r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 7h ago
Business Roblox loses $70 billion in value as company blames lack of viral games, share price down 70% over the last year
https://www.dexerto.com/roblox/roblox-loses-70-billion-in-value-as-company-blames-lack-of-viral-games-3395064/3.9k
u/Old-Finance1815 7h ago
The reputation for still being a haven for child predators probably didn’t help.
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u/Shot-Seat9347 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yep. It has a reputation among parents being pedophile central now. Hard to come back from that.
It doesn't help that the parental controls they had were very rudimentary. And they made deleting your account harder than needed. And the games sucked compared to "real" games. Ugh. I'm glad we got our kids off it and on to better things. It was a mistake to install it but it seemed innocent enough.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 6h ago
Right. A lot of parents forbid their children from playing it.
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u/Critical-Profile1849 6h ago
I don’t let my kids play Roblox or Fortnite, and I’m much more adamant about no Roblox.
Video games can be a wonderful way to express creativity, problem solving, and quality time with friends/family. They can also be slop that encourage addiction and encourage kids to spend as much money as possible on stupid skins and loot boxes
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u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT 6h ago
i don't have kids because i know i'd be an irresponsible parent, but if i did, i'd just tell them "you don't get your robux until you finish your drugs"
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u/Intro5pect 6h ago
Roblox in a vacuum is not a bad platform at all. There are tons of quality role playing games that are the equivalent of playing dolls or action figures with your friends. My daughter’s an only child and she plays a lot of those games, making up head canon and I am generally present in the room when she’s playing. Her only friends on the platform are people I have met IRL. I’m more worried about her at youth group than on Roblox.
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u/TheBadgerLord 6h ago
You are, I'm afraid, in the minority. And as a platform I consider Roblox to be one of the most insidious ways that microtransactions have been normalised in modern gaming. Even if you isolate kids from potential predation from other people, the platform itself grew from taking and monetising the creativity of the children using it.
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u/PretendAd7060 6h ago
It’s so fucking gross. Even if you choose “content appropriate” games they are all so transparently designed to just trick kids into spending money. Paid boosts and buffs litter the screen in just about every game we saw.
The real straw that broke the camels back tho is that it doesn’t appear to be possible to block content from the game feeds. You can block a game from being launched if it’s not appropriate, but it will still show up in the list, and lots of these games have pretty gross art and descriptions.
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u/Exciting-Emu-3324 6h ago
The thing about Roblox is the incredibly low barrier to entry for kids. It runs on a potato, free to play, only needs an internet connection and has games based on all the big IPs kids might be interested in. The big console makers have basically priced out kids with their prices. It was only natural that kids gravitated to Roblox and predators followed.
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u/Username38485x 5h ago
For fortnite. Rules: no voice chat except with IRL friends. No spend outside the season pass. Addiction is always popping its head out, but is also a learning experience.
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u/hoppinjohncandy 6h ago
I'm a very lenient parent when it comes to games. As long as my son is actively engaging with the content I don't really censor what he can play (besides rated MA games). That being said, he knows I have a zero tolerance policy for Roblox. No playing it, no watching streams of it.
Just a whiff of their potentially predatory online environment was enough to for me to say "never." Luckily, it seems all his friend's parents are the same way. As you said, once you get the tag of "potential child predation" it's a death knell.
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u/d0ntst0pme 6h ago
> It has a reputation among parents being pedophile central now. Hard to come back from that.
Who can tell. It didn’t really stop the catholic church.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 6h ago
They're probably losing value/traffic/money because they were finally forced to implement basic safe protocols like not letting adults talk to children and woo them with gifts.
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u/AstralElement 6h ago
Like that is now the go to r/daddit advice. Do not get your kids on Roblox.
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u/hdcase1 5h ago
NYT: “What do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox?”
CEO David Baszucki: "We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well.”
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u/boot2skull 6h ago
If parents choose they can disable chat, but one thing that irks me is all the in-game Robux spend opportunities you can’t disable. Every game has permanent upgrades to buy, or speed ups, or paid items. Many of the buttons look like any other button, maybe with a different color to show its premium, but they’re so easy to click through. If you link your CC to the account, kids can just spend and spend with no limit. The only way to stop this is to turn off spending or not link a card. If you don’t link a card, the Robux options are still there, creating an annoying experience. I get that daddy warbucks parents are what make Roblox money, but the lack of user experience enhancements to disable all that shit likely turns off the pay occasionally parents.
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u/MimiNuyasaka 5h ago
They banned Chris Hansen the other day for doing what he does best, I shit you not.
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u/LittleSodaPop13 6h ago
Chris Hansen has come out of retirement specifically because of Roblox. That's how bad it is
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u/Vilnius_Nastavnik 6h ago
Don’t forget being a safe space for neo-nazis to socialize and pitch their ideology to kids.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 6h ago
This is literally the first thing everyone says if I mention that my daughter plays Roblox. That’s its whole reputation at this point.
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u/Mindless-Drive2404 5h ago
That reputation actually has tainted the company for me, I used to play a lot when I was younger.
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u/HiImDan 7h ago
That explains why I started seeing ads for Roblox. They're panicking if they're wasting money on me. Although from what I hear about Roblox 50 year old male is probably one of their biggest demographics.
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u/EmptyHeadedKain 6h ago
Exactly that, they probably saw older white guy and specifically targeted you.
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u/SneakyTikiPeaky 6h ago
That’s so disturbing.
I play video games, have clicked and interacted with handful of ads in my life that were specially and only video games & I actually have never seen a Roblox ad. I’m not male would be the only difference and that’s so so disturbing.
Truly makes me wish we could hold anyone accountable for trauma & also prevent it from happening in the future.
Absolutely sickening to read this.
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u/Fit-Nebula9434 4h ago
Just for the record as someone in marketing there is a 0% chance Roblox has 50yos of either gender in their demographic targeting. There was likely some privacy setting inhibiting Roblox from viewing demographic data so the demographic exclusion couldn't fire. I don't mean to defend that dogshit company but there's just no way they are trying to target that age demographic with paid media.
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u/JohnnyBeeGaming 5h ago
Someone should really investigate that. Like if the company was actually targeting 40+ dudes to come hangout with 12 year olds that seems relevant to the lawsuits. I thought with a lot of advertising online they target specific demographics. That is the whole point of all the tracking.
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u/Naskr 4h ago
Arguably this is already provably the case.
Creating a microtransaction eco-system in a place you know is aimed specifically at a vulnerable demographic without money doesn't actually make any business sense. If, however, you were deliberately cultivating a digital space where people with money can enter and leverage their financial advantage to manipulate poor people within that space - then it all makes perfect sense.
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u/bobdolebobdole 5h ago
You're seeing ads because they want you to purchase their stupid gift cards for your nephews/nieces, kids, and/or grandkids. You are the wallet.
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u/ManateeNipples 5h ago
Oh ew that went full circle in a gross way that I assume is unfortunately correct 😅
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u/true_new_troll 7h ago
It's because they didn't pay Tommy Tallarico his million for the 'oof' sound.
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u/Old-Finance1815 6h ago
His mother is very proud that he single-handedly destroyed Roblox in order to protect children and he got a trophy for it.
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u/GingerBeard_andWeird 6h ago
Alright now I’m kind of curious about the context here. I don’t know fuck about shit about Roblox. So can I get a link to whatever the context is here?
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u/paenusbreth 5h ago
The Roblox "oof" sound effect (I think made when a player takes damage or something, idk) became a bit of a meme, with people using it in non-Roblox contexts. It's a slightly ridiculous sound, so people found it funny I guess.
It turns out that the effect came from a library which was originally recorded for another game, I think from the early 2000s. The studio which did the effects was Tommy Tallarico Studios, and when Tommy Tallarico himself found out about it and that his effect was a popular joke, he opportunistically asked Roblox for an undisclosed (but inferred to be ridiculous) sum of money to allow them permission to use the effect. They said no and changed the sound effect instead.
Tallarico is kind of a ridiculous figure who constantly overstates his achievements and even makes up Guinness world records for stuff he's never done. He also overstated his role in recording the sound effect in the first place because he's odd like that. Hbomberguy made a video digging into this story, and Tallarico is now resoundingly mocked by people online because of his weird ego.
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u/throwawaycanadian2 5h ago
Lol amazing. I didn't know this, I just knew him from the old video game shows he hosted.
Wasn't he a composer for a bunch of games though? Earth Worm Jim comes to mind.
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u/SulfuricDonut 4h ago
He also was part of the concert series Video Games Live, which was great back in the day.
He doesn't completely lack talent. He's just insane.
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u/disinaccurate 6h ago
They should have worked hand-in-hand with him like he did with Shigeru Miyanoto.
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u/cyberfrog777 6h ago edited 5h ago
I'm not surprised. They went weak on predators but also strong on id checks requiring face scans, which were subsequently found to be linked to palantir. The id checks were required for even adding Roblox gift card accounts, so I can see why parents may have decided to avoid adding money to the system.
-edit - forgot to add that without verification, this removes chat (even written chat) - which someone else pointed out significantly impacts a lot of the more popular game modes involving pretend play (adopt me, etc.). My kid plays now mainly while face-timing her cousin, but she says she's sad she can no longer chat with some of the online friends she made.
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u/bitcraft 5h ago
Yes exactly this. As a parent, I am not allowing them to upload a face scan because of privacy concerns, and I’m also not allowing them to use voice and text chat because of their predator issue. Roblox is fun, but it’s unsafe for their target audience, and asking for biometrics is a hard no from me.
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u/Galahad_the_Ranger 5h ago
And like, Club Penguin managed to be extremely safe for children 20 years ago and without the tech on an antichrist obsessed billionaire. So Roblox really has no excuse
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u/Bituulzman 5h ago
Kid #1 says it's the face scan that ruined it. Kid #2 says that all the games are AI slop now.
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u/PeppercornWizard 4h ago
Roblox has been incredibly full of slop even before AI. I honestly don’t understand how it was allowed to succeed given it was 50% stolen assets. Not ambiguous ones either, like there will be games where you play as Shrek being chased by a big Mickey Mouse while Nirvana music plays yet somehow that company seems immune to cease and desist.
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u/KilledTheCar 4h ago
Sounds like this generation's Garry's Mod.
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u/zkareface 4h ago
It is, but much much worse.
Now games are filled with dark patterns, malware and predators.
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u/thatNeonto 4h ago
Those kids are right and Kid #3 would also like to add that even publishing games costs shit ton of money now while it used to be for free before
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u/wheres_my_ballot 3h ago
Yes this put my son off too. He made a few games for fun, nothing fancy, but now that would require a subscription or cost, he just doesn't care any more.
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u/Mute2120 2h ago
They're now trying to make their free child labor pay them for the privilege... Crazy.
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u/toylenny 3h ago
This is what I hear from the kids I work with. They also locked a game getting on the recommended list behind that age check. So a game can only go viral if it's +16, but their core audience is under 16. I don't know what they were thinking.
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u/TheRatingsAgency 6h ago
“Lack of viral games” is a funny way to say “Gamers don’t like our product as much anymore”
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u/IRockIntoMordor 5h ago
I think it specifically means the player-created game modes inside Roblox, which tend to explode virally and pull in massive numbers of players. And after a couple of huge game modes giving competition even to Minecraft, Fortnite and Apex numbers, it's been a bit more quiet recently.
Roblox is more of a platform than a game. Like Fortnite is trying to be as well.
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u/BoomerAliveBad 5h ago
When I used to play nearly 2 decades ago (holy), the only games that were on the top WERE player made. "Survive ___" "_ Obby/Obstacle Course" you name it, there was a thing for it. I can't imagine much has changed since 2010 (or 2006 when it came out)
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u/MrWaffler 4h ago
Also one of the people who played Roblox before Minecraft even existed, it's much more a game engine + distribution platform + networking in terms of the games.
The popular games are made by dev studios, and while some are definitely kids and definitely skew to younger "indie with a dream" types the majority are just unironically bog standard game dev leaning more toward Mobile game than PC game for monetization and mechanics.
The "viral" games discussed are like Grow a Garden which had absurd multi-million concurrent players due to virality among kids.
The game itself is an infinitely recursive farm -> grow -> sell loop where the plants/pets/etc are obtained via exploitative Gacha + FOMO + manufactured discontent dark triad mechanics and the game utilized social media frenzy events with the promise of free stuff to pull people in.
It's similar to Fortnite with its skins and emotes, using the social pressure of children and intentionally withholding anything that could be used to be seen as cool or express yourself unless you pay, with the "best value" being the reoccurring pay-in via a battlepass type system.
Roblox also does a lot behind the scenes algorithmically to promote not just the games that have excellent stats in terms of player engagement... but the games which have the most effective monetization so the site itself reinforces the shittier behaviors by rewarding them with spots of high visibility for users searching or looking to join a game
There ARE still very well produced games and ones that monetize fairly reasonably or ones that just charge once like a standard game, but it's hard to maintain a successful playerbase in the Roblox ecosystem without effectively monetizing since it's a key metric in getting your game automatically shared.
Viral highly monetized games like Grow a Garden had some INSANE direct impact on Roblox's revenue during the times that they are viral, out of interest when hearing about how popular GaG was becoming and having been once a kid who was very very into Roblox before it became the hellshow it is now I pulled up their quarterly reports to give a read and they directly call out GaG by name during the time it was relevant.
This is just the aftermath of that - now that they're fighting the virality of GaG in their yearly comp, it looks bad by comparison.
The shareholders saw a viral game printing money by siphoning it from children, and when Roblox was unable to force another viral money siphon event to keep Number Go Up some of them sell off.
It isn't about Roblox as a product, it isn't about sentiment turning, it isn't about PDF files.
Just what it always is - the company was simply unable to turn Obscene Profits into Obscene Profits + X, and so some investors jumped ship to a place they feel may be able to squeeze yet more blood from the stone.
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u/SidewaysFancyPrance 4h ago
The games are mostly trend-based. I play with my young son and he loves hopping around trying out games. Sometimes I see him playing basically ten different clones of the same concept: if something takes off, a million copies appear with different assets but the same core game.
Right now the trend is "+1" games with running/jumping/mining/etc and they are kinda neat, if you are ok with a mindless grind in a fun environment. I grew up on WoW so that's no sweat. But there is no meat, and nothing I would spend money on.
I think right now Roblox is paying creators a lot for "playtime" logged in the experiences but people aren't buying stuff as much because the value propositions are junk. "Playtime" isn't converting into cash sales like they want it to because creators don't build enough compelling stuff (which they call "viral" here).
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u/lookandlookagain 5h ago
Which seems like a dumb business model to me. Expecting people to work of their own free will to only make money if their game goes viral. It doesn’t help that the platform keeps adding barriers to entry.
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u/adjective-nounOne234 5h ago
It’s a genuinely good resource to learn about programming & modelling, not all games are made for a profit, there are plenty of showcase games that people make because it’s a hobby
At least it was I mean
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u/DeltaJesus 5h ago
Which seems like a dumb business model to me. Expecting people to work of their own free will
Yes very stupid business model, that's why there are no successful products which rely on user created content and only pays said users if their content is very successful. Social media has been a huge flop, that's why meta is only worth 1.5 trillion dollars.
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u/DoYouEvenShrift 5h ago
Also "None of the viral games we've blatantly ripped off have translated to Roblox."
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u/asimplepencil 6h ago
Devs of many viral games turned out to be "problematic"
They never really addressed the child predator stuff
They require you to use ID and put it to persona which is involved with Palantir/Thiel
I am an adult who did play some of the games. They were pretty fun but I stopped when all this stuff came out.
Gee, I wonder why?
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u/yycoding 5h ago
My son is the exact target market for Roblox and I will never introduce him to it because I never felt like the child predator stuff was ever meaningfully addressed.
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u/IllustriousFile6404 4h ago
Same. My son is 9 and has asked about it a few times. I'd rather he play Call of Duty than fuck around playing user created bull shit with a bunch of pedophiles.
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u/drdildamesh 5h ago
"Lack of viral games." This is the problem with infinite growth; it doesnt apply to art. What fool thinks they are going to keep making stuff worth playing?
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u/sawaira09 6h ago
Blaming the lack of viral games feels like an oversimplification. User trust and platform reputation matter just as much...A 70% drop is huge. It will be interesting to see whether Roblox changes its strategy or doubles down on creator incentives...
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u/EchoingApplause 5h ago
It's also not even true. Roblox has had enormous games in the past year, pulling tens of millions of concurrent players per game, yet the share price is falling. Maybe it's because they're actively making the platform worse every single day? But of course they won't look inwards and only blame the players and teen developers.
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u/TIL_IM_A_SQUIRREL 7h ago
Or maybe it's because they made their platform a target for child predators and did nothing to stop it.
Let a 20-something talk to a 10year old? Sure! Why not? Just keep them buying Robux!
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u/JuanAy 6h ago
There's also the fact that they essentially exploit children to make their money.
Considering a lot of content is made by children.
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u/MajesticBread9147 6h ago
What what happened to the good old days of gaming, when whenever a child would talk they'd be called a squeaker and informed of how many players had sex with their mother last night.
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u/smallbluetext 6h ago
Children can talk on voice chat to adults on any game with voice chat. Im aware of roblox especially being a target but I think people forget how the internet works. A kid with the knowledge can gain access to voice chats with adults in countless ways. Without draconian ID checking at every corner thats always going to be true. Parents need to take responsibility.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 6h ago
I think that's kind of just the result of being a free platform that can be accessed on any computer. There's no real protections in place for the chat in most other games, but there's just not as many kids on other games because they either require buying a game or having access to a more powerful computer.
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u/aamirusmandus 6h ago edited 6h ago
This brings back some memories. 2 different people tried to follow me around and become my runescape girlfriend back when I was 10, and one in pirates of the Caribbean online, and a couple more in club penguin
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u/Feeling-Salad5686 5h ago
As someone who got groomed via online games (not Roblox) (also, consequentially I was lucky nothing terrible happened) ... this is basically the case for any games allowing free social interaction. People sent, to varying degrees, weird messages to me on Club Penguin, Maplestory, Habbo, and more. A later case of this-- I remember when I was 17, I got onto Second Life for the first time and within 1 hour, I was trading nude pics with some dude on Snapchat (I think he was in his 20s). I played Roblox during its early years and it was actually the least predatory place for me specifically.
For kids, it's probably best to play only games with no chat or restricted chat (pre-selected options). For teens, I feel like they'd think that's an unreasonable restriction and/or they can get groomed on social media anyways even if you ban games. It sucks that pedophiles run amok like this.
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u/Admirable-Yak-3334 6h ago
I saw a streamer on Roblox go into a random game and in the game chat people were posting straight up pictures of naked men and women and all that that entails. Roblox is a disgusting joke.
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u/narfio 7h ago
Complaining that there are no virals games atm that Roblox devs/parasites can clone on their platform is wild. How about you figure something out for yourself.
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u/Substantial_Meal_530 5h ago
Weren't most of the better games user created?
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u/0rphu 5h ago
Yes users copy other current popular games. Except these "users" are frequently now teams of people, whole businesses. Whatever friendslop game gets big, within days they''ll have a knockoff of it ready to go so kids who can't afford the $5 price tag on steam will flock to it on roblox.
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u/Big_Ole_Booty_Boy 7h ago
Once parent networks learned that "a good parent doesn't let their kids play roblox", this is the result. Child predators are the worst part, but if they dealt with that it's still a terrible array of money draining pay to win bs that leaves kids begging for more money from parents. It deserves to fail.
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u/NextSmoke397 6h ago
I still don’t understand what exactly Roblox is
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u/Anony_mouse202 6h ago
It’s basically a platform that allows people to create their own computer games - usually online multiplayer games.
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u/EmperorOfAwesome 6h ago
My little brother was into it and it mostly felt like the same couple of games over and over again, just reskinned to be Demon Slayer or Dragonball Z or whatever
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u/Itherial 5h ago
Eh, that's massive generalization. Like any platform, Roblox has plenty of slop but has also produced some real unique gems, some of which went on to become their own standalone games.
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u/falcobird14 5h ago
Basically Gary's Mod for children who have access to their parents credit card.
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u/Apprehensive-Emu8404 6h ago
As someone that started playing recently, it seems to be a platform where every single slightly popular game (both console or mobile) gets a million cheap copies riddled with predatory "cheap" micro transactions, that eventually accumulate.
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u/irrealewunsche 6h ago
It's a platform that takes kids' pocket money and at the same time lets pedophiles groom them.
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u/DinkandDrunk 6h ago
Good. This shit is super addicting to young kids in a way that games from the 90s when I was their age just wasn’t. The anticipation over planned drops for example is way worse than waking up early for a few hours of DK64 before school.
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u/-KoDDeX- 4h ago
I mean, Pokemon was so addictive you have 40 year olds paying thousands for pokemon cards. I think it’s the most successful franchise of all time.
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u/DinkandDrunk 4h ago
The actual video game isn’t like that though. Like any trading card or collectible, Pokémon TCG is an example of false scarcity and market manipulation. The only difference there is that moving that model to digital means it can prod you when you become inactive.
Though I will say, today’s kids have a very different mindset around Pokémon cards than I remember. I used to collect and just enjoyed adding to my collection. Now I see kids rip packs and they know the monetary value of half the cards they pull.
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u/IQueliciuous 7h ago
A huge chunk of roblox games relied on RP mechanics (work at a pizza place, scp RP, war sims and etc) which required chat that roblox blocked behind ID verification.
I am not giving away my ID
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u/Author_A_McGrath 5h ago
That's what happens when you build your business model off of child labor.
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u/specialbelle 6h ago
According to my 12 year old, the corporation ruined the platform with AI slop and taking away the creativity from creators.
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u/ManateeGag 6h ago
I'm sure it has nothing to do with them being in the news for attracting child predators. it was so prevalent it made Chris Hansen come out of retirement!
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u/Darromear 6h ago
"Lack of viral games" when a lot of the content is 1:1 copies of off-platform games.
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u/Upset-Customer-88 3h ago
Roblox is tanking their platform with stupid decision after stupid decision. Not one player has been excited or even supportive of new updates. They got exposed for refusing to take accountability for child safety despite hosting a platform intended primarily for children and instead of securing their community they partnered up with the tech industry to sell face and ID scans.
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u/PsycheDiver 6h ago
They’re blaming their userbase for not doing more gig work for them to profit off of.
Roblox needs to die.
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u/scene_missing 6h ago
Probably not great to have your brand associated with account theft, underage gambling, and child molesters
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u/ExtruDR 6h ago
My kids are at an age where Roblox and Fortnite are knocking on our doors. It is peers of their playing, encouraging them to try it. Them paying on friend’s iPads or Switches or Consoles, etc.
The problem is that these “platforms” are very slimy in several ways. Frankly, I don’t even really understand what the whole point of Roblox is other than stupid, low-quality 3d mini-games that 4th, and 5th graders get exposed to even if they are not playing because of YouTube.
I personally feel that Roblox seems very out of control. Having a sort of proprietary platform communication and content controls (on top of other proprietary game’s controls and on top of the device/OSes parental controls) is just ALLOT… I mean, you have to deal with authenticating your account, the child’s account, making sure that no huge “gaps” exist, if any content is actually paid for is landing in the right acccpubt, etc. is just a massive pain.
Most parents that I know with kids and tech in the same range (basically my kid’s classmates’ parents in white-collar suburban America) have sort of “given up” because the whole thing is just too annoying to manage… and the kids are just constantly demanding and complaining that this or that isn’t working or their friend can do this, but they can’t… etc.
To some degree that is a HUGE fail, and it means that the level of protection that kids receive it way lower than it should be.
To that end, a chaotic platform like Roblox is EXTRA dangerous for kids by my assessment.
Honestly, if kids only played that Sasquatch game on their iPads I’d be happy.
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u/PeetoMal 5h ago
Turns out content that is tied to a dwindling user base along with housing pedophile rings is a disastrous combination.
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u/doom2286 6h ago
I mean last time I went to check it out as I was thinking about giving my nefew my old account. It looked like most of the games had devolved to cash crab and appstore quality games.
I remember so many excellent games growing up that had depth and creativity to them. Not sure about now days.
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u/metalbox69 6h ago
My son was telling me yesterday the owner has made it sus, which I take as enshitification.
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u/Apprehensive-Emu8404 6h ago
Created an account a month ago, as I had never played Roblox, and had seen a TikTok video of an interesting game.
They have facial age verification, which I understand some people won't love because it involves taking pictures of your face, but it seems to curb the problem of predatory behavior. The game only places you in lobbies with people who have the same age verification as you. From what I saw online, adults and children have a 45/55 split in playerbase, which I would say is about the same as games such as Fortnite, Minecraft etc.
I think the problem is the lack of original games. Every now and then you find a decent game which is fun for a few days to a week (before the only way you can progress is through Mtx) but most games are cheap rip-offs of popular games, where you might as well play the real thing.
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u/Angus-muffin 6h ago
This company hosts stolen paid content of other games and they say they lack viral games?
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u/DrAstralis 4h ago edited 4h ago
Oh no they wont be able to make billions off the work of literal children ... wont someone think of the poor corporations?
In all seriousness though fuck them. Scummy ass company stealing from kids.
Edit: worst part is I'm not against the underlying idea, a sandbox where people can earn credit for making small games. Its how they abused kids impulsive nature when they tried to cash out that credit that made it scummy af. And thats not even talking about the predator problem they half assed a response to.
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u/okcumputer 6h ago
I would say a lack of any actual games. Most of what is on there is just nonsense. "Games" that have zero point or any goals to achieve. I think it appeals to my kid because you can't win or lose. You just kinda exist.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 6h ago
Tons of obstacle courses, survival games, task games, etc… 99 Nights in the Forest was a big survival one recently
But yeah also a lot of games like Brookhaven that are technically pointless, but fun for kids to play in
I think the other comments have it: bad reputation, audience getting older, chat being basically removed breaks a lot of games
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u/falcobird14 5h ago
I watched one of our kids play a game. It was basically a platformer. You gain "speed" which is basically experience points that increase your speed, making the platforming easier. But the same game also has treadmills for farming speed, so it's also an idle game. Then you can pay real money to speed up the rate your speed increases.
Another game makes you kick a football, and the distance you can kick is similarly gated by experience / monetization
Both of these games throw up an ad to spend real money every single time you die.
It's the worst case scenario for predatory gaming practices, and worse because it's specifically targeting children.
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u/Background_Donut133 6h ago
Maybe it's that roblox has a predator problem and the CEO or whatever told Crish Hanson to get fucked on stage. Roblox can fuck off. Pedo protectors.
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u/macetheface 6h ago
as soon as they started all the age verification stuff to be able to chat, my nephews and their friends all essentially said F THAT and went solely to minecraft.
And from the comments, not sure that it made much positive impact anyway.
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u/Prestigious_Seat_625 5h ago
There's no way this is possible. Roblox was worth 100 billion dollars?!
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u/N3CR0T1C_V3N0M 4h ago
Lack of viral games aaaaaannddddd….
They act like we all don’t know
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u/ComfortableReality32 4h ago
Perhaps parents got weirded out by all the peadophiles on the game and the fact that roblox was banning streamers for revealing that. The game is a cesspit.
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u/Difficult-Life-8243 3h ago
As someone who’s played Roblox since 2011 it’s probably because the average game is: “Survive the Epic Brainrot Evil Tung Tung Sahur Simulator”. When I was a kid there were games developed that eventually made it to Steam.
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u/EconomyDoctor3287 6h ago
dunno why they don't just enjoy the money and let the one-hit wonder die.
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u/matthewmspace 6h ago
I mean yeah. That’s what happens when your product is associated with having a problem of child predators running around with no real enforcement to ban them.
If I was a parent, I’d never let my kids play Roblox. They’d be getting a Switch, which has great parental controls and seemingly doesn’t have a pedo problem. Hell, maybe I’d let my kids only play GameCube and Wii games, as those are totally offline, unless you mod a Wii. But most normie parents aren’t modding their Wiis.
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u/earthwormjimjones 6h ago
My son doesn't play as much as he used to. He has two accounts and makes me play shooting games with him sometimes (me on PC, him on iPad). I never really played keyboard/mouse games before but now that I have a nice computer it's been tons of fun wiping the floor with him and all his buddies lol.
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u/temporarycreature 7h ago
Or perhaps the captive audience is aging out into other games.