Roblox intentionally blocking Linux with Wine in their new update

Developers don't want Linux users to play his game, just don't play his game and advertise it.
His game is not important, we have today enough games to play on Linux for more that a human life.

That's true for us in the older crowd, but for the younger set games like this are a big deal, and it'd certainly be good if they can play them on the OS of choice used by the older crowd in their lives.

Roblox specifically is exploitive of children. I will not let my children touch this game for any reason. Plenty of other games they can play.

If you haven't seen this video on the subject, and you have children, you need to see this video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

Plus the follow up, which is quite damning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

I don't have kids (just some younger relatives who are more invested in the likes of Minecraft/Minetest, and who like sharing in the retro games that the adults in their lives enjoyed when we were all young), but was aware of a little of this (specifically Roblox's unregulated, ponzi-scheme-like nature), and of other reported issues that one would hope they'd've sorted out by now. These videos were excellent and very insightful viewing - thanks so much for linking to them!

These vids certainly shed some interesting light on why they're not blocking the use of their game-making tools (assuming that that's what Roblox Studio is) through Wine, as well!

I honestly had no idea that it was anywhere near as bad as it is (I thought that it was closer to the Minecraft-alternative bracket than this), and I can certainly understand why people wouldn't want their kids using something like this, now.

Thankyou again.


Last edited by Pengling on 22 April 2023 at 5:35 pm UTC

I'm scared how popular Roblox is right now. Is there even any game more popular among kids these days?

Fortnite. At least where I live, that's what all the young kids talk about. Even my children talk about it with "authority", having never played it (maybe at a friend's house).

Minecraft too. My kids play that a bunch. I haven't gotten to the point of putting together a server, but it might be an eventually (I'll prolly have to learn to play then...yikes)

Gotta love kids.

yeah this hurts big time.

Developers don't want Linux users to play his game, just don't play his game and advertise it.
His game is not important, we have today enough games to play on Linux for more that a human life.

That's true for us in the older crowd, but for the younger set games like this are a big deal, and it'd certainly be good if they can play them on the OS of choice used by the older crowd in their lives.

Roblox specifically is exploitive of children. I will not let my children touch this game for any reason. Plenty of other games they can play.

If you haven't seen this video on the subject, and you have children, you need to see this video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

Plus the follow up, which is quite damning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

yeah, i know, i already said the samething about mario maker, because you pay to work for free for nintendo, but roblox seems even worse, i saw an video talking about it.

the issue is, you can forbid your kids from playing it, but you canot do anything about the parents who allow then, we have to inform as many people as possible, but in the mean time we need that thing to work on our system anyway.
its pointless to win an battle and lose the war, we have to pick and chose our priorities, people who are already playing roblox will not stop to use linux, instead they will hate linux.
roblox have more users than we do, so its not like we can "fight" against this comunity and "win".

on the other hand, people who already hate roblox, arent using linux yet...

on a side note, i dont understand why people think games like roblox, minecraft and fortinite are kids only, sure the art direction attract kids more than any other public, but the same can be said about animation and its quite ignorant to asume only kids like, i grew up with animation and have 0 plans of leaving it.
i dont play roblox but i can understand the appeal of making your own games, i use to make as an kid aside from the fact that i didnt had any graphic assets nor knew how to draw and roblox provide it for free.
a lot of friends play fortinite.
and while im not interessed in fortinite mainly due to the art direction, i dont see a problem in playing Pubg aside from the crap monetization that online games tend to have.

I'll be sure to let my nine-year-old know where to direct his ire... (He's using Endless OS)

That said, actively blocking something because it's "not supported" is borderline malicious. Fair enough if they say you can't expect any support if an error crops up, but actively blocking it is just mean!

It is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.

Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.

As much as I'm regularly telling myself "don't complain, LO is free software", LibreOffice is a !@#$%^& $#@! show. Unless it's some extremely basic stuff, I'm having issues with LO practically every time I try to use it for anything serious (and so do friends and colleagues). Doing a presentation for work with non-default layout? Have fun. Need SVG with hidden elements? Hope you're on that latest version. Doing anything remotely fancy in calc, like how about multiple data series in a chart with labels? Are you crazy? Creating (or god forbid hoping for it to already exist) a standardized letter layout in write? Good luck. Some of the issues I encounter have been a thing for years and sometimes you find comments from ages ago telling you "yeah, not a thing, but you can do this and that !@#$ backwards workaround". Doing stuff in LO is just way too often, way too unintuitive and cumbersome.

The current MS Office incarnation could be equally terrible or even worse (haven't touched it in many years), but I'd take 2010 era MSO over today's LO pretty much every day of the week.

What @PixelDrop wrote is very close to my experience in, sadly, too many cases. Have someone that is content with a browser, full stop? Great. My mother is happily running a Debian system as well (not like there are no problems with garbage abandoned printer drivers or anything...). Everyone else usually has one or more pieces of "functionality" (some software) for which it's impossible to find an equivalent on Linux.

Sorry for the rant, but LO touches a sore spot of mine and makes me appreciate the "WHY THE !@#$ IS THIS !@#% A THING" feelings I often have in my Linux life and usually successfully suppress after a short time.


Last edited by iskaputt on 22 April 2023 at 9:21 pm UTC

Such a backwards mentality. I'm relieved I never let my two boys near this car crash. Now it's 2023, over a year after the Deck's launched and this is their mentality? Incompetent.

I'm scared how popular Roblox is right now. Is there even any game more popular among kids these days?

Fortnite. At least where I live, that's what all the young kids talk about. Even my children talk about it with "authority", having never played it (maybe at a friend's house).

Minecraft too. My kids play that a bunch. I haven't gotten to the point of putting together a server, but it might be an eventually (I'll prolly have to learn to play then...yikes)

Gotta love kids.

I won't let my kids touch Fortnite either because of their gambling loot box shenanigans.

Minecraft is perfectly fine IMO. I just don't let my kids go online, or buy anything off their marketplace without vetting it first.


Last edited by sprocket on 22 April 2023 at 10:31 pm UTC

[quote=PixelDrop]

The only real in windows progress does not come from Microsoft, but from AMD, NVIDIA and Valve as they keep the gaming on windows alive, and that's about the only thing that keeps windows into households, and with the big amount of lobbying and "I know that OS" keeps it in the offices.

[P/S This is not a rant towards you, just a rant in general to let off some steam.]

And all the other third party software makers. Windows desktop user space software as a whole is vastly more polished, flexible, varied, and accessible than Linux. Every time I try and convert someone to Linux there is 1 to 100 windows programs they use that have no equal on Linux and having to run a ton of things under wine does not leave a good impression.

Linux as a desktop system is an ecosystem of barely functional reinvented tires. 30 programs that do the same thing, and yet someone manage to do it worse than all the windows options that do the same thing, despite having a "better" OS to work with.

In every other sector it's great, but for the actual desktop experience it's a splintered, fragmented mess that may one day focus itself into something different, but honestly I think we have a better chance that macOS will just take over the desktop world. If Apple would ever make officially support hackintosh builds and sell macOS directly I have little doubt it would skyrocket in popularity. The only thing that saves us from that fate is Apple's own greed.

That is basically all down to market share. Aka make a decently useful app for Windows and you can earn enough money to start a business while Linux have too small a market share for more than a few people developing apps on their free time.

It is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.

Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.

As much as I'm regularly telling myself "don't complain, LO is free software", LibreOffice is a !@#$%^& $#@! show. Unless it's some extremely basic stuff, I'm having issues with LO practically every time I try to use it for anything serious (and so do friends and colleagues). Doing a presentation for work with non-default layout? Have fun. Need SVG with hidden elements? Hope you're on that latest version. Doing anything remotely fancy in calc, like how about multiple data series in a chart with labels? Are you crazy? Creating (or god forbid hoping for it to already exist) a standardized letter layout in write? Good luck. Some of the issues I encounter have been a thing for years and sometimes you find comments from ages ago telling you "yeah, not a thing, but you can do this and that !@#$ backwards workaround". Doing stuff in LO is just way too often, way too unintuitive and cumbersome.

The current MS Office incarnation could be equally terrible or even worse (haven't touched it in many years), but I'd take 2010 era MSO over today's LO pretty much every day of the week.

What @PixelDrop wrote is very close to my experience in, sadly, too many cases. Have someone that is content with a browser, full stop? Great. My mother is happily running a Debian system as well (not like there are no problems with garbage abandoned printer drivers or anything...). Everyone else usually has one or more pieces of "functionality" (some software) for which it's impossible to find an equivalent on Linux.

Sorry for the rant, but LO touches a sore spot of mine and makes me appreciate the "WHY THE !@#$ IS THIS !@#% A THING" feelings I often have in my Linux life and usually successfully suppress after a short time.

Agree with you. I found that Onlyoffice work better for me.

It is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.

Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.

As much as I'm regularly telling myself "don't complain, LO is free software", LibreOffice is a !@#$%^& $#@! show. Unless it's some extremely basic stuff, I'm having issues with LO practically every time I try to use it for anything serious (and so do friends and colleagues). Doing a presentation for work with non-default layout? Have fun. Need SVG with hidden elements? Hope you're on that latest version. Doing anything remotely fancy in calc, like how about multiple data series in a chart with labels? Are you crazy? Creating (or god forbid hoping for it to already exist) a standardized letter layout in write? Good luck. Some of the issues I encounter have been a thing for years and sometimes you find comments from ages ago telling you "yeah, not a thing, but you can do this and that !@#$ backwards workaround". Doing stuff in LO is just way too often, way too unintuitive and cumbersome.

The current MS Office incarnation could be equally terrible or even worse (haven't touched it in many years), but I'd take 2010 era MSO over today's LO pretty much every day of the week.

What @PixelDrop wrote is very close to my experience in, sadly, too many cases. Have someone that is content with a browser, full stop? Great. My mother is happily running a Debian system as well (not like there are no problems with garbage abandoned printer drivers or anything...). Everyone else usually has one or more pieces of "functionality" (some software) for which it's impossible to find an equivalent on Linux.

Sorry for the rant, but LO touches a sore spot of mine and makes me appreciate the "WHY THE !@#$ IS THIS !@#% A THING" feelings I often have in my Linux life and usually successfully suppress after a short time.

Fully agreed. The sad thing is: Onlyoffice is not much better because it lacks a lot of features. It also doesn't really want to fully embrace FOSS (see Nextcloud Onlyoffice support). It is to the point where I see Google Docs as the only true alternative which is incredably sad. I personally use Markdown and Latex, but you can't expect the average Joe to learn that

I kind of understand the difficulty they have to do what they should do but at least they could easily allow no cross platform multiplayer.


Last edited by lucinos on 23 April 2023 at 12:07 pm UTC

It is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.

Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.

In the USA, that's not exactly accurate. Google owns K-12. Microsoft's strategy is to pick them up for university and beyond. That said, you are very right for university and beyond are definitely Microsoft's world. And for good reason....

It is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.

Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.

As much as I'm regularly telling myself "don't complain, LO is free software", LibreOffice is a !@#$%^& $#@! show. Unless it's some extremely basic stuff, I'm having issues with LO practically every time I try to use it for anything serious (and so do friends and colleagues). Doing a presentation for work with non-default layout? Have fun. Need SVG with hidden elements? Hope you're on that latest version. Doing anything remotely fancy in calc, like how about multiple data series in a chart with labels? Are you crazy? Creating (or god forbid hoping for it to already exist) a standardized letter layout in write? Good luck. Some of the issues I encounter have been a thing for years and sometimes you find comments from ages ago telling you "yeah, not a thing, but you can do this and that !@#$ backwards workaround". Doing stuff in LO is just way too often, way too unintuitive and cumbersome.

The current MS Office incarnation could be equally terrible or even worse (haven't touched it in many years), but I'd take 2010 era MSO over today's LO pretty much every day of the week.

What @PixelDrop wrote is very close to my experience in, sadly, too many cases. Have someone that is content with a browser, full stop? Great. My mother is happily running a Debian system as well (not like there are no problems with garbage abandoned printer drivers or anything...). Everyone else usually has one or more pieces of "functionality" (some software) for which it's impossible to find an equivalent on Linux.

Sorry for the rant, but LO touches a sore spot of mine and makes me appreciate the "WHY THE !@#$ IS THIS !@#% A THING" feelings I often have in my Linux life and usually successfully suppress after a short time.

.... Because this. I make presentations in LO for when I teach. I export them all to PDF. That way I can actually use them regardless of OS. Everything has a PDF viewer that does full screen and most clickers work just fine with them.

I used to do data analysis. Its been 3-4 years, but Calc' Pivot Table implementation is just not good compared to Excel. And it's just not the office suite. There isn't a good alternative to SQL Server Management Studio or ArcGIS Pro. Comparatively, there just aren't the resources being put into the FOSS stuff as there are going into these big enterprise suites.

And I don't think it's totally fair to expect that from the Linux community either. If the goal is broad adoption and support of the Linux Desktop, I think we have to accept that some niche or advanced stuff just won't be there.

If you haven't seen this video on the subject, and you have children, you need to see this video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

Plus the follow up, which is quite damning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

I had no idea. Thanks for pointing out!

Do a youtube search for Roblox most evil company in the world. The video is eye-opening. I have blocked the game in our house and talked with my son about it. It is popular because it exploits and addicts kids and digital laws havent caught up to this practice yet to protect them.

After doing some research i dont see why any parent would even let there child use this product its complete garbage and maybe we should work to make a competing product. The kicker to all this is the game is making a ton of cash while exploiting all there users while also endangering children into a dangerous environment.

Do a youtube search for Roblox most evil company in the world. The video is eye-opening. I have blocked the game in our house and talked with my son about it. It is popular because it exploits and addicts kids and digital laws havent caught up to this practice yet to protect them.

Do a youtube search for Roblox most evil company in the world. The video is eye-opening. I have blocked the game in our house and talked with my son about it. It is popular because it exploits and addicts kids and digital laws havent caught up to this practice yet to protect them.

I'd say https://www.manticoregames.com/ is the closest thing coming up that could complete with Roblox since it's basically the same idea, but build ontop of Unreal Engine.