Can someone tell me how the kids are being forced to make video games. I have read several of these articles and can’t understand the logic. My kids played Roblox and created games on the platform they were never forced or coerced to make anything. Maybe it’s our messed up capitalistic society that expects everybody to monetize anything that’s fun.
The details are too much to go into here in a simple comment. For a full investigation into Roblox check out this video by People Make Games, a games journalism site:
Essentially, Roox makes billions off the free labour of children. The entire eco system is set up to funnel kids into a cycle of consuming others content and producing their own. It’s also completely unregulated which has allowed some shady people, some of whom are, or directly work for, the owners of the platform to set up quasi developer studios where children are subjected to the same appealing treatment and exploitation of the regular games industry, while earning none of the revenue.
Well none of these sources tell me how the kids are forced into this. All these services are free, so I still don’t see the exploitation. Are you saying the kids are tricked into making games for Roblox, if so then maybe that’s on the parents. As a software engineer and having kids who played Roblox their entire lives, I still can’t make the leap of exploitive practices over just capitalism. Maybe show me another platform that kids can learn how the basics of game design while hosting the game at the same time.
More perfect union did a really great video about the exploitation. From what I can remember the crux of the argument goes roughly like this:
Kid plays game, kid is encouraged through game to create content for game. This content created by kid is sold through game to other kids. Kid who put the work into creating this gamemode is not compensated fairly.
The video goes on to explain a lot of other exploitative practices of roblox.
I watched a video a while back about this, but the details are fuzzy. I think it was the one I linked below if you want to look more into it. In essence, there aren’t a ton of cases where kids are actually being forced to work. However, there are strong incentives for kids to work on Roblox projects that the developers themselves push. The devs want a constant stream of content and money coming in, but they don’t want to pay adult workers at adult wages, so they offer Robux to players who make games. It is difficult for people to convert Robux to actual cash, and the money they receive is often significantly less than they would if they put the effort into any other form of work, so many of these kids are essentially making content for the developers for free or significantly less than they should earn. If there was no payout for content creators and the kids were doing that development just because they had passion for the game, it might be a different situation, but there are quite a few kids that believe they can make serious money doing this and don’t understand that the developers are exploiting them and paying very little. Adults can probably do more research and better understand the situation they are getting into, but kids often don’t have the same critical thinking skills as adults and will accept the lie being pushed by the developers and community that they can get rich by contributing to the game they love.
Lol when you agree with a ban that turkey made thats a strange day. Maybe a ban is a bit too much but roblox is shitty and they should be pressured to change… and this applies to most large companies
No. It isn’t abouf if I personally liked these services or not. This is cencorship. Even my mail service proton is banned in turkey it’s impossible to use the internet without a vpn here it’s a cencorship state.
If they ban a service without a guideline off what laws the companies should abide or either not giving a national alternative is totally fucked but otherwise I hope more countries start to limit what big companies can do within their territories.
most people are focusing on the free labour roblox is extracting from kids but from the article:
Further claims stated, according to Turkish media, that Roblox hosted virtual parties promoting pedophilia and that “robux,” the platform’s virtual currency, was being distributed by bot accounts to encourage children’s involvement in these activities, and excess presence of gambling sites and their predatory tactics.
so it looks like roblox was banned because of bad moderation in regards to gambling and sexual predators, both of which are massive issues of the platform. overall i think this is a good move which hopefully will push roblox to do better.
You are smoking crack if you think Roblox is a gmod knockoff, but everything else, unfortunately, yeah. I played Roblox in 2012 and it was pretty fun at 11 years old but the pay2win stuff was out of control even back then.
There were a few weird roleplay servers but back then it really just felt like “playing house” online, but the fact that anyone regardless of age could hop in at any time and send socials was fucking weird to me even as a kid.
It needs a serious rework of how the platform works if they want to continue marketing themselves as for children. The game has seen barely any safety improvements from what I’ve seen of current gameplay and mfs are wilin on the internet nowadays
I've always thought roblox was dumb, but its kind of just a playground. Kids need a playground where their imaginations are free to grow and thy're in control. Somewhere they can interact and learn how to socialize safely with other children. When i was a kid, that was a walk to the park with friends to kick a ball around, riding a bicycle somewhere, exploring, and working out some dumb activities to do... Honest question: how comfortable are you with the idea of just letting your kids go to the park by themselves for hours on end?
For better or worse, it seems like sandbox creativity games like roblox are filling that void for some kids. Not saying roblox is an answer to a problem, just that kids seem to be utilizing it as a playground where they get to be creative and in control. Not sure why I'm bringing this up. It's just a thought that occurred to me recently.
Kids deserve to have games like Roblox, but they don’t deserve to be exploited financially by them by child labour and gambling mechanics.
As always, the answer to child welfare is to prevent them interacting directly with capitalism and markets. Children should always be given a communist upbringing with free food, shelter, clothes, healthcare, education, and recreation.
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