A Roblox farming game made by a teenager [...] had 8.9 million players online [Roblox claims they are not bots] at the same time—Steam peaked at 11.5 million across all games on the same day
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I wonder how much money the kid developer is making off this game.
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I guess on some level there’s something wholesome about it being a gardening game. I wonder how much of the success is owed to the natural human inclination towards farming
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I’ve worked at a professional studio (+100 employees) that specializes in Roblox.
It’s very strange how that side of the industry works. Some people can make a killing just on the marketplace side, like providing assets for others (e.g. someone told me they made $200k/yr independently creating assets).
However, the vast majority of games & creators make nothing, or they make Roblox but now enough to withdraw funds into real money (something like 95% of creators fall into this category). It’s also hard to design for Roblox, because it’s like TikTok for games. What works there is somewhat unique to Roblox itself.
It could have changed since I worked in that field, but it’s a very topsy-turvy side of the industry.
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I’ve worked at a professional studio (+100 employees) that specializes in Roblox.
It’s very strange how that side of the industry works. Some people can make a killing just on the marketplace side, like providing assets for others (e.g. someone told me they made $200k/yr independently creating assets).
However, the vast majority of games & creators make nothing, or they make Roblox but now enough to withdraw funds into real money (something like 95% of creators fall into this category). It’s also hard to design for Roblox, because it’s like TikTok for games. What works there is somewhat unique to Roblox itself.
It could have changed since I worked in that field, but it’s a very topsy-turvy side of the industry.
Damn asset creators and their three figure salaries
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I’ve worked at a professional studio (+100 employees) that specializes in Roblox.
It’s very strange how that side of the industry works. Some people can make a killing just on the marketplace side, like providing assets for others (e.g. someone told me they made $200k/yr independently creating assets).
However, the vast majority of games & creators make nothing, or they make Roblox but now enough to withdraw funds into real money (something like 95% of creators fall into this category). It’s also hard to design for Roblox, because it’s like TikTok for games. What works there is somewhat unique to Roblox itself.
It could have changed since I worked in that field, but it’s a very topsy-turvy side of the industry.
I remember really vaguely reading an article about how it had kind of an exploitative model, especially considering the amount of labor done by kids, but it’s like an entirely different world i just tried to understand when my nephew played.
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I’ve worked at a professional studio (+100 employees) that specializes in Roblox.
It’s very strange how that side of the industry works. Some people can make a killing just on the marketplace side, like providing assets for others (e.g. someone told me they made $200k/yr independently creating assets).
However, the vast majority of games & creators make nothing, or they make Roblox but now enough to withdraw funds into real money (something like 95% of creators fall into this category). It’s also hard to design for Roblox, because it’s like TikTok for games. What works there is somewhat unique to Roblox itself.
It could have changed since I worked in that field, but it’s a very topsy-turvy side of the industry.
I assume that’s $200k a year and not straight $200?
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I remember really vaguely reading an article about how it had kind of an exploitative model, especially considering the amount of labor done by kids, but it’s like an entirely different world i just tried to understand when my nephew played.
Yup. For most kids, it can be exploitative because of the restrictions around withdrawing funds, the super vast majority of the audience is under age, many games have gacha models (gambling). I did get to make & work on games relevant to my kids, so that was very cool.
On the whole, I’m glad I’ve left that area of the industry for now. I’d prefer not to go back (only did about a year / 12 in my career). There are great companies in that space trying, but it’s not easy.
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I assume that’s $200k a year and not straight $200?
Yes, edited now. Thank you.
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Made in 3 days too… doesn’t that just sum up the industry. Well fucking done.
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I guess on some level there’s something wholesome about it being a gardening game. I wonder how much of the success is owed to the natural human inclination towards farming
What? Is there a natural human inclination to farming?
I ask because I’ve always had a natural disinclination to anything out in the sun.
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What? Is there a natural human inclination to farming?
I ask because I’ve always had a natural disinclination to anything out in the sun.
I’ve always been an indoors gamer type myself. Then when I was in my mid thirties I decided to grow a couple tomato plants in pots. Now I’m apparently a gardner. As much as I complain about it, I really like it. Seeing the seeds sprout, eating to veggies. I think I spend more growing than if I bought it, but I’ve still come to like it a lot.
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I’ve always been an indoors gamer type myself. Then when I was in my mid thirties I decided to grow a couple tomato plants in pots. Now I’m apparently a gardner. As much as I complain about it, I really like it. Seeing the seeds sprout, eating to veggies. I think I spend more growing than if I bought it, but I’ve still come to like it a lot.
That’s just growing things.
I have a few little house plants, that were foisted on me by my sister. But by no stretch of the imagination is that at all related to farming.
Even gardening at its most extreme, only might be a hobby farm.
Actual farming, is a whole other kind of annoying. Its just way different when your lively hood depends on it.
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My son and all of his friends played it for a day or two. He made a point of showing it to me, which he rarely does with Roblox. While he was showing me how to play, another player came and asked if he wanted to see his garden. It was huge. After, he gave my son a bunch of materials and cash (or something, I don’t remember), so that was pretty wholesome.
It was basic plant, water, pick, sell. Something I’d never seen in one of their games was it had a gacha system where you complete requested missions and get a random reward, like new or bigger seeds.
I have no idea what the monetization was, mine didn’t spend any.
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Most likely nothing. The whole system is designed to lure kids into making content and not pay out.
PMG has a pair of videos looking into it -
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“Kind of”. Exploitation is the whole game. I linked to some videos in another comment that dug into it (https://lemm.ee/comment/20719563).
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I’ve worked at a professional studio (+100 employees) that specializes in Roblox.
It’s very strange how that side of the industry works. Some people can make a killing just on the marketplace side, like providing assets for others (e.g. someone told me they made $200k/yr independently creating assets).
However, the vast majority of games & creators make nothing, or they make Roblox but now enough to withdraw funds into real money (something like 95% of creators fall into this category). It’s also hard to design for Roblox, because it’s like TikTok for games. What works there is somewhat unique to Roblox itself.
It could have changed since I worked in that field, but it’s a very topsy-turvy side of the industry.
It isn’t ‘strange’, it is, as you say, very obviously and intentionally monetized the same way TikTok is.
The 1% huge payoff vs 99% no payoff divide being essentially random is the point.
The draw of potentially going viral and potentially becoming a multi millionaire is what draws in people, particularly young people whose brain’s haven’t matured yet and thus aren’t capable of realistically assessing risk vs reward.
Its gambling, but essentially as an independent contractor career or hobby.
The cost is opportunity cost, your time and attention and work.
Probably many of the people pouring tons of work into Roblox for years now could have just made their own indie games at this point, probably made a lot more money.
Reminder about IP
Hi Developers, We have been getting some questions about Intellectual Property (“IP”) and what it means to you, so we would like to take this opportunity to share a few reminders. You own the IP of the games and other …
Developer Forum | Roblox (devforum.roblox.com)
Here the official Roblox account on their own forums clarifies that anyone making a Roblox game is inherently giving Roblox a liscense to use all of their IP.
So… if you proof of concept something in Roblox, it gets decently popular, and then you decide eh, im gonna pull the gamemode out of Roblox after I develop something similar in Unity or Godot or something… does… Roblox retain some amount of rights and is now able to sue you?
Does Roblox even honor the request to withdraw your Roblox game?
I am genuinely asking these questions, I am not able to find examples or guidelines for these scenarios/hypotheticals.
Tons and tons of the software industry revolves around who technically owns the right to exactly what ideas, what code, what formats… and the entertainment industry is similar with character likenesses, plot lines, etc.
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comment on the article says
Actually the teenager would basically DMCA takedown peoples games and then remake the game nearly exactly and upload it himself to steal the playerbase, now he sold it to another pay2win studio
trying to find actual evidence for this has sapped my will to live but there’s some interesting drama
https://x.com/joshuaistweeter/status/1919491878505923040
or
https://nitter.net/joshuaistweeter/status/1919491878505923040ruthless little shit’s gonna go far
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Is it fun? Or is it one of those things where they should be playing one of the existing farm sims and just don’t know better?
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“Kind of”. Exploitation is the whole game. I linked to some videos in another comment that dug into it (https://lemm.ee/comment/20719563).
A few years ago I posted in a reddit advice thread about how I banned my kid from roblox because of that exploitation-by-design and everyone freaked the fuck out at me and told me I was a terrible person.
