So here’s the scoop. Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza recently did an interview with Eurogamer about how the company has a reputation for taking advantage of work that children often produce. Sigh.
So to clarify here, Roblox is basically digital meth for children, and a considerable part of the business model is that kids flock to it, not only to play games but also to make their own and share it with other kids. These child-created games can then be monetised, earning the creators an in-game currency called Robux, which can be converted to real money – of which Roblox takes a very healthy cut.
This all came to a head when Roblox found themselves being sued in February over allegations that it was exploiting child labour and offering children nearly worthless digital currency for their labour – but this is a controversy which dates back much further, and one Roblox doesn’t care to back away from.
In the interview, Stefano Corazza had this to say:
You can say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labour,’ right? Or, you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income.
So, I can be like 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now, with just a laptop, I can create something, make money and then sustain my life.
Stefano Corazza also claimed that Roblox had asked some of the platform’s more popular child creators their feelings:
They didn’t feel like they were exploited. “They felt like, ‘Oh my god, this was the biggest gift. All of a sudden, I could create something, I had millions of users, and I made so much money I could retire.
So I focus more on the amount of money that we distribute every year to creators, which is now getting close to like a billion dollars, which is phenomenal.
It’s also worth noting that despite Stefano Corazza trying to spin child labour into a good thing when he started speaking about it, a PR representative monitoring the interview interrupted to say that the vast majority of people earning money on Roblox are over the age of 18.
And if you think it’s rather suspicious to stress how rare it is for children to earn money through Roblox in an interview all about how it’s not exploiting but instead creating jobs for kids, then you’re in the same boat as I am. Maybe, just maybe, Roblox needs to reevaluate how it operates.