The Roblox video game faces a serious charge regarding its unhealthy environment for children and young adolescents.
A few months ago, the Youtube channel People Make Games released a video called ” How Roblox is exploiting Young Game Developers (Understand: how Roblox exploits young developers). In this incriminating video, the videographers accused the game, and the game’s developer more generally, of encouraging kids to contribute content to Roblox in the hopes of making a ton of money, which they won’t. finally never see.
For those who are not familiar with the Roblox, it is no more and no less than a platform through which you can create your own mini-games and share them with other players online. The more a game is played, the more its creator earns a percentage of its revenue. However, People Make Games had accused Roblox to give only a fraction of this money to young designers.
Worse still, the firm would mainly push children to develop games, the latter being both an easily attainable target but also easily “scammed”. The concern is that following this video, it seems that Roblox tried to fix the situation … by putting pressure on People Make Games to remove their video. In a second video, which can be translated as ” Roblox put the pressure on us, so we dug deeper The videographers continue their accusations against the unhealthy play environment for children.
Exploitation of minors? An in-game betting system?
In this new video, People Make Games reflects on the fact that Roblox has absolutely no control over what could be considered minor work. Indeed, many children join groups of young developers, who alone form undeclared micro-enterprises and above all without any monitoring of working conditions or even remuneration.
This has mainly been the case since 2017, the year in which Roblox has closed its proprietary forum due to breach of regulations and proven abuse. Unfortunately, this has prompted the community to turn to social media, where the company no longer has any control over moderation or potential abuse. An aspect on which Roblox has control, however, is the sale of its in-game cosmetic items.
These are often the result of collaborations and crossovers, as Epic Games can also do in its battle royale. Fortnite. However, in Roblox, players can choose to resell their property, at whatever price they want. Some rare and limited items can therefore be sold for around $ 15,000.
An astronomical sum, including Roblox is fully aware since the developers themselves post a table summarizing the latest prices of certain fashionable items, regularly updated in the manner of a stock market quote. Children therefore play apprentice traders (or bettors) and this with the implicit encouragement of the platform.
Roblox urged to react
The video denounces many other breaches of the safety of the youngest on Roblox, who does not seem to be taking the situation seriously yet. As a reminder, almost half of the players on Roblox are under the age of 13, a population that is particularly prone to abuse of all kinds, particularly with regard to money, harassment and exploitation.
By: Bitdefender
