Really sad to see this happen. I remember reading lua docs in the late 00’s when I was like nine or whatever. Shit was the first real exposure I had to programming.
Maybe its just because I was a kid but it seemed purer at first. Like it was really there just to get kids programming.
I don’t know how it was when you were a kid, but there’s been a good number of pretty damning stories since then.
Especially the one about the fucking overt pedophile with the rabid “edgy” fanbase and Roblox having to be coerced into doing something.
Or the shady team-developed games, that are not being controlled in any way by Roblox, but where minor developers are being “recruited” and exploited by adults.
Or the way Roblox itself obfuscates how much you can profit from your games with absurd fees over fees over terrible fake money exchange rates. And how it encourages shitty monetization practices.
When I was younger there wasn’t any money to be made off of games. The best you got was in-game currency to buy hats with or whatever. Roblox made its money off of builders club and ads run on free accounts.
There where some games run by adults, but most where young adults who started developing their game(s) in their teens. The majority where goofy messes filled with random pre-built assets.
There definitely where pedos on the platform. It was an online kids game in the oughts. Online moderation was basically like the fucking wild west back then.
When I was younger, parents generally monitored their children’s online activity. I remember my parents being around watching me play games online or whatever, and our computer was out in the main living room.
It wasn’t like today, where every room has a screen with internet and parents leave their children to do whatever online. Not all parents obviously, but I mean, do commercials about online content still say “Ask your parent’s permission before going online?”
Sure, the danger of people online was there. But it definitely didn’t seem as bad. Maybe my parents had something to do with it, maybe not. I mean, American society was never the same after 9/11/01. It changed for the worse and has not got any better.