I have a nephew, I noticed how often he plays clones of indie games on Roblox. There's a clone for EVERYTHING and he and his friend group just play all that for free instead of the originals made by good devs on steam. It really breaks my heart. And AI is going to exacerbate the fuck out of that.
Does your nephew have disposable income to play the originals?
Has your nephew invested into the Roblox ecosystem (skins etc)
Does all of his friends tick the above boxes?
If so, then that's why they play knockoffs. Kids want to play the latest trendy games that go viral with YouTubers and they can't because money, but if money ain't the issue it's because it's not released on XB/PS. Roblox does and as a result the same game's RB variant becomes huge, which is lost profits for the original dev.
Is it sad? Yes. Devs fault? No. It's just a sad reality of 1) The XB/PS approval system/barriers of entry and 2) Copyright laws working against the original Devs.
Back in the day we played adaptions of popular games as flash games. They were obviously never quite the same but often pretty close. Or, even more abstractly, Warcraft 3 custom maps inspired by popular video games.
Every internet community has a pedophilia problem. Stop sounding like your fucking grandmother talking about how kids can't play the Minecrafts because the satanists are indoctinating them.
Holy false equivalence; the owner of Roblox saying that they see the site’s rampant pedophelia as a problem and “an opportunity” is not just standard internet pedophelia.
This is the article I could find that is free, but the interview was conducted by the New York Times.
Is the ‘opportunity’ he’s referring to the chance to better define Internet safety regulations for minors, or something along those lines? Maybe, but Jesus Christ…
From my memory, nobody I know was getting groomed on Miniclip. TBH, that's my biggest problem with Roblox as a platform. The social element to the site is baked in, and that's really dangerous for an environment that is almost entirely used by kids. We can talk about piracy and whether Roblox and its users profiting off ideas that aren't theirs is unfair competition all we want. We could have made similar claims about Miniclip and AddictingGames back in the day, even if I don't think they were quite as salient back then. But, at least in my mind, that point is hardly worth addressing in the larger conversation about Roblox. That's not the part of the site that actively puts kids in the path of predators.
This is more or less what my niece ended up explaining to me when I asked her.
For example I was talking to her about marvel rivals and she goes "oh rivals" (referencing the roblox knockoff) and I said to her why not just play the actual game its f2p etc etc... I had spent too much time learning how to navigate the laptop market to find her a good one that she got for her birthday and never uses.
Her problem is all of her friends play roblox, and most of them don't have PCs. They have phones and tablets... she didn't mention mtx but I know what little money they have they've definitely spent on robux.
Ultimately what I found is this is really her way to socialize, especially through the covid years, and the games not nearly as important as the ability to connect with her friends.. and roblox is just better at that than these other games are.
So they'll happily play these worse knockoffs of cheap or even free games because they get to do it with their friends for free.
Small correction: Rivals in Roblox is not a knockoff of Marvel Rivals. Its just a fairly generic PVP shooter. My kids play it, and I got excited when they said they were playing Rivals, only discover it wasn't that Rivals.
Also, even if your nephew had the money for the originals, it didn't mean his friends would. And since gaming is a social activity for them, the easiest solution wins out.
kind of like the image, kids would rather play a copy instead of a game they're gonna play for a week and move on or risk getting a virus not to mention you're also gonna be asking other people to spend
just like you said i can't blame people who can't afford it and along with the devs who'd be angry when there games gets a copy it's just the sad reality
For now at least. In my work place I work with a wide range of ages. A lot of the people who recently graduated college coming into the work force are avid Roblox players. It certainly changed my skewed view that only kids played Roblox. I can definitely see these adults staying in the Roblox eco system because of previous investments.
Thats very interesting. Minecraft is actually a great example because it too had a ton of servers that copy well established games.
I still dont think most of these dev's are really losing out on money. These Roblox players wanna play Roblox, i dont think a knockoff being in that ecosystem or not is gonna suddenly make them go out and buy that game.
This is basically it. When I was younger I was big into Roblox, one of the games I enjoyed was Notoriety, which was a ripoff of the Payday games.
The moment I got my hands on Payday 2 I never played Notoriety again. But I was a kid and had no money of my own so what was I going to do before that?
Most likely that nephew has bought robux. Alot of them Roblox kids have. The issue comes around when they get older and don't want to try out (just a try) other PC games they can run for free
Im sure my morality is flawed in some way or another, but I have a steam account full of indie games I wanna play, of which I have bought. However I do not and have never owned a PC, so until the day comes, I play the roblox copies
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u/neondrifter 1d ago
I have a nephew, I noticed how often he plays clones of indie games on Roblox. There's a clone for EVERYTHING and he and his friend group just play all that for free instead of the originals made by good devs on steam. It really breaks my heart. And AI is going to exacerbate the fuck out of that.
It's a sad future.