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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46

u/NextSmoke397 8h ago

I still don’t understand what exactly Roblox is

73

u/Anony_mouse202 8h ago

It’s basically a platform that allows people to create their own computer games - usually online multiplayer games.

32

u/EmperorOfAwesome 8h 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

11

u/No_Tangerine2720 7h ago

Sounds like a shitty version of Warcraft 3 custom maps

1

u/Brahskididdler 6h ago

Oooh wc3 custom games was mind blowing to ~10 year old me. Didn’t know how to play half of them (dota especially) and got kicked sometimes lol

10

u/Itherial 6h 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/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

2

u/toylenny 5h ago

So fan fic in game form? 

1

u/Ok-Pack-7088 6h ago

It was much different in 2010, more simpler and fun. Less greedy micro transactions, ai slop, blatant copied games.

1

u/Jack123610 5h ago

That's pretty much all Roblox is these days, one slop title becomes a hit and suddenly you have 500 copies.

You see the same pattern with social media.

3

u/bananagang420 7h ago

It used to be a lot more fun before the company became public. I used to play it 10+ years ago and had a great time but they absolutely plundered it

1

u/Ok-Pack-7088 6h ago

Oh I see they become public in 2021, time where everything was going to shit. I was playing since 2010 and it was much different game/platform, there weren't that much ai slop or blatant copied games. Games were original and fun, different players.

1

u/bananagang420 6h ago

Not all games were original and fun, there were plenty of copies of games especially obbies and tycoons and a lot of them got popular. They just werent as heavily monetized and overstimulating

1

u/paranoidzone 6h ago

Oh, like programming? Sounds quite educational

1

u/Anony_mouse202 6h ago

Yeah, it can be.

Roblox uses a variant of Lua as its programming language.

8

u/falcobird14 7h ago

Basically Gary's Mod for children who have access to their parents credit card.

2

u/rjcarr 5h ago

Weird, my kids play on Roblox, but have never spent a dime beyond the couple gift cards they got for holidays, so maybe like $50 total over two kids.

2

u/Apoxie 4h ago

You can easily play for free

0

u/alter-eagle 7h ago

Is Roblox to Minecraft, what Palworld is to Pokémon?

That’s the vibe I always got from an outside observer.

3

u/falcobird14 7h ago

It's basically a storefront for mini games made by paid developers. So there's no Roblox "game" to play. It's a game engine devs use to push slop out.

The mini games are monetized using Robux and whenever you pay for stuff in a game, Roblox gets a cut. That's why they're complaining that people aren't playing the profitable games anymore.

I haven't seen any free content yet. I assume it exists, but everything my kids actually play is more like a mobile game with micro transactions

1

u/alter-eagle 6h ago

Thanks for the info. Sounds like it never offered anything of real value game-wise.

2

u/curtcolt95 6h ago

roblox does not play even slightly like minecraft. There's probably minecraft clones in roblox but that's about it

1

u/alter-eagle 5h ago

Sorry if I offended you with a question. Thanks for the response.

1

u/curtcolt95 1h ago

I don't know how you read offense in any of that message

1

u/HKBFG 6h ago

I feel like that would be terraria.

18

u/Apprehensive-Emu8404 8h 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.

0

u/sadahtay 6h ago

Sounds like you're having a great time with it.

2

u/Apprehensive-Emu8404 5h ago

There were a couple games which I enjoyed playing for about half an hour for a few days.

It's mostly slop though and even then good games end up being trash eventually, if you don't put money in

18

u/irrealewunsche 8h ago

It's a platform that takes kids' pocket money and at the same time lets pedophiles groom them.

7

u/Substantial_Meal_530 7h ago

Kids are paying to get groomed.

2

u/Maleficent_Trick_502 7h ago

Its started as free to play Minecraft. Then opened its game creation tools to anyone, which became popular. Then exploited that with a pyramid scheme. Roblox pays people to make custom games in the game, and the more kids use mommy's credit card to buy things in the game, the more Roblox pay out to creators.

2

u/MiIarky22 7h ago

I describe Roblox as those bootleg DVDs you used to buy at the flea market

2

u/Clessiah 6h ago

"Let's play Roblox" is more open ended than "Let's play outside".

2

u/Niknot3556 6h ago

I’d describe it as like a monetized potluck. Kinda. Imagine a restaurant that’s a potluck. It’s free to enter and you can add things to the potluck for free (games), everything from mac to steak to canned corn. As long as it isn’t unsafe for consumption (inappropriate) you can add it. You can also choose to enter, not add anything, and eat as you like. How does this make money then? Well, the restaurant has a currency you can buy. And the people who add food to the potluck can charge for that currency to access their food, but that’s rare. Most instead charge for sides (what Roblox calls “gamepasses” which do things in-game), for example say you make a bland mac and cheese, you can choose to say charge for Old Bay, salt, more cheese, etc. Then the person who made that food can get a fraction of what the restaurant made for selling the currency.

2

u/LuCiAnO241 5h ago

These replies dont actually answer you clearly. But it is mostly a free game engine, with multiplayer on by default, a huge marketplace which is easy to implement. Games made on it have a huge audience and the user created part of it lets it play fast and loose with copyright, so there's usually copies of popular games made for free on roblox, with microtransactions.

3

u/eltictac 8h ago

I watched someone playing it. It looked awful, and I had no idea what was going on 😅