Roblox was recently slapped with a new lawsuit accusing the company of exploiting child labor through its youthful players, as well as deceptive advertising.
Roblox is a user-generated metaverse in which users are the ones to create the worlds and games that exist on the gaming platform. The issue at hand here, is that many of the game developers are children who create the games, which Roblox profits off of.
While users can earn Robux, the platform’s digital currency, as compensation for their creations, the lawsuit exists over the fact that the conversion of Robux to real currency results in a large cut of profits for the developers, as Robux takes a large cut of their sum. Roblox has built its entire platform around profiting from the creative development of its users—most of whom are children—and exploiting their labor for its own profit. Although they are digital currency, Robux have actual monetary value. When purchasing Robux, one Robux is valued at 0.0125 USD, meaning $4.99 USD can buy you 400 Robux; however, when trying to cash out Robux from the platform, the conversion rate significantly differs and one Robux is worth only $0.0035 USD, meaning 1,000 Robux can only be converted for $3.50.
Not to mention, Roblox makes it highly difficult to cash out easily, which particularly leaves many child developers unable to profit at all. In order to even convert Robux to USD, a user must first meet several, hard-to-meet requirements, including having a minimum of at least 30,000 earned Robux in their account and paying a monthly subscription fee. As a result, many child developers are unable to ever cash out their Robux for real-world funds because they are unable to meet the requirements to do so.
Parents claim Roblox takes advantage of children and exposes them to unsafe and unregulated virtual experiences.
The lawsuit is asking for Roblox to make some serious changes and also pay out damages to US users who purchased Robux, alleging that their deceptive advertising led consumers to purchase in-game currency unknowing that they were contributing to a child labor exploitation scheme.
