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Roblox: It Just Got Worse!
169 Plays28 days ago
Whilst the rest of the world is talking about parental controls and monitoring, Roblox has decided now is the time to sneak in data led advertising to your kids.
Andrew, a father of two and lifelong gamer, teams up with Brandon, a consumer psychologist and ex-pro video game coach, to cover video games, the way they are designed and how these design decisions impact the children that play them.
https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2025/04/roblox-scales-video-ads-partners-with-google
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86j9ygw45xo
https://thedopamineslotmachine.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571236212407
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Transcript
Intro
00:00:12
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening.
Introduction to the Topic
00:00:14
Andrew Wilmot
Whenever you are, welcome to the Dopamine Slot Machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games that your children are playing. How are they designed to get your kids hooked?
00:00:23
Andrew Wilmot
How do they make money from your children? And what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with video games is a positive one?
Setting the Stage
00:00:30
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew. I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. And it is just me again tonight. Brandon is still travelling with work and we weren't going to put an episode out, but I just saw the most shocking news and nobody is talking about it.
Roblox's Ad Announcement
00:00:42
Andrew Wilmot
So, Roblox, they very carefully announced parental controls alongside this news, and I'll get to that bit first, because you might have seen that in the news. But first, if this doesn't raise alarm bells, I don't know what will.
00:00:54
Andrew Wilmot
Roblox have announced that they will now be running in-game adverts. These will be up to 30 seconds, full-screen ads within Roblox games. They've partnered with Google,
00:01:06
Andrew Wilmot
Kent, Kantar, Nielsen, all the big agencies to measure and refine the, ah quote here, impact of the Roblox buys.
00:01:15
Andrew Wilmot
now Now, that's some weasel words right there. To be clear, when they say they are working with big tech to measure the impact of the Roblox buys, they are openly saying that they aim to maximise the amount of value, the amount of attention that they and their partners extract from your child.
00:01:34
Andrew Wilmot
To quote Roblox itself here, Our partnership with Google makes it very easy to buy these engaging ads and reach key audiences at scale.
00:01:49
Andrew Wilmot
We are continuing to remove barriers for brands and agencies that are quickly realising the massive potential of immersive gaming platforms like Roblox, where Gen Z are increasingly spending their time.
Measuring Ad Effectiveness
00:02:01
Andrew Wilmot
So firstly, if is that really what you as a parent want from ah platform a platform of chance on for them to be continuing to remove barriers for brands and agencies?
00:02:13
Andrew Wilmot
It isn't for me, but I want to talk about two of their partners specifically, and that is Kint, who, and again, I'm quoting Roblox directly here. who will enable brands to understand the impact of their investment through brand lift studies that measure awareness, consideration and intent.
00:02:33
Andrew Wilmot
So, in other words, measuring just how effective the adverts geared to your children are, how aware of the brands they advertise to your children, your children become, and whether those adverts influence your child to want to buy them.
00:02:53
Andrew Wilmot
purchase that brand. And then there's Kantar, and I love this because they again, quoting director, they say they will allow brands to measure and optimize campaign return on investment on brand equity and behavioral outcomes, including awareness, favorability, and purchase intent metrics.
Data and Psychological Influence
00:03:12
Andrew Wilmot
So they are being extremely explicit here when they are saying that they'll be working with these agencies to measure and try and refine the impact on behavioral outcomes. They're actively trying to change the way your child behaves in response to these ads.
00:03:32
Andrew Wilmot
And they will be doing so with data. They'll be doing so teams of psychologists on board. And they will have more data points than you to even something like Facebook, right, which will have data points for every single interaction you do.
00:03:51
Andrew Wilmot
Children live on Roblox in a very different way to how you might interact with Facebook. They interact with Roblox in a way that you will interact with the real world.
00:04:03
Andrew Wilmot
Right? And so to have data points on every single action they take in that world is so powerful from an advertising perspective. But something else that stood out to me is the following.
Rewards for Watching Ads
00:04:15
Andrew Wilmot
In return, users receive in-game benefits from the creators of these games and experiences. So to translate that, they will be paying your children to watch ads and they will be paying your children in the form of in-game currencies or rewards.
00:04:34
Andrew Wilmot
The quote goes on. Early tests show an average completion rate over 80% with select experiences, seeing completion rates over 90% as users saw the value and rewards such as power-ups or in-game currency.
00:04:47
Andrew Wilmot
Those completion rates are huge, way above the industry average. And when we talk about completion rates, we're talking about engagement in the advertisement.
00:04:59
Andrew Wilmot
ah Do you view your child being engaged with adverts as a good thing? I know I certainly to me don't. And the fact that they would then be paying your child, rewarding your child for watching these ads...
00:05:12
Andrew Wilmot
watching these ads
00:05:15
Andrew Wilmot
It makes you wonder what the behavioural implications here are. Now, I'm not the psychologist. I'm not the expert here.
Concerns About Child Susceptibility
00:05:22
Andrew Wilmot
And when Brandon comes back, we're going to dive into this. But the immediate one from speaking with Brandon is, as well as being targeted in the sense of Roblox developers wanting to get your child to want to buy and spend Robux, they will be getting value from your child, even if they never spend a penny on the platform.
00:05:42
Andrew Wilmot
Advertising to children is highly regulated for a reason. Children are extremely susceptible to adverts. And I'm going to go a step further here. I don't have any evidence for this, but I'm going to suggest that the children who spend the most time on roadblocks and similar platforms are likely to have greater impulse control issues in the general population. So they're likely to be even more susceptible to advertisement.
00:06:08
Andrew Wilmot
especially this style of hyper-engaging advertising. But then you bring in the aspect of rewarding them. Well, look, if I were running ads, if I was in charge of a marketing campaign targeting children, this would be one of, if not the top platforms would consider.
00:06:25
Andrew Wilmot
Everything about this is, from a certain point of view, that being a point of view that doesn't see children as human, but simply walking entry points to their parents' wallets, is absolutely genius.
00:06:37
Andrew Wilmot
We have seen marketing agencies start to get involved in the Roblox space before. In fact, I recently was sent a paper, gives it too much academic credence, but um a long form document.
00:06:52
Andrew Wilmot
And it was very much using all the language of the smartphone free movement, talking about the worries parents have, et cetera. But then it brought up robblock as this positive alternative alternative.
00:07:03
Andrew Wilmot
Now, immediately for me, that raises alarm bells, because that's like saying that TikTok is a positive alternative to inappropriate films. It's only an alternative in that it's even worse. Anyway, so let immediately raise red flags, and and I go and see who's actually put the report together, and it's a marketing consulting company, a marketing consultancy that specifically specialises in creating branded Roblox experiences.
Skepticism Over Opt-In Ads
00:07:32
Andrew Wilmot
The adverts are already there. In fact, they've had billboard-style adverts in Roblox for a while. The agency's already there. This is just giving more access to your child.
00:07:45
Andrew Wilmot
Now, they say these ads will be opt-in, but frankly, considering the misinformation Roblox has put out about their own platform in the past, I'd be amazed if that's universally the case or if they stay opt-in for long.
00:07:58
Andrew Wilmot
The fact that they're rewarding your children for watching ads is horrifying in itself. The fact that they'll be rewarding them with in-game currency and benefits that can only be spent in-game is doubly so.
00:08:12
Andrew Wilmot
It's very purposefully designed to keep them in the platform, giving another route to ensnare children in the Robux real-world value trap. For me, paying real world money for virtual currency is a hard red line that we will not cross as parents, because the moment you start putting real monetary value into a digital world, you start putting self-value into that digital world.
00:08:35
Andrew Wilmot
Well, now, staying this side of that particular Rubicon is even harder, and you can bet that the good people over at Roblox will be doing everything they can to bring your child over to cross that bridge, to start spending money on their platform, whether or not you approve.
Age Verification Issues
00:08:53
Andrew Wilmot
Roblox says these ads will only be visible to users older than 13, but just to be clear, Roblox does nothing to check the age of its users beyond simply asking them their date of birth when they sign up.
00:09:06
Andrew Wilmot
It already actively incentivizes users to lie to them. you lie about your age, you get access to a wider pool of games. And now it's actively financially, putting that loosely because it's an in-game currency, but actively benefiting users to lie to them further. Of course, Roblox know this.
00:09:28
Andrew Wilmot
They'll keep that plausible deniability. So why isn't this all over the news? and Or the real question is, why did I discover this press release linked to at the bottom of the BBC article talking about the parental controls?
00:09:47
Andrew Wilmot
So there's an article in the BBC about this. Not the fact that Roblox going to start paying your children to watch ads. So huge congratulations to the Roblox PR ah team. They nailed it on this one.
00:10:00
Andrew Wilmot
but that Roblox are taking the real radical steps of um letting parents block games, letting parents block users so that they can't chat to your child, and finally being able to see what games your child is playing.
Parental Controls Critique
00:10:17
Andrew Wilmot
That is all, of course, if you have a parent-child linked account, which considering how streamlined the process for setting up an account is, and how far you have to go out of your way to set that up,
00:10:30
Andrew Wilmot
i'm I'm going to say the minority of children on the platform do. And even then, that only applies up to 13. So, you know, once you hit 13, Roblox basically considers you an adult.
00:10:43
Andrew Wilmot
Being able to block individual games on a platform that has 40 million games is useless. I'm not going to beat around the bush here. Maybe you are really engaged and know 100 inappropriate games.
00:10:56
Andrew Wilmot
Maybe you are obsessive and can count off a thousand. Great. That number is going to be dwarfed by the number of games that are available still and are still inappropriate. So have you verified the rest of them? Roblox doesn't verify them.
00:11:12
Andrew Wilmot
And being able to block individual users on your child's phone list from chatting to your child, great. Kind of shocking that wasn't there before. But that does nothing to prevent the harms of chatroom-style games.
00:11:23
Andrew Wilmot
To use an example, Sad Room Lo-Fi, a very popular suicide and self-harm fetishisation chatroom. That Roblox rates is appropriate for five-year-olds. You still freely talk to users on there. You don't have to add them as friends. Roblox can...
00:11:39
Andrew Wilmot
can And we'll do nothing to stop that. And even this functionality, blocking uses, that's always going to be after your child has been harmed.
00:11:53
Andrew Wilmot
Now, in the vast majority of cases, hopefully, that harm is being upset by a negative interaction within the game. But on the extreme end, we do hear about children being groomed on roadblocks, or it increasingly being a platform of concern for child safety and welfare.
00:12:11
Andrew Wilmot
So blocking users, great. ah
00:12:15
Andrew Wilmot
you know, it's it's something that you do after your child has been harmed. It doesn't prevent harm. And even then, it's dependent on active monitoring by the parent. And I don't think many parents who have let their children have roadblocks understand the expectation that they need to be on their kid's shoulder basically twenty four seven playing.
00:12:40
Andrew Wilmot
That's certainly what Dave Buzuki suggests that you do. And then there's finally the additional features to see what experiences your child is spending the most time on. but Again, if there is a linked parent account.
00:12:53
Andrew Wilmot
You know, that's pretty cool in itself and can facilitate better insight into the games your children are playing, but let's not give unwarranted praise here. This is less than the bare minimum. Every other gaming platform. Steam.
00:13:05
Andrew Wilmot
Steam. that Switch, Xbox, PlayStation will have game time tracking, and you can go look at that. So, really, everything Roblox is doing is straight out of the Big Tobacco playbook.
Safety Measures vs. Childhood Needs
00:13:21
Andrew Wilmot
We've seen this before. It's it diversion tactics. It's throwing a bone here and there to improving safety. But our children do not need a safer cigarette.
00:13:36
Andrew Wilmot
They need their childhoods back. And they need it back from platforms like Roblox. that's it. this This is really turning into the anti-Roblox show, isn't it? But every time I think that it couldn't possibly get any worse, they find new ways to surprise me.
Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
00:13:54
Andrew Wilmot
So, if you've got some questions for us, or if you or your children have been impacted by the issues we've discussed today, please, please, please get in touch with us on our website, thedopamineslopmachine.co.uk, or find us on the Dopamine Slop Machine Discussion Corner Facebook group.
00:14:10
Andrew Wilmot
We love getting questions from you guys. We love... but We even just have conversations. but i've I've been asked everything from ah advice on parental controls to questions on specific games and...
00:14:24
Andrew Wilmot
Very few of the questions end up actually coming on the episode, particularly if the parent doesn't themselves want it on. All links can be found in our artist profile. I will also this week include ah links to both the press release Roblox put out and the BBC article.
00:14:41
Andrew Wilmot
But that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining us. We'd love to have you here with us again in our next episode, where we're going to be covering EdTech. Your child almost certainly has to use platforms that are addictive by design for school or homework.
00:14:57
Andrew Wilmot
But what are the long-term impacts of this? This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine. Thank you, and see you soon.