I am a German Shepherd in a daycare. Blocks are strewn about on the floor, and wailing babies crawl about. It is no place for a dog, and I'm desperate to escape. As I'm dashing by the unfenced pool—the daycare is certainly not up to code—a caregiver grabs me and carries me into the water, where she leaves me. A quick shake and I'm off again. My refuge? The Salvation Army, as recreated in Roblox.
The Salvation Army stands empty just beyond the daycare and down a brick pathway. It looks like it may have been repurposed from the shell of one of those modern redesigned Wendy's—just in Roblox. There are three workers in red aprons standing lifelessly in-store, programmed with their sales pitch: Spend your Robux here!
The Salvation Army, the Protestant charity thrift store franchise, has inexplicably opened up shop in two different Roblox experiences, daycare roleplaying game Daycare Party and life simulator Seaboard City. The shops are plopped right into these two experiences, clearly visible from the starting areas. Each of the times I've visited the Salvation Army—a couple of times as a dog in Daycare Party and as a human in Seaboard City—the thrift store has been largely empty. Once, in Seaboard City, a fellow shopper appeared. I asked her for a piggyback ride, but she declined and left the store. Weird customers are bad for business, I suppose.
Salvation Army ARC Commander (who is essentially the CEO of the Salvation Army's rehabilitation centers) Lt. Colonel Mark Nelson said in a news release that the Salvation Army in Roblox is a way to bring "a new generation to the spirit of thrifting at the Salvation Army in a way that feels natural to how they explore, play, and express themselves today." They're calling it Thrift Score.
You can't really thrift, per se, in Roblox, but players can submit clothing designs to be uploaded onto digital clothing racks. On each of my visits, there were a lot of the same designs; they don't appear to be exclusive or one-offs, like it would be in a real-life thrift store. (Players can upload their designs on the Thrift Score website, but can't donate in-store.) The wearables are apparently discounted, but Roblox purchases are often quite cheap already. The stuff I saw was around 5 Robux or so, which is just a few cents worth of the currency.
There are limited edition cosmetics, "donated" by popular Roblox creators. Those limited edition pieces can't just be purchased; they require an additional VIP pass, which is about a dollar or so in Robux. Once you've got that, you get access to an exclusive room upstairs at the shop, where more things are sold. These items are much more expensive, but still under a dollar's worth of Roblox currency.
Money made, aside from the cut Roblox takes on its Robux, goes to the Salvation Army's charities. (The Salvation Army has had a "spotty relationship with LGBTQ+ rights" over the past decade, according to PinkNews, but has attempted to amend its image with LGBTQ issues.)
I can't imagine the thrift stores in Seaboard City or Daycare Party are moving the needle too much. I can see the Salvation Army’s executives salivating over the scores of people who use Roblox on any given day and wanting to get a bite at it, but the two games the stores are currently in aren't exactly top tier—at any given time I played it, there were around 500 concurrent players. For comparison, Brookhaven, the exceptionally popular roleplaying game, has more than 500,000 concurrents right now. People seem to be visiting and lingering in the stores, spamming button clicks on the racks, just to farm free limited edition items, then leaving. But the chance of capturing any of those millions of eyeballs, even just for a moment, is seemingly enough for an unrelated brand like the Salvation Army to shoehorn itself into the platform. Brands are investing tons of money into Roblox as a digital billboard straight to the (largely) children who use it, be it with their own games, cosmetics, or stores dropped into existing experiences. Some of them are successful, both financially and culturally, like Charli XCX's branded content in Dress To Impress, but most of them don't make any noise.
Roblox itself is directly courting brands to license their franchises to Roblox creators easily. Creators approved by Roblox can access the streamlined system to license big brands and create new stuff; everything from Mattel, Squid Game, and The Blair Witch Project is on there. Meanwhile, a brand like Disney is avoiding the platform, according to Variety, because "Disney does not think Roblox is a safe platform at this time." That's referencing the reason behind more than 100 lawsuits and increased scrutiny–whether Roblox as a company can keep kids safe from what Bloomberg called a "pedophile problem." Days ago, Los Angeles County sued Roblox because "the design of its platform makes children easy prey for pedophiles." Roblox "strongly dispute[s]" the claims made in the lawsuit, according to a statement to Game Developer.
