User-generated content, or UGC, has been a continued source of discussion recently, particularly when it involves minors doing the creating and, in some cases, earning off the back of it.
Last week saw Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza raise eyebrows with his comments on Roblox’s openness to allow under-18s to publish and earn money from games on the platform. Roblox takes a significant cut of this, and pays those creators with in-game Robux currency that cashes out at a rate of roughly 3.5 times less than it can be bought, which has sparked accusations of it exploiting children as part of its business model.
“I don’t know, you can say this for a lot of things, right?” Corazza said in response, citing teenagers who’d built up millions of followers on the platform. “They didn’t feel like they were exploited!
“Like, you can say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labour,’ 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.”