Imo it’s not the former (kids making content) that’s the issue; that’s something kids have been doing in games for a long time. Gmod, TF2, CS:S, Minecraft, etc. Most of those games have mods made by kids or people who started as kids, and some of them are very successful.
The thing that’s actually bad is the fact that the kids can make money from it, and the cut they get is almost non-existent. The result is that it encourages kids to engage in the kinds of monetization we normally associate with greedy corpos (loot boxes, true microtransactions like extra lives, etc).
If kids weren’t able to make money off it, or if the cut was larger and they restricted the kinds of monetization kids could utilize (no loot boxes, charging for extra lives, etc), then I wouldn’t see an issue with it.
That’s where I think a lot of people miss the mark. For some reason it seems like there’s a view that’s unique to people criticizing Roblox, which is that kids making mods for games is bad; but imo it’s only bad when coupled with a monetization scheme that encourages kids to nickel and dime each other.
I dunno. Kids making mods is one thing, a corporation exploiting that for profit is something different.
Sure, Gmod and what have you definitely had sales because of mods, meaning an indirect profit, so one could question that too. When it comes to Roblox they’re directly profiting off of the labour of children in a very predatory manner.
Neither scenario is fantastic I suppose, but only the latter is actively encouraging and building systems to exploit people.
VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Roblox is kind of yucky to begin with. Don’t they use kids to make content and then give them an awful portion of proceeds?
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Imo it’s not the former (kids making content) that’s the issue; that’s something kids have been doing in games for a long time. Gmod, TF2, CS:S, Minecraft, etc. Most of those games have mods made by kids or people who started as kids, and some of them are very successful.
The thing that’s actually bad is the fact that the kids can make money from it, and the cut they get is almost non-existent. The result is that it encourages kids to engage in the kinds of monetization we normally associate with greedy corpos (loot boxes, true microtransactions like extra lives, etc).
If kids weren’t able to make money off it, or if the cut was larger and they restricted the kinds of monetization kids could utilize (no loot boxes, charging for extra lives, etc), then I wouldn’t see an issue with it.
That’s where I think a lot of people miss the mark. For some reason it seems like there’s a view that’s unique to people criticizing Roblox, which is that kids making mods for games is bad; but imo it’s only bad when coupled with a monetization scheme that encourages kids to nickel and dime each other.
AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Apropos of nothing but “kids or people who started as kids” is one of the best parts of a sentence I’ve read in a long time.
dojan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I dunno. Kids making mods is one thing, a corporation exploiting that for profit is something different.
Sure, Gmod and what have you definitely had sales because of mods, meaning an indirect profit, so one could question that too. When it comes to Roblox they’re directly profiting off of the labour of children in a very predatory manner.
Neither scenario is fantastic I suppose, but only the latter is actively encouraging and building systems to exploit people.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, yes they do