Robux, loot boxes, and limited-time events aren't incidental to Roblox. They're load-bearing. Psychologists studying internet addiction have pointed to the variable reward schedule behind these systems as the same mechanism that makes gambling hard to walk away from: you don't know what you'll get, only that the next spin might be the good one.
The details are specific, not incidental. Reporting on in-game monetization describes near-miss visuals designed to make a loss feel like it was almost a win, countdown timers that manufacture urgency around limited-time items, and pricing structures built around chance rather than a fixed purchase. Roblox's own Creator Hub has recommended "chance-based merchandising," where players pay for a chance at an item rather than the item itself.
Researchers have documented real harm from this design. A University of Sydney study that interviewed 22 children aged 7 to 14 alongside their parents found that in-game spending mechanics in games like Roblox caused described harm to the children using them, with one line from the research summarizing it bluntly as feeling like "child gambling." Several ongoing lawsuits allege the platform's reward design was built to encourage compulsive play in children specifically.
None of that requires spending money to matter. The same variable-reward pull that drives purchases also drives just staying logged in "one more round" longer than planned, which is the part a blocker can actually address.