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

[Music] welcome welcome everybody this is no gaming podcast two and a half Gamers session number three session number three so we are definitely taking this seriously well we are dis discussing the latest news fun stuff and then obviously dropping some knowledge as well but uh you know don't forget this is also 4:00 a.m. conference discussion feeling about the gaming industry so let's dive in welcome guys Felix and yakob hello there how was your week very very good it's a lot of happening we'll get into a I got a lot of questions this week from some devs uh about one particular ad unit I'll go into that bit later but before we kind of just dive into it I just wanted to make a announcement in the spirit of

self-improvement so it was brought to my attention by my two dear co-hosts uh last week that I use a lot of fillers and in the spirit of self-improvement uh I will now uh or we all will donate € per filler uh every week to a charity uh of our listeners choosing and we're going to have a little poll on LinkedIn after this podcast comes out to choose it so uh we're going to be counting fillers from now on very good well don't worry I will definitely be counting it and that was the one that was the one already yep got it there you go there you go okay and uh and you know uh you wanted to do a quick round of intros again because you feel a bit intimidated that nobody knows you Felix so please can you just introduce yourself as well and the azza

and then I'm going to tell uh our listeners about myself too yeah sure so I'm Felix I'm the director of ad monetization at networking I have worked at dsps and AD networks before so anything that has to do with in-game ad monetization I've seen how the sausage is made and I've also made the sausage oo oh nice that's nice uh so name's Jacob or you can hear it in the conversation also Remo uh pretty much head of monetization at trapl currently but more on the game design stuff uh the jobs that I did before was I guess 80% game design and currently yeah lots of projects are pretty much coming through my hands so that's there but uh mostly focused on game design system design and all the N grey uh parts of monetization that are pretty much dying to the game economy which is of course today's Trend F favorite

subject amazing and my name is mate and I'm a independent UA consultant working in games for nine years already now having a team of motion designers 10 uh at the moment and I work very closely with the several developers around the world to grow their games that's it and uh guys welcome again so let's uh let's dive into the news so what's happening not many Acquisitions this this weekd I know I know right it's like week nobody bought anyone or maybe there is some m&a but not that huge as the week before well yeah we we'll we'll definitely see some more Acquisitions later down the line I can I can guess that this will be happening this year why why are you so sad about it it's like we are going to see I'm not like that that's how this industry works

it's it's just expected like we talked about it before that we are guessing that EA is the next company to be acquired on the chopping block or play those two or play yeah play or someone else yeah yeah let's let's start with the news I guess uh so we're looking at some of the blizzard related news lately uh so there's this historic uh start of the game IND Union in North America I think one of the first ones that actually going to be within a really big company uh specifically Activision Blizzard where QA workers are trying to establish it uh within Raven software and uh originally they pretty much said that they will give Bard until 25th of January which already passed out and bler did not voluntary choose to recognize uh Activision bler didn't voluntary choose to recognize the union

so now I get what a surprise it is in work it is in workers's hands because uh if they can sway a lot of uh people on their side they still need to be uh recognized as a union as like and Activision business needs to start bargaining with them if I understood the whole report correctly but on top of it uh there was the sudden change within the organization in the mentioned company where QA people were pretty much put around all of their teams and not within a QA team just by accident but you need you need to mention that the QA of Call of Duty team that was the yeah yeah qfam like main team that they wanted to form 34 people and what happened well now they are uh definitely sitting with other teams just not to be together trying to create the union well not surprised again I think I saw it didn't even like the GDC survey

from this year that there's like 60% or 55% developers uh wanting to get the game industry Union established so this this number is just Rising every year pretty much yeah but it's GDC survey so you know little bit biased slightly yeah slightly different from the the mobile Game Dev industry anyway the GDC audience is quite well Indie PC and uh in that direction rather than mobile developers this kind of just also piles on what we've been saying before like how bad are things in there because traditionally if you think about it forming a union is traditionally at least like a blue collar thing and blizzard QA that's definitely like I would say more of a white collar job and like for them to have to actually want to group together in a tech company that generally is known for getting you know the cushy lunches and the good deals like what is going on in there like it must be so bad like what well there was

the um the post from uh from Jessica QA which we mentioned I think in the first uh session they're earning 60k a year which is I think really low salary for um North America you know you can can you imagine like having that kind of salary in let's say San Franco are they in San Francisco though or are they like in some other City well not probably in San fr specifically is it Irvine California yeah okay there you go but still um how much you pay for a for a rent I think this has to do with the this kind of hidden tax that's kind of plugging the gaming industry where you are expected to be paid less because you're working on a thing that's your dream job and this is kind of a really bad Mantra that I think needs to definitely go away because it's just the worst to be honest yeah but still

I would also take a pay cut to work on on Diablo for example but not for a long period of time just you know just for year maybe two years stps and then just move on because well we can definitely get better salary elsewhere and you still enjoy working that's the thing you need to be happy to be able to work uh in gaming industry right or well working in gaming industry definitely makes me happy so and that's the that's the main point yeah but you know now that there's like much more competition even with in the market of like the job market of Northern America that I think like everybody gets better and these kind of problems that are or or let's say the the companies that were built originally on this thesis are kind of suffering from this now which is now that you see these movements like let's establish a union now yeah well sure let's see what happens with Microsoft comes in there

and cleans up like say what you want about Microsoft but they're known for you know cleaning up having a good HR System nice all right let's uh let's move on so I want to talk about something that I've actually gotten four questions from from four different devs this week nice and that is rewarded intitial ads and the reason I don't know have you guys heard about these rewarded in IAL ads uh well couple of months ago that the rewarded interstitial ads will be available Google I think but that's it I mean no other information yeah so exactly right so six months ago Google and Facebook announced that they're going to roll out rewarded interatial ads so it's an interstitial ad that pops up and then users can opt out intitial ad 5 seconds into it and then forego the reward or stay watch the ad for 30 seconds and then get the reward so admob

right now is pushing super hard for this format because it's still in beta which in Google is you know it means it's on not a very strong footing but they're pushing super hard and I think that's why I got so many questions from devs this week about it and they also pitched me quite a lot Facebook used to push it but not as much anymore which is pretty much a sign that they're kind of abandoning it and here's my little mini rant like whatever you do if you're a Dev don't monetize with this format like you're opening yourself up to such like unnecessary risk and such unnecessary stress by using this format so when you're using interstitial ads banners or rewarded in Mobile you're always using a mediator which means you always get price because there's competition but for this reward interstitial ad ads there's only admob and Facebook that actually support this format which means you're going into a

doop and we all know that on iOS Facebook is pretty much a non-existent player at the moment so which means that for iOS you will be entirely reliant on admo to pay you the highest price which I guaranteee you they won't like I can see yeah absolutely not and I've seen it like when you have one ad Network and then you add mediation you double add Revenue all the time so pretty much you're accepting 50% lower ppms if you use this format and I guarantee you that admob are pushing super hard for this right now because no one is using it and they're trying to do a last hurah to push it and I will bet that this time in a year from now they're going to Sunset this project in a really short time frame and then if you have if you're monetizing with it you're going to have to change your game and you're going to hold the bag on this don't like it do I get this right so this is something in between the

spectrum of interstial and rewarded video where interstial you don't control at all as a player it just pops up to your face and that's it you you exit or click it and rewarded video you voluntarily choose to watch because there was a reward offered to you before so here yeah the thing pops up this is a hybrid you you need to watch it for 5 seconds anyway you cannot close it yeah and then the reward is shown for you to continue watching yeah so I guarantee you there's some genius product manager in like admob or Google that's been like oh yeah I can improve completion rates on our intitial ads and that's why it's added this reward and when I spoke to ad Bob two months ago I was asking okay so do I get rewarded ad ecpm for this and they're like no no no same as interstitial and I'm like so why should I use intertial and it's like oh yeah cuz you improve completion rates I'm

just like what like that was the CCH I was looking for yeah how's that relevant yeah oh my God okay nice but okay yeah that's my little mini rant it's just gotone a lot of questions over it lately but until the only way I would say you should use this is if you're a developer is if you see this coming on like more mediation you get more competition because that's the only way that you as a developer can guarantee you actually get paid the highest or a fair price for your inventory so if you're only getting Google and Facebook it's not going to be as high as it would if you're selling it on Open mediation Marketplace yeah this is very similar to actually pre-registration campaigns with Google I mean this is so useless yeah I have no idea like why every rep out there well almost every rep is pushing it so hard you know just to spend money on pre- campaigns you can't optimize it properly so it's like you know giving

flyers in San Francisco Metro that would be more effective I say this this not even like install optimization it's like pre- so nobody cares so you will pay the same CPI sometimes even higher cpis than ma campaigns so mobile up install campaigns so like how how does that make sense I have no idea really yeah okay so the lesson for me as a game designer is just you know either use intercial or rewarded videos but this doesn't seems to fit in any like even for me like how do I slot in the reward there in the actual ad which is game related then yeah that's why it's so silly because you have to design around this new ad unit and make it a bit different from the rewarded and that might actually cannibalize your rewarded video as well so it's just it's just bad idea I I don't see any good ideas about it right now like I don't yeah well that's that's why nobody's using it I

guess that's why they're pushing it so hard now it's very similar to uh good old days with I think kusel ads on Facebook Facebook at some point in the past was pushing it so hard like yeah I use it use it for gaming it's amazing ad unit so you're using it obviously no performance anything and then after a while I it can work sometimes but it's really good and suitable for e-commerce Brands obviously because you can show the the different products in the in the carousel ad format for gaming not at all sometimes you can show up different characters and units yes but that's uh that's it so then when I asked Facebook about it again after a couple of months of their pushing is like okay so should we use Carousel no no no no no no no that's uh you know it's it's not very effective like really who would say what a surprise ah the same thing I think was with h with canvas experience but I

can't remember how was it called because can well it was canvas but it can be confused with the Facebook canas where which was the platform for the games 10 years ago yeah but never I mean nevertheless you said it worked some cases when did actually the carousel ads work for gaming when you show uh different characters and units from the game actually so like more hardcore games then I guess more probably yeah more midcore and hardcore so if you use the um or Heroes all you have uh that's perfect but then years ago um they're pushing so hard to create the story in five images so you have the the Carousel and then uh every image is one part of the story so you're just flashing the store Page images pretty much I need to take yeah yep okay uh we can we can move on uh we can move want I I need to stop

ranting about Facebook because my um personal account is still banned but it should be unbanned on Monday so uh should be hope should be yeah should be I was on the on the support with uh so many people already no one can or could help me so uh Facebook you're doing very good job thank you very much for being such a great UA part did uh if you spent more money would they be more helpful you think are like are you stuck in some kind of mid tier or like how does yeah I spent uh 25 million in my whole career I think that's a pretty good amount of money to not being banned but is it all in is it all in your Facebook account though okay that's not yeah there we go there we go that's true but Facebook was always 80% of the spend up until now up until now so maybe that's that's the case because I L to spend on Facebook and they they banned me hey you us H come back and

spend more money this is not this is definitely not how they can motivate me okay let's continue yeah okay okay okay okay so blizzard is making a survival game I think uh they are inspired by their own um survival atmosphere and the situation in the survival mode they are in at the moment but J aside they're working on a new brand uh new um in the whole new universe whatever that means uh it's a new triple play title and uh it's not a spin of an existing Blizzard game but the new IP so this is new that's that's interesting it's it's first time in eight years I think was was it yeah well the OverWatch was the the last one right yeah but also keep in mind that OverWatch wasn't really a new IP where OverWatch was built on the ashes of the project Titan MMO so like considering that the new IP was in the making like far

behind so I would say this is really surprising development uh considering that the current situation at blizzard is uh well what else they can do you you sound as bad as excited as a chess player you don't sound excited at all yeah exactly like what's the wrong with you because I know when this thing will come out it will come out like 2028 2042 Mike mark my definitely there at least we'll finally get a lius test if Remo is correct about like how the brain drain like has affected blizzard and actually see if this will be a flop or not that will be a true test if Remo is correct or not you may yeah but we will see we will see in 10 years you remember how many yeah how many years uh it took from the first trailer of announcement of a cyber Punk oh that was around eight years okay well that's uh that's well not blizzard so with blizzard

that's even longer that's the problem that's the problem okay okay that's your F okay fine yeah but it's interesting because uh still not a mobile undertaking because the rumor on the street of course was that blizzard was working on some kind of World of Warcraft or Warcraft IP spin-off into geolocation like Pokémon Go game so that that's what I heard but yeah we we are not getting it that seems at least it's not being announced apparently you are walking on a very wrong Street if this is something that you heard as a rumor on the street see well well you working in the street of Slovakia so I now I get it now I get it now I get it okay yeah let's continue uh staying on the blizzard Noe uh there's the new uh game publishing studio called new Tales launched by former Ubisoft and blizzard veterans in Paris

uh I think lots of experience coming from Tri play industry there uh such as weend the Lucas Ard Bard and Ubisoft and they are planning to develop games with its internal Studios as well publish as well as publish games from other developers so it's not per se the typical blizzard developers bending together to create a new game rather than this seems like a bigger Venture yeah but this is this is what I don't get um publishing uh seems like a triaa games I mean there's like literally zero people from Mobile gaming industry so I have no idea how they can I well I know how they can but no idea how they will just do the publishing oh well we'll see I guess yeah it's interesting also the other fact is interesting I didn't see any big uh dollar numbers attached to this report like uh we raised this we have this we have that so in the environment that's usually the the thing that you

see there but yeah let's see wishing all the best I guess more more PC console games I guess coming oo can't wait can't wait okay continuing next um and this one's interesting so YouTube head of gaming uh is leaving for a crypto company called polygon amazing yeah wish him all the best wish him all the best I mean this is kind of just a bit you know now is all the VC money is going into crypto and then it's becoming the cool thing for you know the hip cool managers of San Francisco to be doing it's just kind of you know these successful Executives following the money and following the hype right yeah yeah but do I get it right that this is not the polygon's not the company that actually makes G is the protocol on ethereum is it yeah yeah so so what what what would be the role

follow the money what would be the RO come on he went from being head of gaming at YouTube to being the CEO that's a step up no no CEO uh he just joining the the company joining the company well yeah well if he's the CEO that would be definitely a big step up think so of of the game but they no no it's not the CEO yeah and then the other other bit of the news is that Youtube CEO said that nfds and crypto present the previously unimaginable opportunity without any other specific product or deadline details yeah that's maybe because they have no imagination that's the thing also of course is unimaginable because two years ago like nfts didn't even exist so of course it was unimaginable yeah exactly you know they saw the Twitter is uh is having their um well Twitter blue blue subscription with the NFD avatars in the profile pictures

so now everything is uh wouldn't this be like the biggest credential behind nfts if YouTube would be going into it I I could see I could see YouTube making an openc and letting creators also sell nfts on YouTube to their fans and then taking a nice little healthy like taking a nice little slice from it well there is also rumor on the street that uh you know maybe Slovakian Street I don't know uh the the Instagram Instagram is kind of working or thinking about the very similar thing about nfds oh really and social networks about pictures who would say on the Bon about overpriced pictures yeah well that could make sense we'll see yeah we'll see but finally something about uh the mobile developers which is

tiling point is bringing mobile games to PC Mac and browser so they're launching their tiling Point launcher so releasing the launcher enabling games from its mobile portfolio to launch them on PC and mac and and browser obviously and they're partnering with exola to be able to offer crossplatform compatibility options as well so um they think that launcher will enable games to reach new markets um with you know uh new ways of distribution which can be true uh but you know we see the raid Shadow Legends Hero Wars and other games being on web client um and I'm seeing those ads quite uh often on Facebook and and Google as well so this is a well I would say a pretty good um activity yeah I mean I I downloaded yesterday actually and tried it uh the tilting point one it worked

really well like I'm quite impressed I could see it as being like a really good thing from me as a player perspective uh like the titles where you want to have a bigger screen I enjoyed it it was quite cool how many games do they have there like a couple right now but they're putting more and more it's like not more than three four but they're going to be more and more adding on later but I think after speaking to our friend Nick solo what he said is that this can make you reach about 260 million more players really yeah nice so if that's if that's true that's actually quite where where M came from so what what our friend exola said was that essentially like about 200 million of them are in China that you're able to reach and then there's more in Russia Japan South Korea uh things like that but together it adds up to 260 million more players and I guess if you already have a game that's plateaued on like

from a UA perspective there's no more growth to kind of get on the normal channels I guess this is kind of a well let let me get this trke like you are able to reach means what that they have installed tilting Point's newest launcher what do you mean like like is is they talking about just total addressable Market or like where's this number Tam it's a tam it's the Tam so yeah it's a tam it's not yeah because I I was comparing it to something like you know blue STX for instance has around I don't know 400 million instal Bay or something like that that that it would make sense but yeah that's your answer okay I have heard by the way a crypto angle on this that they're just preparing to get like crossplatform for these games here through this who is preparing Sol oring point oh okay you guys think this could be a way as well to avoid some apple payments not sure most probably not that much I

mean uh obviously you can get uh different payment meth methods on PC uh and me and VB but still you still want to make the games mobile first yeah exactly because of the scale I mean this is definitely a nice addition to the growth pool or player pool as well but it's uh it's still PC web and Mac I mean the that inventory is shrinking every day every every minute that we speak at the moment the inventory is shrinking has been happening since what like 2015 already yep well well you mentioned apple and uh guess what Apple was fined 5.6 million for not complying with the Dutch dating app order oh what a nice surprise I mean uh the the news about the Apple enabling um I don't know like why Netherlands and

why dating apps uh to use enabling to use the third party Payment Solutions but it was just out for what week and now they they're fine with 5.6 million for not complying guys like amazing by the way like it's it's per week so it can accumulate up to 50 mil yeah yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah fines will fines will continue to be assessed by at5 million euros per week up to maximum of 50 million euros until Apple complies guys like guys this is no I looked it up this is not even a slap on the wrist this is a big fat nothing burger from Apple in the fiscal year of 2021 Apple made $366 billion worth of Revenue that's a billion a day so even assuming that maybe half a percent of that comes from the Netherlands that's like 5 million and that's every day like it's it's around founding error it's not even a slap on the wrist they can keep doing

that it doesn't it's the cost of doing business like no no like that that's understandable but the question is here you know if like you have 20 different states slapping you on the wrist and count it up then it will become a problem yeah but you know until that happens they will keep doing it that's the thing that's the thing because yeah it's doesn't make any sense to to do anything but if you know I'm a reg agency like this is pretty much free money so I I'll go after it if I'm you know sitting in a neighboring country why would I not do that also good time to be a government yeah o o there is one last piece of news um which is um my soft Louch article how to soft Louch your game in 2022 was just published on mobile memo.com so thank you very much Eric for publishing it please go there read it it's the you know the best guid guide

there shamess PL for all of you Shameless plug Shameless plug now you should definitely read it share it as as much as you can because I really believe this can help a lot of developers out there just to get into the soft Lounge um quickly to know what they're doing and uh yeah please share any feedback you might have and now now we have the main topic of the day which is the evil be behind Roblox I've been looking forward to this I would say the fact behind Roblox where you can fact yeah okay sure sure then you can consider what is evil yeah if it's evil or not well definitely they're making a lot of money so let's see yeah uh so to to frame this like there were these two big videos that were running around the internet one uh done in August second one done in December uh forgot the name I think people play games was the channel I think so don't remember but yeah we can link

that but basically they did a really uh T research on the on the whole topic so I'm taking some of the facts from there and some of the things from around the community uh of course it can be said that it's really biased on their side because they're just really critical but I have also heard some of the other arguments there especially from just direct Roblox only developers so let's let's assess that let's say so let's start with some of the just basic facts which are just facts so if we compare the whole Roblox platform uh it hosts around 20 million of experiences yeah and we'll get to that in a little bit Airbnb and then if you compare it for instance with something like steam steam hosts like 55k games just just to get get the grasp how big it is uh in order to publish a game on Steam I think you need to pay some kind of arbitrary fee

so it's not that easy uh in Roblox I would guess it just it is just free just like normal registration setup but no money involved if I get that right you need to pay also on Apple and and Google like 100 100 per year I think yeah so that's that's as for the scale the important word in this whole like setup is the World Experience because Roblox even though it is sitting on number one in the top grossing charts uh is pretty much blatantly breaching the guideline of store within a store just by avoiding it by renaming their games into experiences so now it's compliant with the guidelines which is number one fact that people don't know no that's the thing uh I still believe this uh idea was pitched by Apple to Roblox like hey guys you know you're making a lot of money on our platform but we would be very very sad to force you we can't have we can't have Marketplace or like uh multiple games

within the app in our store so you know if you if you just rename the games to experiences that might work and you will be happy and we will be happy as well I just think it's a legal eagle I don't think it's Apple I think it's some legal genius inside of Roblox he like guys I've got it yeah yeah I got it they're not games they're experiences I don't I don't think that this legal eagle will work for for anyone else if you're not called Roblox well of course if you have 47 million dius then you know it's very uh easy to bend the rules yeah But continuing on the facts track uh yeah there's 47.3 million dius uh which half of it are users age 12 and under this is another really big critical fact that we're talking around that's pretty dangerous like a completely different audience that we are used to deal with within the mobile

gaming industry because even though that like common people think that games are targeted mainly at kids and children uh Mobile gaming industry is definitely not the like the ones that targeting those main targets here we have people that are 18 plus I would say segments if we would cut those and children would of course some games have more of them some game has less but most of the gaming industry is not considered to be children I think the average age of a gamer if we counting Mobile in the US it's like 37 or something like that and it's a woman because there's more more women playing games than than men uh just by the sheer volume of numbers there but yeah Roblox is a really big exception here where there's like half of the population is 12 and under which brings with itself a lot of other like legal implications I would say um yeah this will be discussed later but

let's continue kurrent Roblox market cap is around 38 billion dollars which uh we the video famously said is the value of seven Ubisoft on the current market Trend I love it s Ubisoft is always a great comparison so it's pretty big and as I said it's it's pretty much stopping all the grossing charts on all the mobile stores for now at least the ones that you can see in all the alternative data analytics platforms such as Appo sensor Tower so yeah it's it's getting there and then um the other important fact is that how Roblox uh takes a cut out of its let's say developers because usually the model here uh not only on the PC but also on mobile market is the 30% steam takes 30% out of the developers or the transactions happening on this platform

Apple and Google uh they do the same epic uh yeah they have 15% on the you know first million and yeah yeah but it's still afterwards it's 30% that's right epic uh squeezed it to 12% uh together with Microsoft Store uh they're pretty much doing their best to try to force steam into the same uh ratio uh with their aggressive politics of giving exclus uh free games every week so that's there and Roblox on the other hand has 75.5% cut love it man that is amazing if you're Roblox yeah but it's worth yeah that's that's the first interesting fact the other thing is that uh this doesn't uh even scratch the iceberg of the whole thing because Roblox operates on its own internal currency called Robux so even like imagine for instance that

Apple would pay you in apple coins like this is not happening apple apple sends you a check uh in in US dollars as they like flow through their platform but Roblox uh they do it differently in a way that when you're dealing with revenue or let's say money within their platform it's always in Robo only when it leaves the platform after all of these Cuts then it it converts converted to dollars so the genius invention is that in order to withdraw the money out of the platform you would need to go at least 100K which is equivalent of th000 us to actually even be able to withdraw the thing Plus on top of it you still need to be on Roblox monthly subscription program on that same account it's exactly what ad networks do if you don't earn usually it's like 800 or a th000 a month then they keep that money for you

until you get over that that's great another comparison to get like an industry Benchmark uh some older people maybe remember Second Life uh older people they had they had also their dollar packed economy uh called Lindon and the minimum withdrawal amount was like a $10 alternative there just to get the scale of like how how big the rule is here uh the other thing is that if you look at ROBLOX uh uh quarterly reports they say that on every $1 of Revenue that they're making uh only 17% so 17 cents leaves the Roblox platform Al together so they're keeping almost all the money in inside the platform yeah and uh can you buy stuff in the platform with these Robux of course you can even spend them on UA o we'll get there

exactly so the important part is that if you are aspiring developer uh like Roblox one you pretty much need to constantly deal with stuff that's in robu and now even if you made any money uh you're you know you pretty much don't know what to do with them because you cannot do like cannot withdraw them if you don't breach this threshold so you spend it on the the platform and that's how they're pretty much keeping all of the money in it so even if you if you do it it's going of get uh devalued a lot because then there's the cut so even if you withdraw it then we're talking about that big cut that's the one that's taking off the payment and this has a really similar historic uh parallel to the company money that do prevalent in America before 1930s where it was a normal occurrence where in like loggers camp or minor Camp

companies would issue their own currency that they would pay their workers in and then these workers could uh use this currency within the company shops pretty much keeping the flow of money within the company if they speak against the company or you know was doing anything that was not in the best manner of the company they would be fired thus losing pretty much all their money because it was within the company and uh this can make them much more dependent on the whole thing so it's the definition of how to like do a platform mon Monopoly and this got uh illegal uh this got illegal by law in 1938 in us but of course the legislation didn't catch up to the digital space so now it's completely legal on a platform that has half of its user base 12 under yep how I'm a bit I'm I'm a bit speechless yeah like I don't know what to say about

that well I would say they're just uh really clever money making money making machine and pretty clever how do you feel if this would be happening on Apple or Google platform that you would be pay get paid in like Google currency or stuff like that so the only reason they're getting away with this is because it's mainly miners who don't yet know any better right hard to say say the other thing is that they are you know they are the Monopoly on their platform so what what do you do yeah they can do whatever they they want yeah easy as that so easy as that but it's super clever I mean look clever and evil way right it's not CL it's clever evil way like yeah H well you can call it whatever you like it's still yeah I was I was really surprised about this because I guess if if this would be happening on some kind of a let's say big store like imagine epic would be

doing this or apple or any other big company that's pretty much a platform operator or Uber like uber will be paying you in Uber coins like do you think this would it would it's illegal basically but within the Roblox space it's not being covered by that law or pretty much somebody didn't figure out it's a publicly traded company so people know like we're not talking about some like random new entrant into the top grossing charts it's a company that's like 10 years old and is already on the stock market so everybody knows how this works don't you think they uh have discovered in terms of the legal they're publicly traded company so they must of course they have cover with legal that is why is is working but uh have there been any lawsuits no I don't think so I don't think so not definitely not uh but you know something being illegal uh doesn't mean that could not be made illegal in

few you know political terms oh yeah that's Mr skeptic again in in here I mean look they're making money now and they don't you know they don't care about what can H potentially happen can not that it's going to happen in the future it can happen sometimes in the future until then everything is fine yeah the the other thing that's kind of sad uh to me when I was like looking at the video was that they have the system really good they they have set it up really good in a way that you can make games pretty smoothly like pretty much frictionless you don't know any coding nothing literally children children can do those yeah easily and uh some of those of course like they stay there and become the the Roblox developer team but the knowledge from the Roblox editor isn't that transferable like the one when you would be like pretty much learning some kind of conventional industry engine such as Unity or unreal or stuff like that

because if you pretty much base all real knowledge on this Roblox editor then when you leave the platform your skills are gone so well in that case you you don't really leave the platform don't really needs to leave the platform exactly there you go yeah another interesting tidbit was that uh they had this claim called make serious cash on their website and after the video was posted on YouTube they removed it surprisingly well I guess they made already pretty serious cash like we made serious cash yeah we made yeah yeah I was like hey you have the typo there you wanted to say you make serious cash not the other developers yeah and then uh there's this other interesting tidbit that the forums the official one shut down in 2017 because they weren't able to moderate it properly I guess because again all of those legal implications with my ERS so that's there uh last interesting like

fact is the Roblox collectible Market uh which is currently really booming because there's a lot of time with Real World brands there such as like I don't know V or NFL or I think we all see Ral Lauren as well they open the village there uh in the in the mountains with Ralph Lauren uh and it's that's that's amazing yeah that's amazing Roblox is also like on the frontier of the whole metaverse hype and considered to be one of the like main competitors in the current race yeah you can still see the you know concerts there as well yeah yeah yeah of course so this this leads us to the other thing which is Roblox collectible Market where there are Collectibles that are kind of platform wide so you can wear them into any of these experiences pretty much that's your cosmetic Market do you mean games yeah and then the

thing is that uh they sold them of course in limited amounts throughout these promotions or like game events stuff like that that's normal but the problem is that the platform is now so massive and uh yeah the whole Market is pretty much so massive there some of these literally skyroads to values like 10,000 $15,000 and that's equivalent of Robux yeah and Roblox still takes a 30% cut from all of the transfers on on the marketplace so comparing it to something like open C which is the nft marketplace which take 2.5% they take 30% and we're still talking about a game population of 12 and under which is 50% that are now dealing with things that are pretty much having insane value uh really at some point well learning the ropes how to how

to make money and what to do with them there you go yeah I know I know like well I can yeah I I can answer that question in 10 10 years or 12 years uh when uh she's uh you know programming on the Roblox some games hard to say I mean yeah it's definitely not what I would expect from my daughter to do and uh try to buy Gucci stuff in in Roblox for 10K yeah if if again people remember just by the history of mobile gaming industry in I think 2012 or somewhere there there was this big Crackdown in Japan on the gacha games where pretty much they had by law to implement some of the controls on spending there and also prohibit some of the gacha designs such as kacha and similar ones that the government pretty

much bended out right illegal just saying that this also also remember the thing where Chinese government pretty much said that you need to display the percentage chances of all the gacha or Lottery based mechanics in your games which I think also follow into our Western guidelines that Apple kind of have in their term sheet so I guess it's more of a question that regulation didn't catch up with roblocks yet but I'm guessing it will at some point because even in Japan I think it was because of the scandals that happened there or some kind of outrage by parents when the government stepped in and kind of started to regulate these so I'm guessing something similar will happen here also well we'll see because again the other interesting fact is that roox platform has a really big problem with discoverability meaning that you are pretty much offered to pay the robo uh currency to like do UA and like use

acquisition on your game and now uh the platform is already in a stage where your average kid developer is competing with literally dozens strongman teams making games with full VC funding companies on just Roblox platform yeah but you need to find uh the way how to uh make your game disover disc discoverable this is so hard so hard word uh but uh you need to make a viral hit in order to make uh the game um to be available to all the Under 12 you know but with viral hits the same same rule as as with Hyper casual like viral hit that's great but you're going to get copied in you know three days by a company that actually have the Manpower and then Pump Pump It Up through UA same as happening in hyper casual what how can you even comment on UA you have no no information about the UA of Roblox nobody has in in this in

this group well I am starting to uh not yet but I will probably next week or the week after so uh I'm in the in the talks with with someone to actually do it so I can yeah I can answer that question what I know is the auction is definitely way different from what we see on Facebook and Google and uh and targeting as well you can have us like small banners um that you can see on Google AdWords on webs so it's like a skyscraper type of um the banner and uh and also the main thing that is out there is the icon which you need to you know AB test and that's like that's it you have no no dude this is Roblox and it's like Facebook 2013 maybe really so it's getting getting there but because it's four yep

exactly yep but well we'll see yeah I will I I will let you know cup Robo yeah yeah of course I still I still don't know like I'm not convinced that this whole thing will kind of last to regulator regulatory storm that I guess is brewing on it cuz it when do you think that that that's going to happen what's the problem sure but the daus of Roblox is way way different than the the ubod as well so you know it evens out a

bit well and any other um skepticism around the the moneymaking machine called Roblox no not the skepticism is pretty much you know reading through the facts here but like yeah but you know like have to like uh leave it to them that like they make a really Su made a really successful company and like a successful gaming platform even though it's a a store within the store that I will keep that yeah yeah of course of course uh but again the question would be would it be so successful if it would be let's say PC browser based only most probably not that much yeah well the inventory again as we said is shrinking on on the web you know they they had to find a workaround on the mobile which I I see they did yeah with the experience this thing they did with the experiences of course I mean look you know like the thing is we can't um we can't say anything uh like from The Experience uh

like building the game on Roblox because we can't we well we don't have any experiences with that so that's the that's the main part that you know you are all all only stating the facts but then if we had someone actually uh here talking about how they can build the game there we would be having probably a very different discussion no of course like I can guarantee that uh oh yeah definitely if that's going to happen yeah okay do we have anything else or we just go for a weekend and uh and have fun yay oh yeah all right thank you very much guys and uh thank you very much uh listeners as well so please share feedback I already got some and uh it was mostly positive which uh it was surprising but that's uh that's good

keep them coming and uh well speak to you next week thanks guys byebye I need to go uh for a delivery man because uh my wife just texted me so give me a sec give me a sec commercial break commercial break and a short message from our sponsors it's really interesting I I talk about this I think I saw it sometimes from the gamecam conference the Google guy was promoting it but it seems it is horrible [Music]