded by people where such
| approach is the norm and mark of good invested parenthood,
| and letting kids get addicted to various dark patterns
| online or in gaming is seen as on cca same level as being
| absent alcoholic parent or similar fail. Not that I don't
| see it often ie when traveling, kids glued to screen to me
| looks very sad while their parents often look like epitome
| of laziness. Physically and mentally weak, socially
| awkward, stuck in eternal dopamine kick chase, largely
| defenseless from sophisticated actors milking their parents
| credit cards.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Everyone will have different experiences. I turned that
| gaming passion into a career and am fortunately much
| better off than my single mother who struggled raising
| me.
|
| (and speaking of parents: who the hell is letting a kid
| use their credit card? I bought an extra $.75
| butterfingers one time and it was probably the most mad
| my mom ever got at me. More than when I dinged the car
| while learning to drive. I NEVER spent her money again
| without asking).
|
| Games help motivate me to read (being into RPGs with
| little/no voice acting will do that), they arguably
| enhaced my logic puzzle ability and reaction time, they
| gave me something to bind over with like minded
| acquaintances.
|
| I think it really comes down to a case by case basis.
| Shocka1 wrote:
| I'm mostly in agreement with ya. I've always been big
| into the outdoors as it's what truly allows me to
| recharge. Fishing/hiking/hunting/mountainbiking, etc. All
| of it is good for the soul. As the kids have gotten older
| I've been able to get them out in the same activities. In
| my house 8/10 times we are outside doing outdoorsy stuff,
| while the other 20% is gaming.
|
| The type/quality of the games definitely matters IMO. My
| six year old really enjoys DCS World and Kerbel Space
| program. Roblox is a total no go in my house, but I
| rarely deny my kid from wanting to land a jet or build a
| rocket.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Doesn't banning it exclude your kids from these groups?
| Do they feel left out?
|
| The way I was raised we understood that most kids do things
| that come back to bite them later and we could choose to be
| better than that.
|
| I don't feel guilty for teaching my kids to avoid drugs and
| alcohol--the friend groups that would actually fully
| exclude them from aren't worth their time anyway. I feel
| the same about Roblox. It's a dangerous drug produced by an
| intentionally exploitative company.
|
| If refusing to participate causes a particular friend group
| to become inaccessible, that says something about the
| amount of time that friend group spends on the drug and
| therefore says something about the utility of the time my
| kid would have spent with them anyway.
| spreiti wrote:
| Explain them the concepts of loot boxes and pay to win. My
| son, who was 8 at that time, understood quiet fast that
| these games don't require skill and are just trying to
| steal money from him. He doesn't like that and now avoids
| games that contain these dark patterns and has become quiet
| good at spotting them.
|
| Also, buy a Nintendo console. It solves 99% of all
| problems. I haven't seen these dark patterns in any
| Nintendo title and personally I think it's the best gaming
| environment for kids.
| watwut wrote:
| My kids did not paid a cent nor did most of their friends.
| There are some paid a little, no more then the relatively
| normal amount of money. If someone 8 years old is paying a
| lot of money for Roblox while his friends prefer roblox
| because it is free, then the issue is provably solvable.
|
| Beyond limiting infinite amount of paying by not giving the
| kid infinite amount of money, you can limit their time in
| the app or on tablet by rules like "max X hours per week".
| xyst wrote:
| Wild. You know there's a problem but you continue to feed into
| your child's addiction. This is known as "enabling".
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| You should find abandonedware games for him to network play on.
|
| Right around the time of the mobile phone gaming took a very,
| very sharp turn to pure sociopathy. It had always been flirting
| with it, but now the mbas are full on putting as much
| sociopathic addiction rigging, social bullying, and
| manufactured demand as possible.
| afloyd wrote:
| Former Roblox player that quit back in 2016, there used to be a
| free currency called Tickets which were a free currency you
| could get through various means, it was a lot more restrictive
| on what you could get, but it really boosted my enjoyment of
| the game. The moment they got rid of tix I quit, because I
| refused to spend any of my meager allowance on Roblox (also
| generally being bored of the game after years of playing.)
| Modern Roblox is really impressive, and really depressing. The
| things people make are incredibly cool, and they are rewarded
| incredibly poorly for it.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > I can't stand that almost all of the games seem to have a pay
| to win aspect, or are heavily advertising every chance they
| get.
|
| That started at a certain moment in history, when paying online
| became trivial, so everyone who didn't produce pay-to-win was
| leaving a lot of money on the table. You need to find games
| that are older than that.
|
| Some of the good old games are free, for example Starcraft or
| Wesnoth. There are many cheap games on Steam, but you need to
| review them first, or maybe find a review on YouTube. If the
| game is sufficiently cheap, for example up to $5, you could
| simply buy 5 copies and tell your kid to give donate 4 of them
| to his best friends.
| niemandhier wrote:
| I bought my son a ps5, Hogwarts Legacy and told him Roblox is
| never going to be on any device we own or in any network I
| control.
|
| In addition to being mostly pay-to-win the platform has a
| pedophile problem.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I know roblox is the most popular target. But really, any
| network enabled platform with a large base of children will
| have a grooming problem.
|
| I was surprised reading the article that Roblox already spends
| 28% of revenue on Safety and Trust. Maybe Roblox is just that
| gigantic a platform to where that's still not sufficient.
| consf wrote:
| Roblox gives me a sense of suspicion and distrust
| kin wrote:
| Everything I've seen from Roblox just seems so rough across the
| board. Poor UI, poor graphics, poor gameplay. There's a sense of
| freedom that is quite refreshing kind of like Gary's mod. I'm
| just so surprised that with such high adoption, none of the money
| is going into make anything remotely polished.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > I'm just so surprised that with such high adoption, none of
| the money is going into make anything remotely polished.
|
| There are numerous polished games on the platform, but the most
| of the players are younger kids on hand-me-down mobile devices,
| so the most popular games tend to be easy to run casual games.
| Here are a few examples of what you're looking for:
|
| * Frontlines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA71d3O1ID0
|
| * Primal Hunt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_lenB5MTTU
|
| * Riotfall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E0kEFxBTEM
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Polish is a double edged sword. Its other side is decisiveness,
| which is diametrically opposed to engineering freedom.
|
| It's a hard problem, though I agree there is some low hanging
| fruit that Roblox seems ignorant to. I think the biggest reason
| for its success is an extreme lack of competition. Nearly every
| time someone makes a good enough (use friendly) sandbox engine,
| they wrap it in copyright and market it wholesale; and that
| makes decisiveness (polish) a high priority.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| They have the craziest most difficult interview process I've ever
| seen, like beyond quant level. But I don't know why. My kids play
| it and it feels like the jankiest most busted-ass 3D engine that
| ever existed. I'm sure all the secret sauce is doing all this
| stuff at scale, but what do Leetcode hards in 20 minutes have to
| do with that?
| guax wrote:
| Most interview "rituals" are about gatekeeping and not actual
| talent acquisition. I'm unfamiliar with theirs but it sounds
| like it from the descriptions and company output.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| It's just a hazing ritual. Somebody started it when it was a
| small company, and all of them had to go through it so new
| hires will too.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| They have positive cash and are paying their employees well.
| That's what a company should be doing rather than paying peanuts
| and hoarding wealth like a dragon. Especially as it seems they
| are actually profitable, just hiding it with accounting.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > just hiding it with accounting.
|
| I posted this in another comment, but the deferred revenue
| recognition was forced by the SEC [1].
|
| [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-sec-told-roblox-to-
| chan...
| aaroninsf wrote:
| FTFY: "biggest surveillance effort targeting children"
| resource_waste wrote:
| Me any my wife's experience with roblox:
|
| >Find good games through reddit recommendations
|
| >Play the games, most are novel and remind me of WC3 customs
|
| >Show our non-gamer friends the quirky games
|
| Its pretty cool, but there is soo much garbage to get past.
| tdiff wrote:
| I find the whole idea of money-driven game environment to be so
| repulsive. It's like ultimate goal of earning money is put above
| having fun. Not something it'd love my kids to experience.
| RIMR wrote:
| >But as COVID receded into memory, Roblox shifted from "new" to
| "familiar,"
|
| "New"? Roblox came out nearly 20 years ago...
|
| It went from "cult classic" to "viral phenomenon".
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