Admitting that your company's practices could be seen as exploiting child labor is a bold move, even if you say you think you are really doing something good. This is what Stefano Corazza, head of Roblox Studio, said in an interview with Eurogamer at the recent GDC about the company's reputation for using child labor.

Roblox is immensely popular with children, who not only play the games, but also use them to create games and share them with other users. These creations can also be monetized and the creators can earn "Roblux."

In February, Roblox was sued for allegedly "exploiting child labor and offering children nearly worthless digital currency in exchange for their labor," but questions about Roblox's practices have been around much longer.

In 2021, for example, People Make Games published a detailed report on YouTube titled "How Roblox Exploits Young Game Developers," followed by another report on the platform's collectibles and shady black market.

Roblox appears to have no intention of changing course: in March, the company announced a new AI-powered modeling tool that it said would "provide opportunities to create, expand, and monetize on the platform to support its vision of enabling anyone, anywhere, to create anything."

"You can say, 'Okay, we exploit child labor,' right?" Korazza told Eurogamer. 'Or we can offer people anywhere in the world the ability to get a job and earn an income.' I mean, I can be 15 years old, living in a slum in Indonesia, and with one laptop, I can build something, make money, and sustain my life."

Korazza further defended Roblox's approach, saying that he has spoken with popular teenage game developers on Roblox's platform and apparently "they don't feel exploited."

"They felt, 'Oh my God, this is the greatest gift, all of a sudden I can create something, I have millions of users, I'm making so much money I can retire,'" Corazza said. 'So I pay more attention to the amount of money that gets distributed to the creators each year.' [And imagine the millions of kids learning to code every month; there are millions of creators at Roblox Studio. They learn Lua scripting, which is pretty close to Python. In the future, can they get a job in the tech industry and say, "I'm a programmer?"

I'm not sure about that part, especially for kids living in slums in Indonesia, but there is no doubt that Roblox pays content creators a lot of money. The company paid $741 million to game makers in 2023, based on total sales (sales plus the total value of all transactions made during the period) of $3.5 billion. A spokesperson who monitored the interview stated that "the majority of people making money on Roblox are over the age of 18." If it's okay, even good, for children to create content on your platform, why highlight it's relative rarity? if you can say that Roblox is exploiting child labor, maybe it's time to rethink Roblox as a whole.

CORRECTION: The article originally stated that Roblox employed teenage game producers, but the company informed us that this was a misquote: Corazza stated that Roblox had "talked to" teenage game producers. . clarified that it does not employ minors in the production of its games.