two & a half gamers session #3 - Is Roblox evil mega corp or money making machine?

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #3. Let’s dive in.

Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič

Roblox

• Steam hosts 55K Games vs Roblox 20 Mil “experiences”
• 47,3 Mil DAU
• Half of the users are aged 12 and under
• Current Market cap 38 Bil $
• Roblox Cut 75,5%
• Roblox takes a 30% cut of every transaction on their platform
• Discoverability
• Robux
  • Minimum Withdrawal to real life money 100K (1000 $)
    • Second life comparison (10$)
  • Withdrawal only possible with Roblox monthly 5$ subscription
  • On every 1$ revenue of roblox only 17% make it out
  • Historic example of “Company money Scrib”
    • Workers spend their money at the company
    • Workers become afraid to break company rules as company rules over their “money”
    • This dependency increase friction on quitting the system
      • Illegal in US 1938
  • Platform Capitalism - business model based on unsustainable expansion in order to monopolize a platform
• Experience based payouts
• Roblox “editor knowledge untransferable
• “Make serious cash” claim removed from the website after video
• Roblox moderation - shut down official forums in 2017 because they couldn’t moderate them
• Roblox Collectible Market
  • Tie ins with Brands
  • Collectibles that are sold for limited time skyrocket in value from 10 to 15K $ dollars
  • Roblox still takes a 30% form all of the transactions
• Roblox Black market

Rewarded Interstitial ads - 6 months in

• Around 6 months ago Google and Facebook announced the roll out of Rewarded interstitial ads.
• An interstitial ad that pops up and users can opt out of and thus forgo the reward
• Admob are pushing very hard on this format which is still in Beta
• Facebook were pushing it but not so much anymore
• Don’t monetize with this format! You’re opening yourself up to unnecessary stress and risk
• Only FB and Admob support it - thus you’ll get lower prices
• FB on iOS is pretty much non-existent so you have no competition
• Calling it now that in 12 months they won’t exist.

Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me