Roblox is a mess, but in an alright way. There are many different games and investing into it is useless, because kids will move from one game to the next soon enough. I have never paid for Robux and never intend to. The kids keep playing it without the buy in. It’s something everyone in school does, so they play together and change game constantly to whatever is trendy.

I’ve only barely played it myself to see what it is like and if the chat was problematic. It seems safe enough, but there are limits to the gameplay when not paying. Most of the games are pretty pointless anyway and don’t require Robux, but the kids are still entertained for a while in each game. Robux might make sense in the more complex games, but I refuse to pay for it.

As for paid games, I’ve paid for Minecraft for pc and android and that’s worth it on both platforms. I have accounts for the entire family so we can join each other and they can have friends over who don’t have their own accounts or don’t know the logins. It’s relatively cheap and only a one time purchase. It can be tricky with the Java and bedrock editions not playing along, so that’s why I just bought more accounts. There are free clones of Minecraft for android that are soo close that my youngest didn’t even realise that it wasn’t the original.

My oldest has also herself paid for the horse game Star Stable for pc, which is a great game, but also expensive. This is more like buying an actual game. It’s basically an 3D adventure game with horses. No microtransactions if fully paid for. The account also works for android, but she uses the pc mostly. Again, this is because her best friends are playing it. She has no interest in horses, but the game is good. It’s sort of like GTA but instead of driving cars and shooting guns, they ride horses and run errands for the stables or something. It’s possible to play for free, but only until it gets more interesting.