Monday, November 24th 2025
Roblox CEO: Lootboxes & Gambling = "Brilliant Idea"
Roblox has long had faced complaints and legal issues over child safety issues, and the gaming platform's latest attempt to quell those complaints was to add AI-powered facial age estimation to match users in chat with those of a similar age. In a recent interview with The New York Times to discuss these new safety features, Roblox CEO, David Baszucki, addressed questions about the future of the UGC gaming platform. Much of the early conversation revolved around the new safety features and how they would affect the users of Roblox, especially minors, but when asked about potentially adding features like microtransactions, lootboxes, and "kid gambling" to Roblox in the future, Baszucki explained that he thinks "we would have to do that."
After a bit of push back from the journalist conducting the interview, Baszucki continues to say that he thinks it's "a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," without trying to get children financially involved in gambling, but still mimicking the actual mechanics. There is research to indicate that gambling mechanics in video games are linked to addiction in adulthood, especially when elements of real gambling situations—casino sounds or visuals, for example—are employed. That said, most video game loot box systems that have been the focus of research contain a monetary element as well. Aside from the addictive aspects of loot boxes in gaming, microtransactions themselves are often seen as manipulative and potentially predatory.
Sources:
The New York Times, Children and Screens
After a bit of push back from the journalist conducting the interview, Baszucki continues to say that he thinks it's "a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal," without trying to get children financially involved in gambling, but still mimicking the actual mechanics. There is research to indicate that gambling mechanics in video games are linked to addiction in adulthood, especially when elements of real gambling situations—casino sounds or visuals, for example—are employed. That said, most video game loot box systems that have been the focus of research contain a monetary element as well. Aside from the addictive aspects of loot boxes in gaming, microtransactions themselves are often seen as manipulative and potentially predatory.
23 Comments on Roblox CEO: Lootboxes & Gambling = "Brilliant Idea"
if anyone is in interested in brain development in the impact of Roblox, social media, smartphones, etc. I highly recommend the research done and being done by Dr. Jonathan Haidt and his team, he is a world renowned social psychologist, whose research convinced the entire country of Brazil to ban smartphones from schools, so he is no joke. @Dr. Dro
I'm very much against lootbox and gacha mechanics in games that are targeted towards any audience below teen. In my opinion it should be straight up limited to games equivalent to ESRB M, but alas
The interview is...not good.
www.techspot.com/news/110368-meta-shut-down-internal-study-linked-facebook-use.html
study was showing social media use caused mental healthy decline.
Wake me up when we start talking about banning the damned thing entirely (either nicotine, social media, or this lootbox nonsense, preferably all).
defending him, but i just think kind of corporate job is way way different than people realize.
i think his situation is different than this one, and shoudn't be compared. this is the CEO. he is king. if that makes sense.
Brother, Spencer is quite literally the CEO of Microsoft Gaming. He had this position for several years now. He is about as much of a “king” as the Roblox CEO (which is also a public company), which is to say - he isn’t and that’s not the point.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology
cac.org/daily-meditations/in-all-circumstances/
I believe the word "frictionless" comes to mind
Oh, I actually agree. I gave Spencer quite a bit when he started as the head of XBox. He was saying all the right things and promised a gilded future. A decade-ish later and several high profile acquisitions with studios ran into the ground and no notable successes to show for it… I am all out of anything positive to say.
man I don't know how these guys make six figures sometimes, I really don't.
I do know one thing my daughter ain't getting access to this anytime soon. We used to have age restrictions on content and the labels used to mean something. Its up to you yourself now to filter the junk out.
Its really so easy to explain to a child that certain things are bad. You just gotta offer a substitute. There are so many games to play and have fun with...By using the internet to deploy criminal activity and us not calling it out directly, but instead covering it with the blanket of 'oooh but its not thát bad' or 'but its so fun!'.Spencer is just a talking head. He ain't a gamer. He's a marketeer, always has been, and I'm flabbergasted anyone was ever convinced otherwise. The dude works for fcking Xbox what do people expect? A real gamer doesn't go working for the least cool or gamery company on the planet, he goes there to make money.Not a sliver of sense. See above. They're both gutter rats some idiots chose to believe, and apparently some still do for reasons I can't grasp. Neither of them is influential on the games themselves or gaming 'fun'... they both strategically try to corner a market. Its not about gaming at all. Pray tell what's making us better games when Spencer is telling you 'Xbox will be everywhere'? Look where we are now, you get a fancy big picture mode on top of your bloated W11. Yay!
one point for honesty, minus a hundred for everything else