Roblox Boss Stefano Corazza Claims Play-To-Earn Isn’t Child Labor, But A Gift

Roblox

“In the good old days, kids as young as 5 could work as they pleased, from textile factories to iron smelts. Yippee hooray!”

Recent of late, accusations have mounted that Roblox‘s play-to-earn system is exploitative, specifically of players under the age of 18, flouting child labor laws. Stefano Corazza, the current head of the Roblox studio, has fired back, however, stating that the system is “a gift” for players under legal working age.

Roblox has long had creative features; it does bill itself as a game where users can “make anything you can imagine,” with that “anything” potentially being viewed by 66.1 million users worldwide. They also boast having over 3.1 million Roblox developers.

The problem, of course, is the playerbase. Roblox skews younger than most online games. And those vaunted creative elements have caught them some heat in the past, notably when they added 17+ content to the game. But aside from that, while there are good user-created games in Roblox, for every one of those, there are hundreds of bad actors who’ve created highly exploitative “games” that are designed to siphon Robux (the game’s paid-for-with-real-money currency) from player’s digital wallets.

Which dovetails nicely with today where, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Corazza attempted to shut these accusations down with the following response, taken in full below:

A Roblox PR rep also clarified with Eurogamer that “the vast majority of people that are earning money on Roblox are over the age of 18.” That said, that statement also might lead to the interpretation that there are some undisclosed number of their developers that aren’t. Another representative sent the following to IGN, in addition to a link to a blog dedicated to supporting developers in the Roblox community:

Roblox has continued a slow, steady platform expansion over the years. As of now, it’s available on most of the modern platforms, including Xbox and PlayStation, in addition to some of the top VR platforms. This likely ensures that it will only grow bigger as time goes on.

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Source: IGN

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B. Simmons

Based out of Glendale California, Bryan is a GAMbIT's resident gaming contributor. Specializing in PC and portable gaming, you can find Bryan on his 3DS playing Monster Hunter or at one of the various conventions throughout the state.

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