Is this what we’re doing instead of actually parenting? Roblox sucks, but you know what sucks even more? Being left out of the friend group because your parent is digging their heels in on some issue they can’t understand. Plus, where is the brightline for this? Would you ban your kid from playing Fortnite because of the skins? Counter strike when he’s older? Clash of clans?
You could play Roblox with him and explain what’s wrong with the games. You could help build his taste to not like the games that want to charge him out the ass and let him move past Roblox on his own. You can help him learn to make games and help him learn enough to want to move to something else. Otherwise, you’re just going to seem like an asshole. Because from reading this, you clearly just watched some video essay on Roblox and dug your heels in based on that.
Would you kindly fuck off? I am allowed to parent my children how I see fit. I provide him plenty of high quality games and multiple gaming systems and I want to make sure that his limited video game time is at least stimulating.
You were asking for advice, and she gave you some solid suggestions. IDK why you’re getting so bent out of shape.
Edit: Adding this article to maybe give you some more detail. Play the game with your kid and see what about it they enjoy. If you want to introduce them to better games, you’ll need to have an idea about what they like.
Is this what we’re doing instead of actually parenting?
No, that wasn’t advice. That was judgemental and without cause. I am asking for game suggestions because this isn’t meant as a punishment - it is meant to let the kids have an upgrade. But I guess I didn’t tiptoe around everyone’s overly sensitive feelings over here.
You gave absolutely no context about what kinds of things your child enjoys in video games. Go figure that out first. If you don’t know that, and you’re taking the game he enjoys away he’s 100% going to see it as a punishment.
Thanks for presuming I don’t know what my kid enjoys. Why do you have to be such a dick with the personal attacks? I am asking for advice on multiplayer games. You’re being a dick. I bet you make a lot of friends that way.
Pay no attention to the people who don't have kids. You're doing just fine. The fact that you're asking honestly makes you a better parent than many.
Kids, as you well know, are gonna figure out unimaginable ways to get themselves in trouble. I've had to tell more than one of my kids, "I'm gonna let you make all the mistakes you want, and I'm gonna be there to pick you up, but I am not going to let you make permanent mistakes." When it comes to advertising, microtransactions, OnlyFans (yes, OnlyFans), the lesson is "these things exist for one purpose, and that is to separate you from your money as much as possible." If you are paying for something, stop and consider whether you can get a substantially similar thing for free, or at least for a lot cheaper.
From reading your other comments, it sounds like you and the other parents all agreed together to drop the hammer on all the kids at once. That is a good idea, and it's great that you have lines of communication open to your kid's friends' parents. That's going to be important when they're older and driving cars, and having access to intoxicants and mall ninja shit.
To your actual question - I saw someone mention Minecraft, that is a fantastic choice. There are "skins" and shit that can be bought, but the game itself it absolutely fully playable and enjoyable without anything beyond the initial game purchase. Running a private server is pretty easy, and I would recommend it, so that the friend group always has a place they can go where the annoyances of the internet-at-large are excluded. Besides that, a kid who is motivated to modify his own Minecraft server is going to be driven to figure out how to do it, and that kind of skill will be super useful for oh so many things throughout life.
If they like arena combat games, Crossout is pretty fun. World of Tanks is okay, but the grind curve is steep. War Thunder is fun for planes and ships, but I am not a fan of their tank play mechanics. All of those are free to play, yes you can buy stuff, but you absolutely do not have to.
There's a single player game that I have to mention: The Long Dark. Winter survival, and there's also a storyline mode. The storyline is really good, and the map is absolutely vast. While it's not one they would be able to play together, it's a great exploration and survival game, and I would be remiss if I didn't point it out.
You know what’s more stimulating than any individual game you’ll have him play? Making his own choices on what to play. And like I said, brightline, what is and isn’t stimulating to you? Are shitty flash games banned for being too simple minded?
Parenting is your kid learning from you. They’re not learning why you’re banning Roblox, and if you explain it to them they don’t really understand. My kid is starting to not fuck with Roblox anymore because of how pay to win some of the games are. He had to do a lot of chores for those Robux and instantly wished he had the money for better things a couple days later when he wanted a plushie at the store. When I told him he could have gotten that plushie if he hadn’t gotten Robux, he stopped wanting Robux. He learned the value of money, and learned to prioritize the things he wants, and coincidentally doesn’t want to play Roblox like he used to. I didn’t have to be the bad guy because most kids have things they want more than Robux. All I had to do was make him choose.
Seriously, download and play Roblox with him. There are a million different games on there, you can even filter games on the site. Some of the games are actually really fucking good. Meet him where he’s at, set rules so he has to play Roblox with you. You can actually monitor what he’s playing and doing, while getting in some bonding time. Because your Dad playing tag or whatever dumbass things we were into as kids was way usually way cooler than playing Dad’s game. You’re going to be
That’s what I’m more upset about. The logic behind these decisions that has been expressed simply isn’t sound parenting. This kid just got his favorite toy taken away, and while it isn’t meant as punishment, it will feel like punishment. The logic expressed in the post is regurgitated out of a video essay, and makes it sound like Dad doesn’t even know why he’s taking it away. My situation was a little bit different, adopting someone else’s kid who had an entirely different life before me, but I feel like the shock therapy of just banning it with video essay logic is weak even if they are fully your children. As someone who was on it as a kid, I don’t like Roblox overall. However, I’ve found just teaching him why I don’t like Roblox has been more effective than just pulling it away and giving a poorly thought out explanation why. Now he’s come to the conclusion of the emptiness of Roblox himself, I didn’t have to force it.
Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. Giving them the information on their level and giving them choice usually pays off with kids. They can usually understand way more than we expect them to as long as we can break it down for them. It’s one thing to be the weird kid who can’t play Roblox because your parents don’t want you to, it’s another thing to be the kid who just doesn’t want to play Roblox. I’m saying that this is a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too, and that’s by educating your kids to make good decisions and give them ample opportunity to practice that skill.
The marketplace of ideas tends to be a much weaker force than “what are my friends playing?” I’m all for treating kids as people, but that also means understanding that people mostly choose what lets them get on with their peers the most easily.
Why do you think I am not trying to be the best parent? Do you know my child? No? Then you don’t know what is best for them. In this case, it is the best. Roblox is garbage tier games on a platform made by exploitation of children for the exploitation of children. Just because I am man enough to call that out and make the tough decisions doesn’t mean people need to personally attack me for it. Dangers to our society evolve - it’s like slapping a crack pipe out of the hand of a family member… just digitally.
This is a reading comprehension issue. Look at what I said more carefully, I am implicitly supporting the idea you are trying to help your kid and telling you to argue from a standpoint of human benefit rather than sovereignty. With the rise of Christian nationalism, we’re only going to see an uptick in “children are the property of the parent” style reasoning, and we should all be fighting it.
I don't think you quite understand how bad Roblox is.
Think of the most predatory games you can imagine.
Roblox is far fucking worse.
Not only is it a money grubbing game like the worst of mobile free-to-play games, it encourages content creators to exhibit the same behaviours and does nothing about blatant fraud on the platform. Something it's money obsessed nature actually encourages and rewards.
If the shit that goes on in Roblox went on in Facebook to nearly the same degree, Meta would be raked over the coals for it; even Meta haven't stooped so low.
On one hand it can be damaging to take away opportunities from kids, on the other hand roblox is massive groomer haven; I genuinely don’t think the kinds of connections they would make there would be worth the long term harm that may result for being involved in that shit.
Ultimately I think you did the right thing by banning it. You’re locking out like a 10th of their social life but those aren’t contacts they want.
Yeah we’re giving him and his friends alternative multiplayer games to have fun on with each other. It’s not like we’re killing his social circle - we’re just upgrading the forum.
Do you know any of the friends’ parents? Maybe you can all gather some ideas together and have a more uniform policy on what’s banned and what might be fun alternatives.
I agree with this. Roblox is huge and often how kids of an age socialize/play. Teach them why mtx aren’t okay, and protect yourself from having to pay.
Get them into some irl stuff too. DND group, sports, book clubs, etc.
It’s a FOSS voxel engine, so they can play multiplayer with their friends for free. MineClone2 is a Minecraft clone on Minetest, so even if their friends don’t have Minecraft, they can still play with friends.
For paid games, consider indie games, as they’re less likely to be micro-transaction bullshit. Raft, Stardew Valley, Two Point Hospital are good options. Not so much multiplayer, but Stardew supports it. Multiplayer wise, maybe Among Us if the parents are comfortable with that.
Given that you’ve got some great answers already, there seems to be very few guides on how to deal with this sort of shit as a parent.
Gaming today is very different to what we grew up with, particularly microtransactions, and I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many kids spend insane amounts of money on things like FUT packs, VBucks, etc. Much of this is down to peer pressure, so saying shit like “my kid will never pay money on microtransactions” is wishful thinking.
Kids also have different attitudes on what constitutes value to them. So while parents see robux as total ripoff, kids don’t have the experience of playing a game and receiving the whole thing and not being expected to pay real money to skip the hard parts.
Kids aren’t the only ones who waste their money on frivolous gaming transactions though. Millions of adults by battlepasses for games or we wouldn’t have that crap in games either.
Yeah that’s why I let my kid do specific chores to earn money for mtx. So he has his dripfeed to support whatever costumes or other mtx he sees - but not enough to get truly addicted. Plus I have been very forward with him that the money he spends on mtx is literally worthless the moment he buys it - so I give him normal allowance at a higher rate than his small mtx earnings. My goal is to balance it out so he can have non-standard skins and not feel made fun of for it, but also not grow psychologically dependent on them like some kids.
I’m crumudgeony enough to remember when buying a game was buying a game. I disliked it when mobile games slowly changed into monitization via microtransactions. Heck, I remember buying games for full price and then they got changed to ftp overnight with mtx. That kind of stuff drove me nuts and I am firmly anti-mtx. That said, I let my kid earn money he can use on mtx for cosmetics and stuff on Fortnite. But it is a dedicated pool of money for mtx, his actual money kept separate so he can buy ice cream or save for bigger purchases without worry. Roblox on the other hand, is a company that exploits children for their labor to create the games and it hires psychologists to ensure kids dump as much money into it as possible all while having no moderation. Roblox is awful. Microtransactions in children’s games are harmful and exploitive. I’m letting my kid get a drip feed so he can get the little benefit from having non-stock costumes in fortnite while also having the learning experience that in games with mtx, you can never have enough - without him becoming a whale.
I’ve recently banned my kid from playing it too. I had only just unlocked it for the first time. I had previously blocked it because it was, IMHO, terrible. As a professional gamedev I find it offensively bad. But I relented, because lots of his friends were playing it. However, and this may be the experiences he was playing, it seems to be almost exclusively training kids up for gambling. Pretty much everything is dopamine based rewards. It’s like a casino. It’s worst than I ever imagined. I’m this close to banning online play in Minecraft because he is similarly gravitating to the same sort of experiences. In our case it’s not about money, he hasn’t spent a cent on these things. But the content is very problematic, I have concerns that it is encouraging developing minds that gambling is the norm.
It’s also just an extremely dangerous platform. They have a stock market, game mode development with children employing children (clearly neither one understands employment laws), and unsurprisingly a ton of pedophiles
It would be helpful to understand what types of games the kid was playing in the first place to suggest alternatives. I ripped this answer from quora on how to see which games within roblox your child was playing
Game History: Roblox used to have a “Game History” feature that allowed users to view a list of recently played games. This feature showed the last few games you played, but it was limited in terms of historical data. It’s worth checking if this feature is still available in your account settings.
Roblox Account Activity: You can check your Roblox account’s activity feed, which may show some information about recent game interactions and achievements. However, this feed typically doesn’t display a comprehensive game history.
Roblox API: Some third-party websites and tools may offer services that attempt to retrieve and display more extensive game history data by accessing Roblox’s API. Be cautious when using third-party services and make sure they are reputable and secure.
I went looking for any kind of account tracker and to no one’s surprise they are mostly about account value from items, not so much about worlds/experiences they have been on.
Most of the responses I’ve seen on here are just suggesting games which may or may not be to your kids looking purely based on those games being generally accepted as good.
If you’re that kind of person, throw away the Xbox too, pure garbage. Everyone deserves the open environment of a PC where one can tinker and learn about the system, maybe even make some mods for games.
The method to it’s madness is fairly underhanded to adults, much more so for its’ intended audience.
I wish I could find the video that did a basic deep dive on all (negative) aspects of the roblox community, from the robux, to the game makers potential for being exploited, and the oddly nft/stock market of cosmetics which are a massive fomo money sink. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t aimed at children, but because it is, that only makes the handful of bad/fringe cases even more unsettling.
It’s no big secret that kids are dumb enough to try and get robux for free from almost any link saying they can online. But the incentive is there for them to try.
Removing roblox from a kids library is a good thing for peace of mind. Plus there are plenty of other games out there to play with friends and depending on how they spent their time on roblox, it likely wouldn’t be terribly hard to match to another game within whatever genre they were playing.
I don’t think there’s a problem with restricting internet access for your kids, especially if you can get other parents (of your kids friends) to do it too
Not really. It will feel like programming if you already know how to program, but I don’t think it will teach you programming anymore than any other problem solving activity.
I’m putting up a minecraft server for my kid and her friends, but I don’t really play myself other than than. Few creative builds so I’m curious if you could please expand for me what exactly you mean when you say to mod the shit out of it. Is it enough to create rules or am I going to have to actively moderate their play?
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Aktywne