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Roblox Accused of Concocting Illegal Gambling Ring for Minors - Bloomberg Law (news.bloomberglaw.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The complaint outlined the process by which minors can use the Roblox platform to gamble. After purchasing Robux through the platform, they can navigate to one of the gaming website defendants’ “virtual casinos” outside the Roblox ecosystem and link their Robux wallet to the gambling website, meaning Roblox can still keep track of electronic transfers, the lawsuit said.

While Roblox could halt this “illegal gambling ring,” Colvin and Sass argued that it’s “significantly enriched” by the scheme. They allege that Roblox charges a 30% fee on the websites’ conversion of Robux back into dollars, raking in “millions in annual cash fees.”

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The difference is you can't cash out Apple gift cards, and this is precisely why games generally don't allow it either: when you allow cash-token-cash conversions, then you turn the token into a cash-equivalent, becoming responsible for any misuse just the same as if you offered a banking account.

But Roblox got greedy, and not only do they allow cash-token-cash conversions (at a crazy rate of $100 USD = 10,000 R$ = $35 USD), but they also allow third parties to interact with it, with fully centralized knowledge and control.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh interesting.

But you can sell apple gift cards on eBay, yeah? Sure you won't get the full value, but you get most of it. And as you said, in this case Roblox is taking a cut for the conversion anyway.

So it seems like they could've washed their hands of this by making Robux transferable/ebayable: the "casinos" would still exist, they would still benefit from the popularity of the casinos, and the Robux are still "worth something". But they got too greedy and dug too deep by trying to become the "eBay" in the situation and take a cut off both ends, and now they might be forced to make Robux effectively worthless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yup, pretty much that. I guess Roblox could remove the conversion back to cash, and convert to gift cards instead. They could still skim the 30% on both ends, by making the gift cards in like "Robux diamonds" or something, like what Instagram does.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think a more important difference is that Apple isn't involved in the transfer of the card from one person to another.

It sounds like Roblox is involved in each transfer and could cut off access to the third party site once they find out it is actually a gambling site.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The combination is definitely worse, but if Apple allowed one person to charge a card, and a different person to get the cash out, they'd still be involved in the transfer of the cash, so they'd still fall under all the banking regulations.

Roblox in this case got the worst combination possible: cash transfer, full control, gambling, minors. Like, what were they thinking about (...unless, they got so much profit that they don't fear any fine).