Roblox: A Multi-Billion Dollar Company

11/9/22

By: Anthony Hynes

Roblox; let's face it, I bet all of you reading this have heard of it. A REALLY popular platform with millions of games on it by people just like you. There are billions of users on it, with over 15 million people online everyday. It has some good and bad sides, and some really bad people in it, but a lot of people find it entertaining and fun. It’s been around for 15 YEARS! That’s a long time for a still running game today. I’m not going to put Minecraft anywhere else in this article, but Minecraft was released in 2009, and Roblox was published in 2006. That’s a 3 year difference.

While not a big difference in age, it has a very different platform style. Anyways, enough with Minecraft, let’s go back to Roblox. We’re going to view the “good” side first and its opinions.

Roblox has millions of different games and developers (the people who make the games), and most of them are really good games for the audience who play them. Some have groups where you can post your opinions on them, and that's a really good mechanic on Roblox’s part. BUT, there can be some bad people on the platform and will go out of their way to attack a specific group or player. Roblox has a report feature where you can report a player that is abusing in ways such as Harrassment, Exploiting (hacking), Swearing, Adult Content and other bad things such as that. It’s very good they have that feature so they can keep their platform safe for everyone on it. Also, if you ever play Roblox and someone is doing any of those things, make sure to report them immediately so they don’t do it again. Roblox has another thing where if someone reports you, they have bots and moderators to see if it was a fair report and they will either ignore the report, give you a warning, ban you for a variety of days, TERMINATE your account, or IP BAN you. The IP ban is a really powerful ban and can affect players in a way that makes them not at all be able to access the website. These all vary on the offense that you did to a game or another player.

That was a lot of information, but there’s still more. Now, let’s look at the “bad” side of Roblox, groups, players, and games. If you see any of these on the platform, it’s best to stay away from it at all costs to avoid interaction and affiliation with these things.

On with the bad side of things. We looked at all of the good things about Roblox. Okay, maybe not all, but most of the good things. Remember when I said, “bots and moderators?” Well, now we're going to look at the bad side of the system with the moderation with Roblox. JOHN ROBLOX, a youtuber who makes videos about the game, had made a video titled, “Roblox Powering Moderation” and he explains what’s wrong with the moderation on Roblox and puts a lot of issues in the video with it. From the bots making big mistakes, to real moderators abusing their power on helpless users, it can be a terrible experience for users if they come across these issues with the platform.

Some players can appeal if they get an unfair ban, but others will abuse the report feature and try to get a player banned for no reason. They will send reports time and time again until a player gets banned, or they will use bots to do it for them. There was a giant bot wave in 2019 where players would get friend requests and notifications from bots trying to chat with them to scam them. This was a big issue with the platform back then, but now has died down. Scamming bots are another bad way of manipulating players and mechanics into trying to get your way. Bad players will do this to an extent where it makes the platform not fun for anyone at all. I’ve fallen victim to a wave of bot friend requests before, but it is best to ignore them and report the bots. Roblox and its players doubt it will happen again because the platform has grown and Roblox has updated their defenses against these attacks. But, there is another issue with the platform.

On very rare occasions, Roblox will shut down without any context to viewers. It happens every few months because of some server outages at the Roblox Headquarters. There was a MASSIVE outage in early October of 2021, and players were thinking that the platform would never come on again. It came back 3 days later after the outage. There was also a giant forum raid back in 2016, where a youtuber (shall not be named) had gathered his fans to spam the forums and say “Unban (user)!” Roblox had shut down the forums after the giant raid for some time, then eventually removed them. Veteran Roblox players were sad about the removal of the forums, and wanted them to come back. Roblox said it was for the own good of the platform and community. People to this day still want the forums to come back, but it seems as if it is not a possibility for Roblox.

Now let us look at some of the bad users of Roblox. We will talk about infamous hackers, such as tubers93. The person who hacked Meepcity, a really popular game by AlexNewtron. He devastated the game for a while, but it has returned to its normal state. Most of you have probably heard about tubers, but some of you haven’t. He hacked Meepcity in late 2019. The user has also exploited an unknown game, along with Ragdoll Simulator by having a jumpscare of an edited image of former United States President Barack Obama known as Obunga.

There is another infamous Roblox hacker named C00LKIDD, a hacker who has exploited in various different games, and then taken them down. He also made a script GUI which had many different commands inside where he could use powers to ban players from games. He is very well known, maybe more than tubers, and was one of the most powerful hackers.

We have covered many different topics about Roblox, with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now many people have various different opinions about the platform, from it being the worst game out there, to it being THE best in the world. Personally, I think it is a very good game, but it has a lot of flaws with the platform, and the company. 

I’m going to wrap this up here, I hope you enjoyed reading this article! Have a great day.

Contributor Bio

Anthony Hynes is a 6th grader at EJHS. He enjoys his time playing video games, writing articles, doing Math, and sleeping. He loves rhythms and beats, and likes to play the piano.