We’ve talked plenty about microtransactions here on this site in the past, and many of the posts have been negative, as many companies LOVE to exploit gamers in the microtransaction trade by “giving them” cosmetics that do nothing but look cool, yet can cost a fortune to buy. Sure, developers have a right to charge what they want, and gamers can “just say no” to the cosmetics and keep playing the game, but many do buy them, helping perpetuate the cycle of greed. Roblox has been guilty of many microtransaction sins in the past, and a recurring one has gotten people talking on Reddit.
Currently, any player can change their name on Roblox. It’s not even that hard in the literal sense of changing the name. The catch is that it’ll cost you 1000 Robux, which is $12.50. That’s quite a lot for a simple name change on a free-to-play game. Now, in the “official sense,” many gamers noted on Reddit that the reason the game charges for it is that usernames are meant to be “exclusive entities.” Thus, once you have a username, no one else can take it.
Plus, others noted that on platforms like Xbox and PlayStation, you have to pay to change your username/gamer tag. So, there is at least precedent for this. However, neither of those are above $10, and the fact that this game charges over that has raised many red flags for players.
This is hardly the only offense the game has in the microtransaction trade, and many on Reddit noted that they’re doing this because “they like money” and the dev team likely feels that this is a good revenue stream for them. While we obviously can’t confirm that, there is precedent on some levels of this kind of thing, including how it’s incredibly easy for kids to circumvent certain “protections” that the game has in place for microtransactions and rack up quite a bill. Plus, because of the “no refund” policy, the game clearly doesn’t want to lose any money that it makes on microtransactions, even if they were on accident.
Another key thing to note here is the overall revenue of the game. You might think it’s one of the “biggest financial successes in the gaming space” because of all the talk of 90+ million daily users. Yet, as the most recent financial report showed, the property actually operates at a huge loss! Thus, every microtransaction, even just ones for username swaps, is a way to potentially dig themselves out of that net loss.
