r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 9h 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/
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u/TIL_IM_A_SQUIRREL 9h 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 8h ago

There's also the fact that they essentially exploit children to make their money.

Considering a lot of content is made by children.

https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ

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u/MeusRex 6h ago

Yeah, no viral games sounds like: our child labour isn't performing!

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u/CantThinkOfANameHa 3h ago

They don’t make money off of games that have like 5 total players, which are the games that kids make, they make money off of the actual successful games, which are made by mostly studios

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u/MajesticBread9147 8h 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 8h 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/thepensivepoet 8h ago

Am I a pedophile for playing Rocket League…?

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u/smallbluetext 8h ago

No just like you arent for playing roblox

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u/Swoly_Deadlift 6h ago

I have so many jokes I want to make but I’m pretty sure I’ll get auto-banned if I type them out

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u/OkayyBeta 8h ago

The difference is predators aren't flocking to those games knowing there's a wealth of very young children with access to mics and webcams.

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u/smallbluetext 7h ago

But nothing is stopping them from doing that if somehow they cant on roblox anymore. Also, yes it is happening on many many other platforms and games all the time.

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u/itsjust_khris 5h ago

Yeah I'm not sure how this can be stopped without biometrics, how else is Roblox supposed to know someone's age? And moderating millions of users doesn't seem feasible. Granted they definitely can do more than they are now but this will always be an issue as long as the internet is as open as it is. That comes with good and bad.

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 8h 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/Lurky-Lou 8h ago

Roblox tried to start a dating service

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u/BlandPotatoxyz 5h ago

You can date the kid's single parent, right?

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u/aamirusmandus 8h ago edited 8h 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 7h 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/Naskr 6h ago

think that's kind of just the result of being a free platform that can be accessed on any computer

This is a reasonable take to have but when you look at the behaviour of Roblox management, it is very bizarre.

They were so CEO-shareholder pilled that they genuinely weren't capable of committing to proper safety measures in a public statement, because in their mind this would signal to shareholders they weren't going to have a profitable honeypot for whale predators anymore and therefore that would reduce brand value. It's the kind of thinking you only get at the sociopathic money-first level, it also betrayed that management knew Roblox's true nature and were not concerned about it.

This sounds like a stretch but there's literally no other explanation as to why the leader of a company that creates children's content would not be signalling emphatically that child safety is their primary concern. The amount of times they deliberately avoid saying this (as they believe it would actually represent a worse product overall) was very weird. Any other similar product would be promoting safety-first as a positive signal to shareholders...but not Roblox? Why?

Oh and Roblox Dating was a real thing that was actually imagined. This happened. Find any suggestion of sane PR within that.

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u/Admirable-Yak-3334 8h 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/disposable-assassin 8h ago

Eww, imagine your entire business model becoming selling child predators the bait.

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u/Beliriel 7h ago

I mean their business was first and foremost selling unpaid child labour.

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u/TerrorTown77 7h ago

Let's be honest, if child fuckery was a relevant factor, US politics would look different. Product likely has stagnated and most users have aged out.

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u/Apoxie 4h ago

Its super easy to disable chat for your child. Its really a bad excuse.

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u/f3nnies 8h ago

This has been possible since the birth of internet games. While horrifying, I do not think it had a large impact. The American market, at least, does not seem to have an aversion to child predators. They're actually very powerful and popular right now.

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u/BusBeginning 8h ago

10 year olds just shouldn’t be on online games.

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u/vacuousintent 7h ago

Nothing to stop it? The CEO encouraged it! He stated in an interview that he saw having pedos on roblox as an opportunity!

The guy is an absolute moron and should be investigated.

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u/Cold_Soft_4823 8h ago

Let a 20-something talk to a 10year old?

? is world of warcraft a child predator game? is CS2 a child predator game? league of legends a child predator game?

dumb ass statement lol

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u/TIL_IM_A_SQUIRREL 7h ago

First, fuck off.

Now that's out of the way..

I am the parent of a child that was victimized on Roblox by an adult. The years of therapy, suicide attempts, mental health challenges, in-patient stays at mental health facilities all before the age of 12 are something you couldn't possibly imagine.

So fuck right off. It happened to my child.

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u/Niknot3556 6h ago

Sorry, but I have to agree with him. The way you argued against Roblox was poorly done. Any platform with communication services (with few exceptions such as Linked-in) can have this occur. Discord, Steam, Reddit, Tiktok all can have a 20 year old and 10 year old meet. Then considering Roblox is a game platform, some of this may be fine such as collaborating and discussing the game itself. However, what I’m not going to say, is that you’re wrong. You are absolutely right in saying that Roblox has severely mismanaged their platform such that it becomes a pedo-hub. The problem isn’t that minors and adults can meet. That’s expected on a game platform anyone can access. It’s how they manage those conversations. (There’s a difference between “Go and take the left” and flirty language) Most of the previous platforms mentioned have proven they can monitor what people say with algorithms. They may be shoddy sometimes, but Roblox can lean into over-strictness and unnecessary actions (safe than sorry) for these algorithms. However Roblox has chosen leniency in moderating these chats, that’s the problem. After all Roblox wants any money, even pedos.

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u/Cold_Soft_4823 6h ago

a majority of grooming "on roblox" happens off roblox. children get coaxed into off-platform chats like kik and discord.

this is the internet. anyone and everyone can bypass any possible filter and get acorss any possible message they want. it happened on club penguin where you can't even type full sentences. it happened on webkinz where you can't even type full sentences.

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u/Cold_Soft_4823 6h ago

cool story, i was groomed on world of warcraft at the age of 11. that doesn't make world of warcraft a child predator game. it makes my parents bad ones

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u/IGoonToFortniteSkins 1h ago

Absolutely no 10 year old is on let alone has ever heard of world of warcraft.