Roblox is minting teen millionaires

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-06/roblox-s-teen-millionaires-are-disrupting-the-gaming-industry

by petethomas • 5 months ago

219 302 5 months ago

SoftTalker• 4 months ago

This is so far out of the realm of what I do with computers that I'm not even really sure what Roblox is. I guess sort of a virtual game world? Seems crazy that there's so much money in it.

giobox2• 4 months ago

It's basically a litmus test for whether you have kids or not at this point. The age at which kids become aware of Roblox from their peers is getting younger and younger in my experiences anyway. Before I had kids, I had very little idea either, and I consider myself fairly well acquainted with PC gaming.

sayamqazi3• 4 months ago

The solution is to give them a taste of better built (specifically competetive) games and they will never like roblox.

LoganDark• 4 months ago

Roblox is a game engine and social platform. The basic idea is, you create a game in their engine, using their development tools (such as Roblox Studio), and then you market/promote the game on their website for others to play together with their friends. The game runs on their servers, and you don't have to worry about your own infra if you don't want to, in exchange for the money players spend on Robux (their virtual currency, and now the only one), which they can in turn spend on developer products and other paid items that you set up in your games. Then once you make enough Robux from player purchases, you can cash it out through a process called Developer Exchange which essentially makes you a W-2 employee of Roblox (or whatever financial partner they use, Tipalti?)

The idea is that people like playing with their friends and when they can take their friends and make new friends across hundreds of thousands of games they stay for a long time and (they or their parents) make lots of purchases. The social features of Roblox are a huge part of the appeal, even though I was mostly interested in the engine.

gmueckl2• 4 months ago

In very simple terms, Roblox is an MMO based exclusively around user generated contents (games, items, assets...), including its own virtual currency, microtransactions, marketplaces and convertibility to/from real money. Roblox as a company takes pretty hefty cut from all transactions.

There has been a silent shift in the gaming market over a long time now. Roblox is one aspect of it. Another is the absolutely massive amount of money raked in by some free to play mobile phone titles. For example, Playrix has a revenue comparable to Ubisoft, but their main products are a series of match-3 type games for phones.

ikr678• 4 months ago

Hasnt this 'casual' games market always existed? Once upon a time Zynga/Candycrush was a behemoth on the back of facebook embedded games.

globular-toast• 4 months ago

In even simpler terms it's the current "shut the kids up" tax that parents pay.

zerr• 4 months ago

And how does it differ from Second Life?

0x3f• 4 months ago

Kids in current year like it

NuclearPM2• 4 months ago

The main difference is there that Roblox games are fun.

kentm• 4 months ago

Second life is trying to be a metaverse in the style of snowcrash; it’s one big world. Roblox is more like Newgrounds, where you have a bunch of distinct games or experiences that you select from a menu, but skins and currency and whatnot are portable between the games.

jayd16• 4 months ago

Easy to dev for. Runs on a potato. There are many maps and modes.

blakesterz• 4 months ago

Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352...

https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/

JumpCrisscross3• 4 months ago

Or RuneScape.

Jabrov• 4 months ago

RuneScape millionaires?

aj_icracked• 4 months ago

I just laughed out loud. My friends and I LOVED RuneScape in middle school. I'll meet yall in the wilderness to trade armor.

Ameo• 4 months ago

So true. A member of the clan I was in was operating a proper hedge fund, taking in investments from the clan and using it to flip on the Grand Exchange. Iirc he was even doing sorts of arbitrage, market making, and other advanced stuff.

Now he works at Google doing quantum computing research lol

monster_truck• 4 months ago

Used to sell cooked lobbies to friends for cash back in the first few years of RuneScape. Good times

joezydeco• 4 months ago

The one place where Lua coders are valuable.

frakt0x90• 4 months ago

Balatro was made in Love2d which is Lua!

Levitating• 4 months ago

Oh wow, I would not have guessed that

NuclearPM2• 4 months ago

1. Roblox

2. WoW addons

3. Neovim

4. OpenResty

5. NodeMCU

6. Wireshark

7. Lightroom

8. Hammerspoon

9. LÖVE

10. Redis

toast0• 4 months ago

6. Wireshark

I love this game, but there's no paid DLC; not sure how they monetize.

sonofhans• 4 months ago

Factorio! The factory must grow! (And it must be modded in Lua).

2001zhaozhao4• 4 months ago

I come from the Minecraft modding/server community. There is interesting fact that I like to tell people about the sheer size of Roblox compared to other communities like Minecraft.

The largest Minecraft server in the world is Hypixel at around ~30K concurrent players. Most other servers are very far behind.

There is one Roblox game that looks and plays like Minecraft and copied one single gamemode (Bedwars) common in servers like Hypixel. It had 60K+ concurrent players last time I checked late last year.

There are almost definitely more people playing BedWars on Roblox than there are playing it on Minecraft at this very moment.

bstsb11• 4 months ago

these days, Roblox BedWars averages 36K on weekends:

https://romonitorstats.com/experience/6872265039/

however, Hypixel seems to have overtaken it! last Saturday, it peaked at 39,000 concurrent players. i prefer the original gamemode anyway

Imustaskforhelp4• 4 months ago

Some of it has to do with roblox being free.

(I don't have a minecraft account) but Trust me when I say this but within developing countries especially. You can find 3-4 people out of 1 who plays on hypixel but can't because they can't pay for the game usually when we are really young which is also roblox's most major userbase.

I can imagine Hypixel being atleast 2x and a rough estimate of 5x more the size if they support Cracked Minecraft accounts for example.

Btw, this is also the reason why aternos is so popular within some communities because a free server which can have cracked option. Sign me up starts happening in bulk.

Me and my friends had an aternos server. It was truly something out of this world meeting them tomorrow after having 10 people together in a minecraft server.

I was the person though who spent way too much time and had less stacked gear lol in the end because some of my friends were like bandits haha, who stole my stuff from caves and in general, I have spent much of my time in minecraft during the starting (nothing -> diamond) then afterwards (diamond -> end/netherite)

Anyways my point is that we all could've definitely been on hypixel and something similar if Hypixel supported crack client. For example 11 of us or more played the game one time or another (not sure) within our single class of 50 people and only one of the guys had an minecraft account.

One of my friends literally got into some cash-app type stuff with a shady tetris to earn money app which showed ads to earn 25$ just so that he can buy minecraft to play on hypixel and the game fundamentally required something impossible and my friend felt so depressed at the time and he's one of the smartest people I know. A) people are easy to scam, B) he and many of us had so much desperation to play on hypixel in general.

You can get an alt (and I used to) for free or very cheap which would work everywhere unless on hypixel which had stricter rules and the difference between account prices could be 10x back or more that at that point its just better to make a minecraft account just for hypixel or similar. (I remember seeing accounts for 3$ or something that would work everywhere except hypixel)

I asked him if I should write a blog post to name and fame the company but he denied and he was truly sad that day :(

All of this combined can show how Roblox truly hits a jackpot with it being a free game. Most people might not pay but because of the perceived fame of the game and the number of people playing it. The people who pay would be more likely to pay and I see some people/kids who really look for ways to make robux online.

So with all of this, its easy to see how these (usually teen developers like us) can make something which can land 100k$ as unachievable that sounds.

one of my friends racked in quite a lot of money making 3d sprites in blender for these roblox people and in exchange used to have them buy blender extensions. Those extensions were truly a lot of money if he had to go buy them.

2001zhaozhao4• 4 months ago

I agree with this. For the last ~4 years I have been working to turn my Minecraft server into a free browser game on a custom engine.

Though in Roblox's case, there's two additional factors helping the success of games on its platform besides being free to play

- Roblox has become the de-facto portal from which lots of people play games by default, especially on mobile devices like tablets where discovery for other games (that aren't P2W and can spam ads) is very poor

- Multiplayer games are exceptionally easy to develop on Roblox. (With a standalone game you have to grind on an engine for years like what I'm doing. I'm developing thousands of LOC per weekend with a multi-agent setup and there is just so much necessary complexity that launching an alpha build will take months.)

vasco• 4 months ago

That whole schpiel is why Minecraft isn't free. That people are willing to go through that. There's a lot of free games.

MisterTea• 4 months ago

Some of it has to do with roblox being free.

This reminds me a of recent conversation I had with a friend about the success of Roblox. The big thing my friend said that Roblox has over Fortnight or any other gaming platform is ease of installation.

He told me how their young cousin came to visit and wanted to play Roblox. He told his little cousin he didn't have Roblox and that he would have to download and install it. The young child eagerly replied "It's super easy! let me show you!" So he let his cousin on to his PC. In less than 3 minutes he installed a small client, signed in, download the game files and was playing.

My friend was surprised and said Epic is struggling with this very problem and knows Roblox is successful precisely because of this ease of deployment. This is the same reason Discord is popular: you hop in, create an account and off you go. For Epic, Unreal Engine games are gigabytes in size and games are dependencies of other games built on top such as expansion packs. e.g. to play a Lego expansion pack game you need to buy and install the base Lego game. Roblox avoids this and the game files are small and fast to download.

Svoka• 4 months ago

Grow a Garden, a game on Roblox reached 21.6 million concurrent players.

That number is just insane.

For comparison - top Steam concurrent game is 3.2 million in PUBG.

mattfrommars• 4 months ago

I think it’s because of Kings Kids on their iPad playing this games vs being on PC playing a game on Miniclips or Ebaumsworld…

bstsb11• 4 months ago

even tiny roblox games make money. i developed for a small game (~10m plays) a few years back and i still earn a decent residual from player revenue, even as the game slowly loses traction

hmokiguess• 4 months ago

what does a decent residual mean?

bstsb11• 4 months ago

enough money to cash out via DevEx, Roblox's developer program, every month or so ($110). it's absolutely not a salary - there are barely five people playing at any given time - but given i've done nothing in a year, it's appreciated.

edit: looked at the old stats online. a few years back that game was pulling $1,500+ with no effort each month

2001zhaozhao4• 4 months ago

I made a roblox game years ago with no more than like 2 concurrent players at a time. The game's ideas were immediately copied by a much bigger game (this turned me off the Roblox platform for good).

I still got enough robux to DevEx just from premium roblox subscribers playing the game. (If I cash it out i would get a few hundred dollars. Which is nothing for me today but absolutely a lot of money for an aspiring teenage developer.)

socalgal2• 4 months ago

Is there some other platform where ideas aren't copied?

glenngillen• 4 months ago

Did you you have previous game making experience? I've toyed with the idea of trying to make it a small project for me and my kids but I thought it might be a bit beyond them (and then ultimately become just my project)

bstsb11• 4 months ago

i had experience, mainly with web development; that being said, Roblox Studio is very intuitive for building and UI design, as is Lua (specifically Luau).

my advice is to just start building something. the Toolbox has thousands of 3D models which make the initial experience easier and more fun, and there are hundreds of YouTube tutorials teaching you the basics of Roblox scripting.

also use the excellent DevForum, which has thousands of explainer posts:

https://devforum.roblox.com/c/resources/community-tutorials/...

hjnilsson• 4 months ago

Curious, how does the game monetise, do you have loot-boxes in-game or something? Or is it enough that people play it? What kind of game mechanics are possible to build around?

intrasight6• 4 months ago

"According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16." - Wikipedia

2 decades in the making, they are really hitting their stride. But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.

Spivak• 4 months ago

See this is why I think the whole age verification thing is backwards. If you want to create child friendly spaces then you need to verify someone's age is under 18, 16, 13 etc.. That's a way more real and tangible harm than a teenager looking at a nudie mag.

intrasight6• 4 months ago

For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules:

App to IdP: is this person 13-15

IdP: yes

fc417fc8025• 4 months ago

Please check this box to confirm that you do _not_ possess a government issued photo ID ...

Sorry, in order to use this service you will need to visit your local police station and have them verify that you are in fact a child ...

Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work. I don't think age verification solves very many real world problems. (It does mitigate some, such as alcohol consumption. Just not most.)

yieldcrv5• 4 months ago

But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.

I run a studio that makes Roblox experiences and this is Discord's problem, and will immediately become Telegram's problem the decade where parents and policy makers figure out its Discord's problem

their kid went into an experience within Roblox so I can see that's the branding, the parent paid the kid's allowance in Robux, so I can again see that's the branding

but this is largely a symptom of parents nationwide not paying attention whatsoever

I've talked to many parents, aunts and uncles, they don't know they're the central bank of Roblox of a currency that can be accumulated and cashed out, let alone that its a distributed set of third party experiences.

Roblox Corporation already has age gated talking ability on platform. What specifically should they be doing when everything happens in different communities and off platform?

tadfisher• 4 months ago

This is the actual excuse Roblox used when confronted with actual evidence of child sex trafficking originating on their platform, at the same time balking at implementing age gates and chat restrictions. So of course they caved and implemented age gates and chat restrictions when their "central bank" (a.k.a. concerned parents) learned about Roblox's "issues" from YouTube exposés and other concerned parents.

It doesn't matter that the illegal shit happens off-platform. It is not a good look to be the top of the funnel for traffickers, which is why they put in these invasive restrictions.

If you don't like it, then invest in "creating experiences" for platforms which don't target children. Because asking "what is Roblox supposed to do about their pedo problem" didn't and will never work to placate the people who actually fund the platform.

hsuduebc22• 4 months ago

Interesting. If you don't mind me asking. If I understand the business correctly, the brands are inquiring to design specialized worlds in Roblox so kids can play in them and look at ads?

freejazz10• 4 months ago

I run a studio that makes Roblox experiences and this is Discord's problem

Not really if Roblox is the one connecting the pedos and kids in the first place and I don't see how that is remotely controversial.

nomel3• 4 months ago

But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators

My understanding is that the recent improvements are face scans, and communication limited to people within a few 4 year windows.

They've also increased moderation of chat significantly, especially for the lower age windows.

What low hanging fruit do you see? What's the "ideal" system? Seems like a hard problem, if any sort of cooperative communication/play is involved.

intrasight6• 4 months ago

It is indeed a hard provlem. No low hanging fruit. There certainly not alone, but have a bigger issue with grooming and predation since half of all kids use their platform.

It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification.

Root_Denied2• 4 months ago

The ideal system as far as I'm concerned is one that regulates Roblox out of existence for a variety of sins.

At this point I'm just waiting for someone to dig up a name associated with Roblox in the Epstein files, because that's the only way I can conceive of how they've managed to avoid getting shut down this long.

roysting2• 4 months ago

I realize people may find this controversial, but from personal experience with gaming, I see all of these types of games as “predators” in and of themselves when they are “monetized”, because they are deliberately and explicitly exploiting the addicting nature of games in general, by being and manipulating a freebase of dopamine and serotonin just like the gambling industry does/used to.

If we survive this era with an intact advanced civilization, I believe people will look back on this period and “games” as an insane thing to permit, let alone facilitate and perpetrate upon one’s own children, the next generation, the offspring necessary for survival of a life form, species, race, society, or culture.

nananana93• 4 months ago

Please don't make excuses for literal evil p*dophile megacorporations. There is plenty of low hanging fruit, and even if there wasn't, this issue is important enough that if they can't fix it they should go out of business.

1. They can just disable chat for non age verified accounts. Done. Problem fixed. Oh, but they'll lose money, won't they? That takes precedence over child safety.

2. The community is willing to help. You can find examples of independent actors uncovering tens of thousands of NSFW communities and accounts and submitting them to Roblox with detailed descriptions of the activities of each one, only for Roblox to perma-ban AND SUE the people doing the investigations, and not ban the offending accounts.

3. They can build an actual strong safety team. A $40B company can afford to throw a few million dollars per year to hire 200 people to do that same investigatory work. This is typical tech firm behavior, where they believe every problem can be automated away, and they're not willing to do the minimal amount of manual labor.

Ferret74465• 4 months ago

The low hanging fruit of banning reported predators, instead of banning people who are reporting predators. Or the low hanging fruit of not saying they want to turn their platform dominated by children into a dating site.

Epstein would blush

TacticalCoder• 4 months ago

But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.

It's first and foremost a huge risk for kids.

My solution is simple: my daughter (11 y/o) can play Roblox but she must be in a game with another friend (whom I know and whom I know her parents) and she must on a video/conf-call with that friend, using another device, while she plays Roblox. That way I hear everything they're saying.

And they're ecstatic and having lots of fun.

I check the chat once in a while: the rule is "not hiding the chat when parents look or no more Roblox".

Keeps her mostly at bay from predators.

Incipient• 4 months ago

I feel like for a 11yo, you can't even explain the risks. Not just for lack of true comprehension, but also just kids shouldn't have to worry about that stuff, and just be kids.

userbinator• 4 months ago

Getting them to accept the normalisation of surveillance while they're young?

And then people wonder why authoritarianism is on the rise...

dyauspitr3• 4 months ago

This is ridiculous. She 11, take the damn tablet away from her.

bmitc• 4 months ago

It sounds like, from this thread, that it's Roblox themselves who are the predators.

dyauspitr3• 4 months ago

I hate it. What a waste of a perfectly good generation.

taberiand• 4 months ago

The generation that's going to enter adulthood in the age of unchecked climate change and AI taking over their careers?

I say let them enjoy themselves while they still can.

femiagbabiaka• 4 months ago

Seems possible that MMO's will have a resurgence once the Roblox generation comes of age.

xivzgrev• 4 months ago

"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby."

Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M.

Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".

Imustaskforhelp4• 4 months ago

Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".

I am teen and I think that FIRE has many terms but This still is like a really really FAT fire.

At some point though, I think that what my generation might forget is that even with Fire, you still live a normal life or you would need tremendously more money if your lifestyle is lavish, something which we see in social media (sometimes even on paid money)

If you want to buy 100k$ watches and 1 Million dollar or more lamborghinis, probably even this money would not be enough for you.

But if you want to live a normal life like you do. even 2-3 years of sustained could be MORE than enough even for some slightly expensive side hobbies say horse riding or minor watch collecting even. But if you are online and you see people flexing their 1 million dollar watch, you are gonna add 12 more years of life on a project to get to that level

I'd say its more of an expectation/comparison issue and I am not even sure if 10 years can satisfy that

My personal Fat Fire number is more like ~2 million and I don't even want Fat Fire particularly because I would be happy doing a job that I might like so more of a lean FAT which can be around 300-500k even.

maybe this changes into what is affordable or not within the more western hemisphere though as things feel even more (unaffordable?) but even that doesn't really explain why he might need 40M from my perspective.

To be honest, it can very well be ambition. Might as well make 10 years of money if possible because then the number feels so absurdly large that I can do anything that I want and then I will make my own game. Not realizing that you would only need a fraction of 40M to realisticly achieve that same goal and we are discounting the fact that 400k is even sustainable in a such long period of time.

ekropotin• 4 months ago

As someone who been a teen long time ago, I can’t imaging someone in this age responsibly planning their retirement.

I’d 100% blow out all money on some useless crap.

If you are really a teen, who can think so clearly and far-sightedly, you are going to have a really bright future as an adult. I wish you luck and please do something good for this world, instead of chasing high paying job in FAANG.

Swizec2• 4 months ago

Apparently his FIRE number is $40M
it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living

I think a lot of people (especially young) just haven't done the actual math. Or have lifestyle desires beyond basic not-working.

You can FIRE living in SF for $4M. This gives you $160,000/year basically in perpetuity. If you do it right, there's little to no income tax on that money so 160k should be plenty enough for a 1-person income. 4-person families survive (in SF) on less household income than that.

But yeah a 4M exit is definitely not classic ferrari or even flashy lambo levels of wealth.

semitones• 4 months ago

well you certainly could get the lambo, it would just be 10% of your net worth, which is already far less (ratio) than what most Americans pay for their car...

sdwr• 4 months ago

It's very rational to overshoot in that situation. If you build your lifestyle and then FIRE, you are derisking your budget while you still have income.

But wanting to change your lifestyle when you retire is incredibly risky, especially if you're young without life experience.

Any misstep costs you a fraction of lifetime earnings, and there's no way to recover it.

tverbeure2• 4 months ago

FWIW, the 4% rule is for safe withdrawals for around 30 years of retirement, as in, you retire at 65 and you hope to live until 95, and even then it has a non-zero chance of running out of money. It's not a percentage you should use if you want to retire at 40.

mikkupikku2• 4 months ago

If he thinks he can get that with a ten year grind, why would he stop short? 10 years isn't long compared to most careers so maybe he should go longer and get a bigger house or something. Of course roblox will probably fall out of fashion and stop being so profitable by then.

Milk that cow for all it's worth.

3eb7988a16632• 4 months ago

We all die in the end. At some point, an additional dollar is not improving your life.

hooloovoo_zoo• 4 months ago

Traffic for his game has declined by 90% from its peak already though.

pear01• 4 months ago

Someone thinking they need 40M to escape the "anxiety about the cost of living" is not just a personal decision. It is either extreme greed or delusional. He makes money doing Roblox he is the "laptop class". If you make 400k per month and can't afford to live something is wrong with you. Let's not conflate parents struggling to support their families with whatever this kid is doing.

For reference a worth of $40M puts you well within the top fraction of one percent of all Americans, nevermind the world. If anything given his age it is probably more likely his wealth will become a liability for him rather than an asset. The trope about people who come into that much wealth that young and it creates problems for them exists for a reason. Staying at his desk cranking out more Roblox products might be the best way to keep him away from becoming the victim of his own success.

Anyway good for him. You're right there is a lot of anxiety out there. On some level he should rightly get as much as he can. But let's not pretend you need millions and millions to be safe. We should be working to change that anyway, not merely celebrating massive outliers. I assume since you care about struggling families so much you support his taxation so some of that money can go to people or communities that are struggling? Or since you seem open the idea he needs 40M to survive perhaps you think the government should keep their hands off?

harrall• 4 months ago

If you’re planning to not work at all, $1 million is approx. $35,000 per year in salary.

At $5 million, we’re talking more $200k per year. I’d likely still work.

At $10 million, we’re seeing more like $400k.

At $40 million, you can can early at least $1 million/year. This kind of puts you in a new bracket for things you can blow money on.

If you quit working entirely, you will become not very employable so you need to consider that.

ge96• 4 months ago

It's one of those things, you hear about it (Starter story) and think "I should start churning out games too" but gotta be in it/have drive/creativity too. I personally haven't been playing games for a while (I have a gaming rig).

Also have to keep up with trends that kids are into

Would be interesting to look at the numbers eg. how many games are created, percentage who gets paid. Like steam releases with free game assets

nsingh2• 4 months ago

From [1] (2022 numbers), the median creator earned around 50 Robux per year, which is ~19 cents with the current DevEx rate, and the average was 13,500 Robux.

Out of ~7.5 million creators in 2022, only 11,000 qualified for cashing out.

The distribution is brutal, realistically you have to stick with it for years before getting a hit, if ever. Not to mention the stats probably look worse in the LLM era. You definitely have to like doing it as a hobby.

One caveat is that the creator total likely includes a lot of casual experimentation. If many users make one or two games and then stop (I can see most kids doing this), the 7.5 million figure may overstate how many people are seriously trying to make money from it.

[1] https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2023/07/vision-roblox-econ...

amiga3862• 4 months ago

Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail.

Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make games for them strike it rich!!!! They don't mention that to do so, you first have to become popular amongst millions of competing titles, and the easiest way to do it is to pay them so they'll advertise it for you.

Oh, and the company scrip - Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money. They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden. This is on top of the 75% cut they take!

In all, approximately 17% of the real-world money paid into Roblox is paid back out to creators. What a scam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

Heliodex19• 4 months ago

The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible:

The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because

1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee, and the mean price of Robux) which isn't representative of what the average developer is earning and barely appears in the actual cash flow on the platform,

2. it's using the DevEx rates and sales fees from 2021. Today, DevEx rates are higher and fees are lower. Engagement-based payouts are not accounted for here either (which are also much higher than they were in 2021).

3. it's profit, not revenue. The expenses are paid for before the money is paid out. Comparing this to other platforms that offer revenue shares instead is misrepresentative.

The 2nd video hinges more on moderation, showing how children are exploited by bringing them off platform, namely to Discord, where most of the evidence referenced in the video takes place. Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's.

They then suggest Unity as an alternative platform, which I personally think is a much worse option. I used to be more cynical about this and believe the video creators were clearly being pushed by companies that had a financial incentive in the downfall of Roblox, though nowadays I just attribute it to bad journalism and watchbait.

I suggest reading EcoScratcher's brilliant response <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/7e1c1f0fc493> and follow-up articles <https://medium.com/@ecoscratcher/e51651da6bf4>, of which their 2nd video briefly mentions and claims it misquotes (it doesn't) and misrepresents (it doesn't) their position.

Edits in response to parent comment edits:

They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux, further incentivising you to never actually make real money, because your Robux is "worth more" inside the Roblox walled garden

Specifically through the DevEx programme, Roblox pays a small amount less than it costs to buy Robux to enable them to pay for server upkeep, platform hosting & support, and app store fees (when a developer's game is available through an app store, the app store fees for purchases are paid by Roblox). The rest (any Robux taken out of the economy, including that spent on advertising or first-party avatar items) goes towards platform investment and employee costs.

This is on top of the 75% cut they take!

The DevEx rates have already been factored into this inaccurate "75%" figure. Taking the DevEx rates out a 2nd time (which, emphatically, never happens on the platform) makes it more inaccurate.

The actual figure, calculated at <https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences>, is 67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent, making for a near industry-standard 33% cut. And even this is underrepresentative due to being published before the September 2025 DevEx increase.

Retric6• 4 months ago

making for a near industry-standard 33% cut.

LIES, from that link:

“On average, 67% of all spending in experiences supports OR goes to developers.” Supports here does not actually mean they get paid that money.

Later it mentions the actual money going to developers as: “This enables us to return 28%* directly to the developers.” And yes that 28% includes an asterisk.

That’s a 72% cut to the platform.

jameson5• 4 months ago

67% given to developers per in-experience dollar spent

This is misleading because for every dollar spent, $0.67 is not what developers get paid. The link (https://create.roblox.com/docs/monetize-experiences) you referenced clearly says 25% is the "Developer share".

The cost to run the platform is the platform's cost."Platform hosting & support" and "App stores & payment processing fees" should not be considered as developer operational cost

hrimfaxi2• 4 months ago

Do you work for roblox? You seem to have some affiliation to them

https://github.com/Heliodex

https://devforum.roblox.com/u/lewin4/

freejazz10• 4 months ago

Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's.

I strongly disagree with that.

getly_store2• 4 months ago

Yes—the 24.5% figure is suspect because it multiplies three numbers, ignoring how revenue shares vary by tier, price, and region. A credible estimate needs the full sale distribution: tiered take rates, refunds, taxes, and processing margins; a single mean price isn't representative. With transaction-level data, compute the weighted take: sum(take_rate_i * sale_i) / sum(sale_i), or present a bounded range from the observed distribution.

anileated• 4 months ago

CEO of Roblox was once asked whether he would ever put prediction markets inside Roblox, he gave a straight face answer: https://youtu.be/XpIXRgMlPo4?t=2122

tovej• 4 months ago

Jesus Christ. This man is just a sociopath who doesn't bother to mask anymore.

Lutger• 4 months ago

Brilliant conversation.

"Would you let kids gamble?" - "It sounds very fun and obvious." "To be clear, we think it's a horrible idea!"

TedDoesntTalk4• 4 months ago

In case you don’t want to watch the video: his answer is yes BUT he needs to figure out how to do it legally in the different jurisdictions that control kids gambling.

benoau• 4 months ago

He's also previously said he wants Roblox to be a dating service lol

_ink_• 4 months ago

Robux - has very, very different exchange rates, depending on whether you want to buy Robux from the company, or you want to get a payout and convert your Robux to real money.

Wtf? That should not be legal.

roysting2• 4 months ago

The best you could hope for is regulation of the delta or maybe enforcement of markets. The problem is really that such abuse is a kind of debt bondage, you have no other choices but essentially the Roblox company store.

It’s a newish form of the same abuse due to the nature of tech, game addiction, and the decay of culture and society; but it’s also why society has not developed a response against that particular practice any more than the corrosive and addicting nature of “games” that are essentially not much different than gambling, only more legal and across a wider user base.

I have a theory that much of the gambling industry in the USA has atrophied because the “investors”, aka, the corrupts and rotten people of the gambling industry that are/came from organized crime, have moved into “gaming”. I have specific reason to believe that was a general trend beyond specific cases. For example, people who’s job was to develop extremely addicting slot machine “games” both visually and in their manipulation of addiction patterns, i.e., how to push and milk someone to the limit before they can be pulled back into the gamblers fallacy.

But now I’ve gotten way off topic…but not really. It’s all dark, evil patterns; using game addiction to exploit the capture through debt bondage.

wvbdmp2• 4 months ago

It would be legal to never pay it out in real money at all, if other marketplaces are any indication. Like “store credit” or gift cards. You can’t get it out of the walled garden and the walled garden unilaterally controls the value.

Heliodex19• 4 months ago

The point of the discrepancy between purchasing Robux and converting to fiat is to allow Roblox themselves to be able to pay for the infrastructure and support they provide to developers. If the rates were equal, there would be an effectively equal amount of money going into the platform as going out of it, which wouldn't leave enough to pay for their expenses.

This system is known as the Developer Exchange programme <https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/articles/203314100>. The differing exchange rates are a necessary part of how the platform works and should 100% be legal. Analogues to "company scrip" or the like commonly used to unjustify the system are propagated by people that don't have a coherent enough grasp on the platform's economic system.

stavros• 4 months ago

Isn't there a secondary market for Robux that then sells for much better prices?

sghitbyabazooka2• 4 months ago

that also has a cap, you're not getting more than $6 per 1000 robux there, which is a little under double the official rate but still only 2 thirds of what users actually paid for said robux. not including the risk of the platform banning you.

coryrc• 4 months ago

What percentage of real-world money paid to Google goes out to Google SWEs?

(This is not to dismiss the roblox concerns, it's a "yes-and")

KellyCriterion• 4 months ago

I guess thats the reason why they are a billion-doll-marketcap company by today?

Didnt know about these asymmetries within payin/payout: This is like a casino where I have an "exchange rate for their chips"?

casey2• 4 months ago

Yup, so many people focused on sexual exploitation that they ignore the traditional exploitation. Doesn't look any better when you realize ALL sexual exploitation is downwind of this financial one.

amelius• 4 months ago

(...) puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make games for them strike it rich!!!! They don't mention that to do so, you first have to become popular amongst millions of competing titles, and the easiest way to do it is to pay them so they'll advertise it for you.

Sounds an awful lot like the AppStore, to be honest.

giarc• 4 months ago

My kids play Roblox and get often get gift cards from friends for birthday presents etc. I've always hated that a gift card for $20 can't be redeemed for the equivalent Robux. Instead you get options to purchase Robux and the most you can redeem is about ~$16, so then you have left over cash and have to get another gift card. Dark pattern.

codebje• 4 months ago

There's an option buried somewhere in there to convert left-over real dollars into robux. They don't make it too prominent else no-one would be sitting there looking at the expensive robux options that offer (mostly, but NOT always!) a better exchange rate.

Scams and grifts from top to bottom.

bstsb11• 4 months ago

visit this page and click the bright blue, prominent button labeled "Convert to Robux":

https://www.roblox.com/my/account#!/billing

you will receive the exact amount you would get from the equivalent conversion rate of the closest "package"

tchock23• 4 months ago

Fortnite does that as well. Annoying dark pattern.

morelandjs• 4 months ago

It’s depressing how many lucrative big tech (FAANG/Unicorn) jobs are effectively scams with business glitter on top. And it’s not always obvious unless you really sit down during the interview process and scrutinize the business model.

tracker12• 4 months ago

I'm not sure what it would take and/or how the reaction would be to 3rd party "bank" player(s) inside the game offering real exchange rates sitting in between and suing if Robox killed their account and took their "Robux" with it. Assuming players can exchange Robux inside the game without issue.. I'm guessing they take a cut on all transactions, which is kinda sus/garbage itself.

numpad0• 4 months ago

They pay a lot less than it costs to buy Robux

I don't understand why that isn't regulated to hell by all sorts of securities and banking laws, with reporting requirements and background checks and eKYC and mandatory reserves and all that. If the poker chips can be transferred and then cashed, I don't think that's allowed in most gambling laws. That's way past gambling.

Heliodex19• 4 months ago

Are you using gambling as an example here? I don't fully understand the relation. There isn't any way to gamble Robux for more Robux on the platform, and in the cases which are arguable (such as on-platform item trading), the money must be transferred through Roblox's Developer Exchange programme, which can't be done for Robux not earned directly from experiences.

If I understand what you mean correctly, then any Robux transferred between 2 users wouldn't be able to be cashed or exchanged for fiat for the same reason as above. If they can try to fake it by selling avatar items or experience products to another user, they would immediately be hit with the usual 30% marketplace fee, then have to attempt to get through manual DevEx review with what is very obviously a suspicious set of transactions.

The reason they're not scrutinised by security and banking laws is because the Roblox platform and economic system are carefully designed so that such abuse is neither profitable nor feasible, and as such there's nothing to uncover in any potential investigation.

sys32768• 4 months ago

My youngest has played Roblox half her life, but is very angry about recent decisions like requiring ID to chat in-game.

Still, if she's anything like other players, she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games, and we've spent a few $100 on Robux gift cards over the years.

lionkor• 4 months ago

I wonder why? Why was there not a point at which you said no?

latexr2• 4 months ago

she's spent countless hours playing some of the most mindless Roblox games

It sounds like you disapprove, or at the very least recognise it’s not harmless, so I’m struggling to understand why you allow and incentivise it (by pouring hundreds of dollars into it).

Would you expand on that? I have no intention of judging you as a parent—if you say you approve of her time on Roblox, that’s that. I’m only asking because it seems you might not.

microtonal5• 4 months ago

I hope she is 30 because playing Roblox half your life for anyone under 18 (which means you started at 9) does not sound healthy.

g947o3• 4 months ago

You know, just as a thought, if you have engaged with her like taking her outdoors or other activities, she wouldn't spend so much time or money on a stupid online video game.

mhitza• 4 months ago

Telling parents how to raise their children, while also making baseless assumptions of their life as well, is an approach with which you'll only antagonize people.

grvdrm7• 4 months ago

Or, meet halfway. Talk to her ABOUT the games. At least attempt that.

Reminds me of a family member who complained about his oldest playing Minecraft. He said “I don’t understand it” - guy is 49, grew up in Montana, shot guns as a teen. Very different upbringing.

But I never saw him attempt to understand. My daughter is not stuck on games at the moment but when she does play I do my best to talk through with her.

Multiplayer Switch games on TV help!

kylehotchkiss• 4 months ago

Ugh, they're just gonna blow it all on e-bikes for them and their crew and broccoli hair maintenance product

themafia• 4 months ago

The traditional Bloomberg money worship.

But the platform’s more successful game makers say they don’t have complaints.

Imagine being a journalist and just accepting this and ending a paragraph with it.

“In Amsterdam we did get a VIP table at a club overlooking everyone,” Zirschky says. “But we always make sure to try McDonald’s in every country.”

Blind consumerism making up for a lost childhood? Yikes, even for Bloomberg.

terrycody• 4 months ago

I mean, I don't understand why those young teens can spend that MUCH money on it, does their parents allow this virtual spending thing?

ares623• 4 months ago

What used to go to local business as kids and teens spend time out together, it now goes to a single company on the other side of the world.

fc417fc8025• 4 months ago

Consider how much money used to be spent by children in aggregate at suburban shopping malls.

sergiotapia• 4 months ago

Do you know that in roblox you go into games and you just walk over something and it prompts you to buy stuff to "beat the game" or "level up". It's an exploitative "game" that targets kids.

jameson5• 4 months ago

Roblox is slot machines for kids

Games are filled with loot boxes that drop exquisite items on chance. It's a repeated cycle of charging robux only to spend on another slot machine.

US regulation is far behind protecting children from such scheme. Japan disallows many forms of such loot boxes due to addictive nature.

Aeolun7• 4 months ago

It’s not that bad. Sure, all the games allow you to spend money to rapidly get better, but the core gameplay loops work just fine without it.

bluefirebrand• 4 months ago

Anecdotally, I have 3 nieces and 2 nephews and only the oldest has avoided Roblox

Every Christmas and birthday now is "I want Robux" and they are actively annoyed if they get anything else

This thing is bad for children

jameson5• 4 months ago

games allow you to spend money to rapidly get better

Audience is the problem here. It's obviously not a big deal if the platform is targeted for adults, but majority of users are underage. The platform can certainly implement guardrails for the vulnerable users if they wish to

loloquwowndueo• 4 months ago

Dunno man, when the “core gameplay loop” gets interrupted every 2 minutes with “do you want to pay to win?” Banners and 50% of the screen is covered in ads and trap buttons that pop up a purchase dialog when you press them accidentally (a given on mobile with touch controls), it’s fairly obvious the gameplay loop is the last thing in the developers mind.

dogleash• 4 months ago

the core gameplay loops work just fine without it.

Of course it's functional, it has to string people along for enough time to get them to start paying.

That doesn't mean grinding a system tuned to get you hooked enough to give up and pay is a 'just fine' as a game. It's openly deliberate malicious design.

wj• 4 months ago

I have called them casinos for kids elsewhere due to the bright colors, flashing text, and money counters going up, up, up on the screen.

And also because my kids can spend tens of dollars in minutes on it.

russelg• 4 months ago

Japan disallows many forms of such loot boxes due to addictive nature.

Crazy to say this when they've basically pioneered and perfected gacha games.

rincebrain3• 4 months ago

Both things are true, though.

The fact that gacha games are so popular is _why_ they had enough attention to explicitly ban the most toxic patterns at the time. [1]

There's an interesting question of how far to push the bans, though - "in theory" your goals should probably be "don't let people prey on addictive behaviors" and "minimize people impulse buying more than they can afford", but the latter especially is...very hard to make an empirical rule for, and then you get into logistics like people just making additional accounts to get around it...

[1] http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/18/kompu-gacha-freemium-systems...

rincebrain3• 4 months ago

I would, I think, probably argue that the problem is less that they're gambling and more that they involve actual money.

I think exposing people to addictive mechanics with guard rails is probably useful for teaching you how you respond to them, before you go to Vegas and blow far more than you budgeted.

In particular, I don't think you're going to ban addictive things faster than people can build them, and I know you can't rely on parents having conversations with kids, so I feel like all you can do is try to remove the whirring buzzsaw of real money incentives and let people learn that it's sharp, but foam sword sharp, where you can't ruin your life permanently (easily) with it.

unselect59172• 4 months ago

https://archive.ph/6V4RI

Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas before I gave up. VPN isn't even on. Anybody got a different link?

selcuka• 4 months ago

Archive.ph made me solve 5 captchas

Are you sure you haven't been DoS'ing a random website?

https://au.pcmag.com/news/116045/wikipedia-blacklists-archiv...

unselect59172• 4 months ago

I clicked the link. That's it.

grvdrm7• 4 months ago

Same problem. Moved to Chrome from Safari and that fixed it.

pinkmuffinere3• 4 months ago

Today, at 19, he’s collecting $400,000 a month for his creation... In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby.

Lol if he waits like half a year he should have plenty enough to go make games as a hobby.

himata4113• 4 months ago

Roblox games have a shelf life of days, getting to a month or more you either have to produce days worth of content in less than a day - it's extremely exhausing.

pinkmuffinere3• 4 months ago

ah interesting, thanks for adding that context.

pinkmuffinere3• 4 months ago

The travel offers him a fresh perspective. It shows him that his work “isn’t that big a deal. It’s not the end of the world because ultimately there’s people walking down the streets of Sydney right now who don’t care about my Roblox game performing 50% worse.” Colley has indulged, just a little. Last year, after the Roblox developer conference, he took a private jet to Las Vegas with some friends. Did he place any bets? “I’m not old enough,” he says, “but I had people gambling next to me.”

Honestly it's encouraging to hear that some teenage millionaires have some very reasonable views, it certainly goes against the stereotype of young wealth. I hope these aren't the exceptions that prove the rule.

CrzyLngPwd2• 4 months ago

My grandsons would come and stay, bringing tablet devices with them, and would prefer to stay glued to them the whole time.

Since we banned their use, they now play outside with my other grandchildren, on the rope swing, the zip line, or exploring in the woods making dens and forts, using their imaginations.

Children should not be playing computer games, or scrolling on any social media, IMO.

otherme123• 4 months ago

I have heard a number of parents saying their kids are "good behaved" when they are silently glued to a screen, while roaming outside, making noise and playing are bad behaviours, specially when they break things or get a bruise.

CrzyLngPwd2• 4 months ago

Worse still, they are so well-behaved, with their tablet and headphones on, watching YouTube or playing games.

Brybry• 4 months ago

I think a fair number of us here got into computers because of playing computer games as kids.

The issue is setting limits.

Now obviously banning is easier and lower friction but limiting to an X time per day routine can also help with self-discipline. Depends on the person.

Kids can have the same issue with TV. I had an issue as a kid with books. My parents had to limit my reading time because I would stay up all night under my covers with a flashlight reading.

fhennig• 4 months ago

I agree with the 'setting limits' bit.

But also maybe the parent post and you refer to kids of different ages?

I didn't have access to a computer until I was 9, and then also we didn't have tables and smartphones, so there computer was only available at home as well.

I think below a certain age the limit is fine to be set as 'not at all'.

microtonal5• 4 months ago

There is a big difference between games now and games then. E.g. an SNES game was made to be fun, but not to be intentionally addictive, you would never buy a new game if it was.

Many online games are designed to be as addictive as crack to extract as much revenue as possible. Our kid is in the typical video gaming age, almost every kid of her age is stuck in Roblox and some in Fortnite.

Setting limits helps, but more broadly, games that require a monthly subscriptions or buying in-game currency should just be outright forbidden for anyone under 16 or 18. Yes, kids need to learn to recognize and suppress abusive patterns, but these addictive games, together with social media, and Youtube Shorts is destroying their mental health and normal, healthy exploration of the world.

I think parents are also failing in general. It's insane how many use tablets as a pacifier, some give 2 year-olds an iPad to play with. Or setting bad examples like using phones themselves at the dinner table.

warmedcookie• 4 months ago

We set time limits on tablet and rules like getting your homework done first, but my 9 year old specifically begs me to let him have Roblox, which I think he is too young to play.

I told him he can play it, but he has to beat Chrono Trigger (tablet version) first. He didn't even get to the county fair and gave up, saying it was too boring, the nerve!

MarsIronPI• 4 months ago

Anecdote here: I was given a computer at age 4, and I didn't really have any limits on how long I could use it. On the other hand, I wasn't allowed to register any accounts and I had to ask before visiting sites I had never been to before. >75% of my time on the computer at that age was spent on hacking with Scratch. I learned a lot and developed my love of computers at that age. I'm absolutely glad that I didn't have "screen time", but I can also see that if I didn't have the limits I did I could have ended up pretty badly.

kyriakos• 4 months ago

The computer games I used to play are nothing like the stuff my son is playing. Its not just a matter of how much time is spent. They are the same as social media, engineered for maximum engagement, contain ads or try to sell you something .

tracker12• 4 months ago

I know I had a pretty bad overuse of TV as a kid.. that said, my mom's restriction of an hour a day was a bit too restrictive imo, didn't last long though, because hanging out in the livingroom in the evenings was kind of a given, even if I didn't get to choose what was on...

bstsb11• 4 months ago

playing Roblox got me into game development, and helped to teach me the basics of general programming. i did have previous experience from Python etc, but Roblox gave me a breeding ground for actually doing something with those skills.

butILoveLife• 4 months ago

Best to be playing with acceleration than to be problem solving on video games... rightttttt

torlok• 4 months ago

Another FOMO article. Bloomberg may as well start reporting on lottery winners.

Noaidi• 4 months ago

The U.S. has no economy, it is a joke. I cannot believe this BS counts into our GDP.

WhereIsTheTruth• 4 months ago

What a boring civilization

lunias• 4 months ago

I remember how hard I had to lobby to get my parents to agree to ~$12 a month (that I paid for with 2 weeks of my allowance) for EverQuest.

xrd• 4 months ago

I admittedly harbor a bunch of resentment towards Roblox for the predatory way they have encircled my childrens' friends, and my children as well, so take my feelings with a grain of salt.

I didn't get far in this article.

It feels like the modern equivalent of "there is a kid named LeBron James who is only 19 and will be make millions in the NBA." Roblox Millionaires might be true, but feels like an anomaly, and in this case, causes serious harm IMHO. Lebron James actually has used his wealth and prominence to make a difference in the world, and if he encouraged kids to get active, it feels like on balance a good thing.

I just don't see a good/happy career path for anyone becoming a Roblox Millionaire no matter whether it is true for even one person. Maybe it isn't the point, but if it isn't, why even celebrate it?

Thorrez• 4 months ago

Founded in 2004, Roblox paid out $1.5 billion to game creators last year. On average, the top 1,000 developers — individuals or companies — earned $1.3 million, according to the company.

So 87% of payouts go to the top 1000 developers.

Roblox is minting teen millionaires

Related Stories