alt Hacker NewsWhat about if a kid under the age of 16 wants to publish a game for other under 16 year old friends, like what Roblox was created for?
Now they need a paid subscription with an id check to become a 'trusted friend'.
Replies
For friends, they need to do an age estimation only.
To publish globally for <16 users, the id check and subscription requirements then apply.
I am 17, I wasn't really a roblox player aside from playing with one of my friends once or twice[0] (more of a minecraft enthusiast) but I know or can tell there are sizable amount of people online who have only played roblox, some even started because of it under age of 16 and learnt to code because of it.
My point is, many people around me or online really really love roblox and they even start to code because of it. I mean it makes sense, Coding something translates to something directly cool. I wanted to make Minecraft plugins too but I always found java to be a bit distressing so I used to search how to make minecraft mods in python or lua when I was 15 or something, I personally never really got into roblox though (I maybe the exception rather than norm) but I suppose lua/luau makes that process a bit easier and so its gonna be a big hurdle to most youngsters who wish to code.
Also I am not fine with Age verification as well but oh well, I could've maybe understood it but what I don't understand is how a billion dollar company needs a few dollars for moderation. I feel like its just a net negative and is gonna create backlash and rightfully so in some sense.
Anecdotally one of my friends back in 10th grade (so 14-15 year olds) actually learnt lua just to make a roblox game or games in general and he was an artist, (one of the most artistic people I know) like firstly his drawings were some of the most amazing in our friend-group and he had made some quite significant amount of money by doing blender for roblox devs and he just said that he likes blender so he gets them to buy blender plugins rather than money itself. He really wanted to get into gamedev.
And I think once again my main point is that, there would be less people interested in game-dev overall. I mean we all start somewhere and I find the idea of taking subscription money a little dis-tasteful for Roblox to do.
Exactly, this will marginalize the creators of tomorrow who might have picked this up and built something, will now hesitate and probably try to find something else to build on. The people building giant games full of "buy this crap" every 5 seconds, spamming my 6 year old with prompts, they will continue doing so.