Roblox Studio boss: children making money on the platform isn't exploitation, it's a gift

"I can be 15, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and with just a laptop create something, make money and sustain my life."

Roblox remains a gigantic phenomenon, boasting monthly player numbers of over 200 million - close to double the entirety of Steam - and a pattern of growth that defies the recent struggles of the wider games industry.

It also remains controversial, as exemplified by People Make Games' accusation in 2021 that Roblox is "exploiting" young developers on the platform, with many of those developers under the age of 18.

The accusation then involved the system of paying developers a fraction of their in-game earnings via Roblox's in-game currency, Robux, and Roblox also selling those Robux at much higher price than it buys them. This largely remains the same today, with 1000 Robux currently cashing out at $3.50, while buying 1000 Robux costs the equivalent of around $12.50.

At the time, Roblox issued a statement to Eurogamer that spoke in general terms about the growth in the total amount of money earned by its creators, the coding skills they learn, and the various support programs Roblox makes available to them.

In an interview with Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza at GDC in late March, where a new suite of AI-powered creation tools was demoed, I asked about the reputation Roblox hac gained and the notion that it was exploitative of young developers, since it takes a cut from work sometimes produced by children.

"I don't know, you can say this for a lot of things, right?" Corazza said. "Like, 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.

"There's always the flip side of that, when you go broad and democratised - and in this case, also with a younger audience," he continued. "I mean, our average game developer is in their 20s. But of course, there's people that are teenagers - and we have hired some teenagers that had millions of players on the platform.

"For them, you know, hearing from their experience, 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, 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."

At this point the PR present during the interview added that "the vast majority of people that are earning money on Roblox are over the age of 18".

"And imagine like, the millions of kids that learn how to code every month," Corazza said. "We have millions of creators in Roblox Studio. They learn Lua scripting," a programming language, "which is pretty close to Python - you can get a job in the tech industry in the future, and be like, 'Hey, I'm a programmer,' right?

"I think that we are really focusing on the learning - the curriculum, if you want - and really bringing people on and empowering them to be professionals."

For more on Roblox, its new features and big push into AI, it's worth reading our full Roblux Studio interview.