Do you like being shown ads? Of course you do, according to Roblox, whose studio is proud to announce that the game is rolling out a new service to allow companies to buy ads that it can show to its young audience who want temporary access to paid content instead of paying premium currency for things! That’s right, true believers, soon the game that already relies on underpaying creators for making actual content for its title will also bombard teens with ads instead of baiting their impressionable minds to filch their parents’ credit cards.
Readers will recall that back in 2023, Roblox Corp. responded to an FTC complaint about deceptive advertising toward children by implementing a new policy that would hide all ads from players 13 and under; it also agreed to block ads for MLMs, crypto, and charities. So presumably, only kids 14 and up will be subjected to this new mobile-esque ad situation, which is… still not really great.
The company’s press release for this particular addition to the game describes it with overflowing glee at the idea that now children can be shown ads more efficiently than ever before and that it works at scale, but the press release kind of would. It’s currently unclear where these ad-supported options will show up in the game’s “experiences” as those are under the limited control of creators, but either way, this doesn’t sound great for anyone other than the corporate owners.
