One of the Most Popular Games on the Planet
20 comments
·May 22, 2025waltbosz
op00to
It’s good that you play with your kids, and they’re not playing alone.
I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that. She said Roblox and Discord are the top places right now where predators are hanging out cruising for kids to exploit. Discord makes sense, but I was surprised at Roblox.
As someone who came of age in the free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era (“borrowed” shell account at a local university), it’s really disappointing how exploitive the internet and gaming is, especially in spaces that could stimulate creativity.
irjustin
> I was surprised at Roblox
Any place with a large gathering of children and free form text input/chat instantly turns this into exploit. Pretty much every video game w/ chat has to deal with this.
> free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era
In simplest terms, the predators hadn't fully adapted yet.
It's sad but as with any tool that gains mass adoption it'll get both sides of the coin weaponizing it into something nefarious. In this regard I am worried about predators adapting AI tools in ways that aren't obvious and I am concerned for my children, but exactly as you say, we must "play with them" which helps ensure their safety at multiple levels.
conception
https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/
Oh yeah. Scary place.
JadoJodo
> I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that.
I've heard the same advice from a friend who works in law enforcement in this same area (child abuse, CSAM, exploitation) for the US (federal) government. Some of the stories I've heard...
ronnier
My son makes games in Roblox. He just turned 14 and I highly encourage it. As a result he learned how to use an IDE and how to write LUA. Fantastic way to learn to code. He even downloaded blender and watched youtube tutorials on how to create 3d models.
dylan604
I enjoy hearing about how kids are doing things like this. I'm also very jealous of the resources available to them. I started learning 3D modeling when Lightwave came bundled with the Video Toaster. There was no YouTube. The internet wasn't even a thing yet. Resources were very limited to me, to the point that I got frustrated with not being able to get past very rudimentary models but I kept playing. The thing that really killed my interest was the incredibly long render times on that 8MHz CPU. If you told me back then that real time rendering would be possible, I'd have laughed in your face.
If I had access to Unreal type 3D then, you wouldn't have been able to pull me away from the computer. So probably a good thing for me it wasn't!
gyomu
Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I became a programmer because I had many, many hours with nothing to do at my grandparents' house. I did have a programmable calculator and the reference programming manual that came with it, so I'd recreate (in extremely basic form) the games I read about in magazines/that my friends told me about and that I dreamt of playing but didn't have access to, such as Diablo/Sim City/etc. Later I learned assembly to make faster games (I'd print out z80 asm reference tutorials at the library, write code by hand on paper, and then type it out, compile it, and load it on my calculator from a library computer a week or so later).
Honestly, lots of respect for the kids these days that are so self driven that they'll spend hours on their projects and not watching mindless short form videos. I don't think I'd have had that self discipline if I had had a phone with unlimited internet/YouTube/TikTok/etc access.
dylan604
> Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I'm jealous of the resources, not of the kids. No way in hell I'd want to go through being a teenager again, especially with social media existing. But that has nothing to do with the learning resources available now that were not when I was their age.
StableAlkyne
It's cool that this generation has their own tools to get into writing games
Probably a heck of a lot less clunky than the 2000s too! That era you had to either mod something that already existed, or attempt to make a source mod (+fight with Hammer to make maps).
Plus there weren't too many good free 3D tools, but now Blender is as good as commercial software. On top of the huge selection of good IDEs and documentation for the coding bits.
Glad to see there's still a scene around just making things for the fun of it!
null
billfruit
The article does not analyse why it became popular or what makes it unique. A shallow article.
joshdavham
Would you be willing to explain? I’m not familiar at all with Roblox.
billfruit
I meant article does not explain anymuch other than that the game is popular. It should have carried more and deeper analysis.
seivan
[dead]
joshdavham
This is actually weirdly very inspiring! It makes me feel that I should be more bold with sharing early versions of the things that im building without being too worried about how polished they might be.
gnabgib
The game: Grow a Garden (on Roblox)
socalgal2
with 5 million active users on May 17th, more than the highest steam game ever, PUBG, at 3.2 million. Made by a teen in 3 days.
At GDC, Roblox was hiring engineers. They announced their goal is to upgrade Roblox to be the best system to make AAA games
conception
Farmville had 83 million monthly/34 million daily users. People really love farm games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
shmerl
Does Roblox work on Linux or they still excuse not supporting it even in Wine with some bogus arguments?
I've played it with my kids. It's a simple and fun tycoon type game. You buy seeds, plant them, harvest crops, sell crops, repeat. Upgrade your crops, etc. There are gacha eggs that grow into pets that you buy with free game economy money . The few items that cost robux (which you buy with real world money) are not heavily advertised.