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NEW EPISODE: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers (Patreon)

Published:
2021-08-19 13:01:19
Imported:
2026-06
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Hey patrons!

We've got a longer piece from Quinns today, as he investigates the relationship Roblox Corporation has created with its community of mostly younger game developers.

The company is now valued at more than $40 billion, after a phenomenally successful public listing earlier this year, making it one of the most valuable video game companies on the planet. And yet, for all the success stories you may have seen before now, only a tiny sliver of the people making 'experiences' on the platform are actually being compensated themselves.

Is that fair? And given the average age of Roblox's playerbase, to what extent are children being exploited for their work?

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Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers

With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage of? Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeopleMakeGames Check out our t-shirts: https://store.dftba.com/collections/people-make-games Written and presented by Quintin Smith: https://twitter.com/Quinns108 Design and art direction by Anni Sayers: https://twitter.com/anni_sayers

Comments

Luke Shadwell

Hey I’ve worked on Roblox for almost a decade as a developer and had a lot of success, I haven’t seen the video yet but I don’t agree with the title at all, happy to give my views on this if you wanted to hear them. Roblox has been a massive positive to my life and my future.

Luke Shadwell

To be clear I’m sure I’ll watch this and realise it’s actually a great breakdown of the subject as PMG always does, just my instant reaction to the title :) I know some other devs are also patrons (also that 200M players stat is from my own analytics site, RTrack :))

gnar

It's a gripping header but I have to agree with you. My younger brother and sister play Roblox all the time and my brother designs spaceships in Blender. He doesn't do it for a paycheck. He does it because creating is fun and validating in and of itself.

scandis

This was a really welcome look into the Roblox ecosystem/business, thank you. I work in dev and have had to consider the kids' game angle many times. It is really hard to make serious money on kids without exploiting kids, or teaching them harmful models. Not saying it can't be done, but sure is easier to just see how far the law lets you go.

Luke Shadwell

Did end up watching it and as always the level of investigation and fact checking was amazing. There are quite a few areas of the video I disagree with but I think the majority of my criticisms are still within the bounds of the debate, so it’s not inaccurate I just think the presentation of some things is extreme e.g. likening to working class coal miners being exploited. There’s a big difference in that Roblox is offering the chance to earn literally millions of dollars, if you aspire to be earning that much money the road to it will of course be difficult. There’s no platform where a kid could make a game and then have massive success every time, but Roblox offers the closest to that there is.

Roger Franz

So the most popular games become more popular. So Roblox is cheating its young devs.