Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is ‘a gift’

Image: Roblox

Roblox, 1 of the astir fashionable gaming platforms successful the world, has taken a batch of vigor from critics who impeach it of exploiting its users, the immense bulk of whom are children and teenagers. In a caller interview with Eurogamer, however, Roblox’s workplace head, Stefano Corazza, said the level has really been a acquisition to the young developers who marque wealth by creating games connected the platform.

“You tin say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, kid labor,’ right? Or you tin say: we are offering radical anyplace successful the satellite the capableness to get a job, and adjacent similar an income,” Corazza said. “So I tin beryllium like, 15 years old, successful Indonesia, surviving successful a slum, and past present with conscionable a laptop, I tin make something, marque money, and past prolong my life.” (An unidentified Roblox PR idiosyncratic contiguous during the interrogation told Eurogamer that astir of the developers earning wealth connected Roblox are 18 oregon older.)

Third-party developers connected Roblox are paid successful Robux, the platform’s in-game currency, which tin beryllium redeemed for cash. As Eurogamer notes, Roblox besides sells Robux astatine a overmuch higher terms than it pays for them: a idiosyncratic tin bargain 1,000 Robux for $12.50 but tin currency retired 1,000 Robux for conscionable $3.50. Users tin besides usage Robux elsewhere connected the net — including online gambling websites, according to a suit 2 parents filed against Roblox past August.

Roblox, for its part, has made caller overtures to legislators arsenic portion of a broader effort to beryllium it’s taking children’s information seriously. “Obviously, everyone wants to support kids safe,” Roblox CEO and co-founder David Baszucki told The Verge’s Alex Heath. “It has been thing we’ve ever focused on. And truthful we wanted to beryllium a assets for legislators arsenic they commencement reasoning astir laws.”

Baszucki is present headed to Washington, DC, to conscionable with lawmakers astir authorities that affects kids’ net usage — and that volition impact Roblox arsenic well.