The user avatar and name removed for sake of anonymity.
This post is kinda similar to some posted here before, but…
At least there is some price written. Of course it is really low for what the creator wants (many times lower than the minimal wage in the US).
There is one thing that I just think is straight up wrong for anybody to even think about, though.
“I pay if I like.”
Imagine working for a company that pays you under minimal wage and if they don’t like your work (which, once again, is outrageously underpriced), they just won’t pay you at the end of the month. I know comparing these two scenarios is pretty extreme (1st, you aren’t working for a company, but doing a commission which nobody is forcing you to do and 2nd, you would probably also work on other things in a normal company, not just a single thing for a month), but still, I think if Roblox isn’t really into moderating these job posts (even though they already have moderation procedure which all job posts undergo before being visible to everybody - but who knows what is really happening), it is partly appropriate to step up the pressure. It is afterall a platform for us, creators, to find other creators which we can comfortably work with. I just don’t feel like this is happening and I think I am not alone.
Safe place
I will just quickly remind what Roblox told us about Talent Hub:
source here
Now, I am not at all denying that the Talent Hub is one of the ways to find other creators, even though it is very hard at this time. I just want to focus on one thing from this ‘statement’ - safe place.
One thing I really want to mention before I continue - this document is written primarily (as the name suggests) for ‘Parental guidance on Talent Hub’.
I think most of us can agree that Talent Hub is not a safe place, at least not for everybody. Most of Roblox’s users are under the age of 13, as stated in this document from 2020. This share has probably stayed or even rose in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
source here
But mainly for those users, the Talent Hub is not a place what they should be trusting and which should be called safe for creators. If you don’t believe me, just go to the top of this topic and go through all of the posts. Many of those include a screenshot in which you can primarily see under minimal wage compensation or unclear compensation conditions for the work the creators are requesting. A place with this kind of ‘content’ is sometimes not even safe for older and experienced creators, not to talk about the creators under the age of 13.
The badge
I have one last thing to adress. The verified creator badge. When you go to your Talent Hub profile settings, you will find the ‘Verification’ section there. If you are not yet ‘verified’, once you click the button, you will be taken to you Roblox settings where you will obviously see the ‘Verify My Age’ button. Why am I saying this?
Clicking on that button, as some of you might already know, takes you through a process of verifying your identity. This is how Roblox processes your data:
source here
The process of verification verifies if you are a real person, if you aren’t committing fraud and if you are over x years old.
source here
Let’s just skip the first highlighted part of this picture as I already covered it.
In this document, though, they are stating that
Anyone that has a verified badge on their Talent Hub profile are users that Roblox knows and trusts.
This basically means that anybody who is over x years old can have that badge.
Now let me ask you. Would you really trust the person who wrote the job post that I appended at the top? Because they have the verified badge and thus, Roblox knows and trusts them. I personally wouldn’t, since they aren’t even mandatory to pay me afterall. Paying anybody for their work on the Talent Hub is simply a game of trust, as stated in the Talent Hub specific terms and conditions:
source here
And to return back to the safe place, this statement basically denies all of that. The only thing that is making all of this legit is the disclaimer for parents:
source here
This document also states that the Talent Hub can be taken down anytime, without further notice. The Talent Hub specific rules can be also modified whenever.
Conclusion
At the beggining, I thought this would be another drop in the sea of job posts that, let’s face it, shouldn’t be on the Talent Hub.
Digging a bit deeper into all of this really gave me the real picture of what the Talent Hub really is. I now unfortunately feel like doing work on the Talent Hub is sometimes a real gamble. The state in which the Talent Hub is right now is basically just a prototype.
Don’t get me wrong - the Talent Hub is still in some sort of pre-release. This doesn’t excuse Roblox from moderating their own product (which has a real potential, if they work on it), though.
I have hope that Roblox takes all the response from creators into consideration and implements all the sensible ideas and suggestions into the Talent Hub. I also hope Roblox doesn’t blindly ignore or even delete this post - don’t take it as a hate post, take it as a post in which I tried to pinpoint the shortcomings of the Talent Hub and append them with evidence.
If you read all of this, thank you very much. I deeply appreciate it.
The only thing left for me is to wish you all a nice rest of your day or night.