But if LEGO started coming with lottery tickets in the kids sets, had adds for exploitative devs that ran real businesses with 7year olds on payroll in “pretend money” that can be exchanged on black sites that LEGO approved of by not taking any actions, well you start to get in to problems.
The thing is that Roblox is not just a unsuspecting pawn here. They are deliberately fostering this, they know about the toxic development environment, so they closed their own forums to avoid legal implications, they knowing promote gambling to kids, they allow sites that exchange in game currency for money because it helps grow their game.
> It also lets kids learn a lot of entrepreneurial skills if they have that bent, which I view as a massive plus.
I’m sure the experience of working as an underage kid for a grown man sexually targeting underage girls will very valuable in the startup world, especially the part where the company gets informed and doesn’t do anything more than the bare minimum because his child labor ring is making them money.
It’s a game for kids, but it’s not made or owned by kids. We can hold them to a higher bar of responsibility.
1. What kind of "lottery ticket" are you referring to? Lottery ticket, by definition requires random element. Does Roblox provide any such mechanics? No. A platform that you can buy and sell is hardly considered "lottery ticket" platform.
2. The forum is closed because of the toxicity of the posts, not because of the development environment. For development communication, they could use Guilded which is owned by Roblox, it's not like there is no legit alternative. If people choose to communicate out of the platform, how do you suppose Roblox to take any actions? They can't even verify if the provided evidence is true or not. Should Google ban a user's gmail account if that user did sexual harassment in their own company?
Including BASIC on a Commodore 64 wasn't exploitative. It was a boon, even though it burned millions of kid-hours of labor.
The reason child labor is illegal is not because we’re under the wrong assumption that work experience itself is bad for them.
Roblox is encouraging kids to develop games for a platform they make money off from. They are then paying them with in-game money to compensate them. This looks very much like a subcontractor relationship, but with payment in company store money.
They are also aware that large groups are collecting and behaving like game dev studios, and these new child developers are getting pulled in by those organizing them. There are reports that abusive behavior is occurring in these groups, but because they are not on Roblox, the company sees no problem.
You can still develop software for Roblox and never see a problem. Still, it doesn't mean that problems are non-existent.
Roblox sells classes as a type of tech education after school activity, where they teach kids to build stuff in their game engine. Parents like it because they are often worried that regular school curriculums don't prepare their kids for a tech centric economy. HOWEVER, the material for these classes are entirely un-subtle about the prospect of making money.
Even worse, the game will guide you to spend in game currency advertising your game.
It's using the same dynamic as a multilevel marketing scheme on children.
Disgusting
If, as a parent, you don't want your kids to play Roblox, don't let them. My kids (and seemingly all of their friends) love it, have played it a lot, have spent time creating and learning how to create, and interacting with other kids.
>It's using the same dynamic as a multilevel marketing scheme on children.
I've never seen where my kids are asked to recruit more kids to follow them and filter money up the pyramid. Maybe you and I have different views on what a MLM is?
Have you even played Roblox? Interacted with the culture of it?
Yes, there’s a lot there to be worried about.
It's like letting kids play with LEGO, and then being able to share their creations online (which is a thing). LEGO is not an empire built on child labor. It's an empire built because kids like playing with LEGO.
Roblox is no different. Calling it "child labor" with all the bad connotations that go along with it is simply designed to grab headlines or spread fear mongering.
That kids can make money, which not all kids want at the ages Roblox is really popular, is a plus. If I could have sold LEGO designs as a kid I would have loved it.
It also lets kids learn a lot of entrepreneurial skills if they have that bent, which I view as a massive plus.