Player-built worlds and platform currency

What you're actually buying

A house currency (Robux, V-Bucks, Minecoins) that you spend on items, passes and experiences made by other players or studios. The currency converts back to cash for creators only at a rate the platform sets, after it has taken its cut, so only a slice of what players spend reaches the people who made things.

How it works

These platforms don't sell games; they sell a currency. The cheapest way to fill an infinite catalogue is to let players build it for you, then sell kids the currency they spend inside it. 'Developer' becomes unpaid labour sold back as opportunity: build the world, chase the few who make real money, and the platform gets a catalogue it never had to staff, refreshed for free, forever. Reported figures put well over a third of Roblox's daily users under thirteen.

When it's fine

When children understand that the currency is real money, spending is limited to an amount set by a parent, and building rather than buying is the point.

Where it came from

Roblox was founded in 2004 and launched to the public in 2006. By the mid-2010s Roblox, Fortnite Creative and Minecraft Marketplace were building on a decade of live-service games and free-to-play, which had made paying for status and spending pocket money on virtual goods feel normal. Developers cashing out Robux via DevEx have reportedly received roughly $0.0035-$0.0038 per Robux, a fraction of the roughly $0.01-$0.0125 players pay to buy it. A 2021 People Make Games investigation accused Roblox of exploitative creator economics and gambling-like collectible trading. Epic, by contrast, pools 40% of net Fortnite Item Shop revenue into a monthly payout for creators, reportedly paying out over $1 billion. The roots are older: Warcraft III's free World Editor (2002) produced DotA, League of Legends and Dota 2 on unpaid labour, and Warcraft III: Reforged's 2020 terms claimed every custom game for Blizzard.

Rules and regulation

Children under 13 are the group regulators watch most closely, particularly over spending and data. See 'Aimed at children (parents' cards)' for the FTC cases.

Historical prices and revenues are in US dollars at the time unless marked A$.