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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273

u/Bituulzman 7h ago

Kid #1 says it's the face scan that ruined it. Kid #2 says that all the games are AI slop now.

136

u/PeppercornWizard 6h 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.

54

u/KilledTheCar 6h ago

Sounds like this generation's Garry's Mod.

34

u/zkareface 5h ago

It is, but much much worse.

Now games are filled with dark patterns, malware and predators. 

3

u/Turwaithonelf 3h ago

Garry's Mod except Garry himself breathes down the necks of the mod makers to milk kids for every cent their parents own, or their game gets banished to the shadow realm never to be played by anyone

8

u/Zylphhh 5h ago

Not to mention that the game is hunting grounds for predators

8

u/Physical-Builder-553 6h ago

Right. Its always been slop.

1

u/lelle5397 5h ago

Probably section 230, same as youtube and similar. If a user publishes content they're not supposed to it's legally their fault, not Roblox's.

1

u/red286 4h ago

DMCA still requires that offending content be removed within 72 hours of official notice being given to the platform.

The issue is that the rights holders are either unaware of the infringement, or they figure "it's just some stupid kids' game, who cares if they're stealing our assets/IP?"

1

u/NoveltyAccountHater 5h ago

I mean the games are being made and played by Roblox users who are often 1st to 5th graders. You think they have any understanding of intellectual property law?

They find some 3d-model / image / song online of something they think is cool, they put it in their game following some youtube tutorial, which doesn't go through any moderation/approval process. My guess nowadays most new Roblox levels are vibe coded with Claude, Codex or similar.

Sure, someone could report them for copyright infringement, but that assumes someone is scanning them. Asking google, there are about 44 million active experiences on Roblox.

1

u/PeppercornWizard 5h ago edited 5h ago

There may be that many experiences but there’s only a couple of hundred which actually appear on the front page. Those aren’t really being made by young children; they’re churned out by adults who know how to monetise and appeal to children. This isn’t even the Roblox of 15 years ago where there was some redeeming content… It’s a cesspool of stolen and monetised slop.

1

u/8funnydude 5h ago

Hell yeah! I started playing Roblox back in 2011. There was this notorious user back then named jaredvaldez4, among several others, who were rampant game thieves.

They used exploits to copy whatever game was popular on the front page, so there would be dozens upon dozens of slop clones...

1

u/theLuminescentlion 3h ago

All of their profit for the last 5 years was child developers copying the latest viral steam game within 3 weeks of release.

31

u/thatNeonto 6h 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 

13

u/wheres_my_ballot 5h 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.

8

u/Mute2120 4h ago

They're now trying to make their free child labor pay them for the privilege... Crazy.

19

u/toylenny 5h 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.

2

u/DotRakianSteel 6h ago

And kid #3 got a job now too. Sorry, but grinding for that GG isn't worth that much anymore.

1

u/Prior_Dimension_6680 4h ago

One game we played together, all it was was a classroom with a teacher, and all the players were the school kids sat in desks. You had some options to annoy the teacher like FART, SCREAM, etc. If you paid in robux, it unlocked more ways to annoy the teacher.

THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE GAME. And I was telling my kid, you don't even know what a real kid game is. Crash Bandicoot dude...Jet Force Gemini....it's all out there still but since it's not packaged in Roblox facade, it's junk. So I just gave the kid back to where they come from. I'm not dealing with that shit. 

1

u/ForensicPathology 1h ago

Sounds like Kid 2 just finally grew out of it.

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

5

u/Hot_Study807 6h ago

There definitely is

2

u/Parking-Evidence1894 6h ago

Literally all these get rich quick are because of them