Why Roblox and Child Labor Are Suddenly in the News Together

Somewhere, a public relations person at Roblox has been having a bad week.

Roblox is probably not happy with the headlines bouncing around the last few days:

• IGN: “Roblox Senior Engineer: Play-to-Earn Isn't Child Labor, It's a Gift”

• The Verge: “Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is ‘a gift’”

• Kotaku: “Roblox Boss: We Aren't Exploiting Child Labor, We're Giving Kids In ‘The Slum’ A Job”

These all stem from a Eurogamer interview conducted with Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza, where he dropped a doozy of a quote, when asked whether Roblox, a platform largely played by young people and entirely built around experiences/games that are also made by the same young users of the platform, possibly exploits children:

"I don't know, you can say this for a lot of things, right? Like, you can say, 'Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labour,' right? Or, you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income. So, I can be like 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now, with just a laptop, I can create something, make money and then sustain my life.

Free advice: when asked if your platform exploits young children, regardless of the merits behind the question, don’t start with “I don’t know,” and equivocate over it. 

In other words:

In response to the backlash, Roblox did issue a lengthy response to Eurogamer, with the company noting “for the experiences that monetise, the majority are created by developers who are aged 18 or older” and “of the creators who are enrolled in the Roblox Developer Exchange (DevEx) program, the overwhelming majority are over the age of 18.”

Roblox is attempting to grow up with its audience, but still, Roblox is mostly for kids.

Some parents say yes to Roblox. Some parents say no to Roblox. Every situation, and every child, is different, and as I’m always pointing out at Crossplay, there are not clear cut answers here. What is clear, however, is that Roblox remains incredibly popular, kids want to play it, and importantly, it’s become a bonafide social platform for young people. As a result, it’s not shocking that people are creating, selling, and making money off selling Roblox items. Those “people” can also include children, and over the years, there have been rising concerns about Roblox’s relationship with those kids.

Much of the criticism against Roblox was crystalized in a 2021 video from People Make Games, which is worth watching, even if you don’t know a lick about Roblox:

If you don’t have time for the video (it’s short!), here are some important takeaways.

Selling a game on someone else’s platform means giving that platform a cut. Steam, for example, takes 30-percent, which is standard for Sony, Nintendo, etc. Roblox, however, takes (at least) an astonishing 75.5-percent. On top of that, discoverability on Roblox is a huge problem for new games, which means you’re often forced to pay for advertising slots on Roblox. Worse, “robux,” the main currency of Roblox, is valued differently inside and outside the platform, incentivizing robux to stay within Roblox.

The house—in this case, Roblox—always wins. Such ecosystems have a nasty legacy.

“I'd love to know how many people below the age of 18 are labouring to create content for the platform with the hope of making money and ultimately failing,” said Quintin Smith, host of the People Make Games video about Roblox’s seemingly exploitative practices, to Crossplay, when asked about the latest quotes coming out of Roblox.

“Of course Roblox has success stories among its developers,” he continued. “That's the nature of the crab bucket. But even in the case of the crabs at the top of the bucket, enjoying the sunshine, I'd love to have a conversation about the exchange rate when they DevEX their Robux, because the developers I spoke to would all prefer a larger slice of the pie from a company with a market cap of $24 billion.”

DevEX is the program that turns (valuable) robux into (less valuable) real money.

“I'd love to know what resources they offer Roblox developers of any age,” he said, “who feel like they've been exploited in the business relationships they've formed with other Roblox developers, people who they've most likely never met and who have all of the power in the business relationship. Because last I heard from Roblox devs it ‘isn't enough.’”

Elsewhere in Roblox, a lawsuit brought by two mothers alleging Roblox is facilitating illegal gambling rings is moving forward. You can read my reporting on that here.

Oof, indeed.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• The problem isn’t inherently Roblox letting kids make money on Roblox, it’s an ecosystem specifically designed to deny creators from getting an appropriate cut.

• These are problems that legislation should actually solve, because waiting for a platform like Roblox to willingly give up gobs of money is highly unlikely!

• I did relent on our family “no robux” position over the weekend briefly, allowing my Stitch-obsessed oldest to buy two $1 pieces of Stitch-flavored avatar clothes.