Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza responded to criticisms of the company in an interview with Eurogamer at this year’s Game Developers Conference, where he said that Roblox does not exploit child labor, but instead creates work for anyone in any living situation.
Roblox demoed a series of AI-powered creation tools at the event, making it easier than ever for users to create their own games on the platform. The studio has long been criticized for profiting off of the work of its users, many of whom are under the age of 18. Corazza did not appear to see it that way.
“I don’t know, you can say this for a lot of things, right?” Corazza said. “Like, you can say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labor,’ right? Or, you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income. So, I can be like 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now, with just a laptop, I can create something, make money and then sustain my life.”
The line between “child labor” and “a child who has a job” feels like a thin one, but Corazza said that the young people working on Roblox games are getting an education in coding.
“And imagine like, the millions of kids that learn how to code every month,” he said. “We have millions of creators in Roblox Studio. They learn Lua scripting, which is pretty close to Python – you can get a job in the tech industry in the future, and be like, ‘Hey, I’m a programmer,’ right?”
He stressed that the majority of designers were over the age of 18, but said that teenagers who were hired did not feel that their work was being exploited.
“Our average game developer is in their 20s. But of course, there’s people that are teenagers – and we have hired some teenagers that had millions of players on the platform,” Corazza said. “For them, you know, hearing from their experience, they didn’t feel like they were exploited! They felt like, ‘Oh my god, this was the biggest gift, all of a sudden I could create something, I had millions of users, I made so much money I could retire.'”
Shortly after Eurogamer published the interview, Roblox issued a follow-up statement to clarify that the company viewed users’ game creation as more of an educational tool or a hobby than a job for monetary gain, even if it may eventually turn into a career. They also emphasized the point that the majority of creators who monetize their work are over the age of 18.