One of the world’s largest free gaming platforms has been down for many hours on Friday.
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Roblox, the platform that gives children and young people access to thousands of games, is down, the company’s pages show. The downtime has lasted from night to Friday Norwegian time.
– We know you’re having trouble using Roblox right now. We apologize and work hard to get things back to normal, the company writes on Twitter.
Barnevakten.no describes Roblox as Netflix for gaming. The platform claims they have more than 200 million monthly users.
The games on the platform are created by both professional game developers and other users.
Downtime coincides with taco campaign
According to the Down Detector service, the first reports of problems at Roblox came before 01.00 on Friday night. At 16.15 Norwegian time, problems with the site are still reported.
The downturn hit just after the American taco chain Chipotle promised 90,000 free burritos to Roblox players. The first 30,000 who completed a digital maze in the game over the next three days were to receive one coupon each for a free burrito at their outlets in the United States and Canada.
Roblox has not commented on whether there is greater demand than expected in connection with this campaign which has led to the downturn.
Controversial platform
In a mini-documentary produced by People Make Games (PMG) In August, Roblox was criticized for exploiting young talented game developers, with no guarantee that the creators of the games will actually be paid for the work they put in.
Roblox allows children to create games that other children can play, and then earns a virtual currency that the company behind has given the name “Robux”. This currency can be used by users to purchase advertising space on the website, to make their games more visible.
They can also withdraw the money, but only after earning enough that the sum is worth 1000 dollars – or close to 8500 kroner.
–– Although Roblox encourages you to make games, the probability that you will make a successful game is more or less zero. You always compete against people who have a lot of money, says an eleven-year-old game maker to PMG.
To gaming site Eurogamer, the Roblox company has responded to this criticism.
– Roblox is a platform for user-generated content, where people from all over the world come together to enjoy experiences together. All the experiences are built by our environment, which uses our free tools to create deep and diverse experiences, they write in the statement.
They point out that the platform teaches children and young people about coding and entrepreneurship, and point out that in the last year they have doubled the number of developers who earn more than 715,000 Norwegian kroner a year on the platform. According to the company, the total number who earn more than this sum is more than 600 – among the platform’s 200 million users.
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