Why Is Roblox so Popular?

The American company Roblox is one of the most valuable game developers. It is developing a platform on which users create games and can earn on them. Roblox capitalization jumped after the publication of the report for the third quarter of 2021. Revenue grew by 102% to $509 million, and the company is losing money more slowly than it earns: net loss over the same period increased from $50 million to $77 million. More than 47 million users launch Roblox daily. Let us discover the reasons for such popularity.

The History of Roblox

Roblox was founded in 2004 by American entrepreneur David Baschucki and the engineer Eric Cassel. Over the next 15 years, the company raised more than $856 million, and in March 2020, it entered the New York Stock Exchange through the direct listing procedure. On the first day, it was valued at $45 billion.

What is the secret to its success? Roblox is reminiscent of Minecraft, which was bought by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Both belong to the sandbox genre – they give access to an open world where you can create your own games, locations, and characters. Instead of photorealistic graphics, they use deliberately simple ones. In Minecraft, everything consists of cubes, while Roblox resembles a virtual Lego constructor.

The main audience of Roblox is children 9-15 years old. They love Roblox because it is easy to create their own games and meet other players. Unlike Lego, where the imagination is limited by the number of colored bricks, the possibilities of Roblox are endless: players can even add something of their own to the world created by other gamers.

Roblox Is the Most Expensive Game in the World

Roblox's main asset is its own virtual currency, Robux, on which users spent $1.9 billion to buy in 2020. You can also make money: Roblox allows you to trade in skins and virtual goods for characters. The platform commission is 50%, and the number of active developers exceeds 2 million. In 2020, the authors were paid more than $320 million.

Roblox is ahead of American Activision Blizzard, the developer of the Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Diablo series, in terms of capitalization. It is estimated at $54 billion.

Competitors from Microsoft are behind – Minecraft does not have a similar monetization system, and there are fewer loyal users. The monthly audience of Roblox has already exceeded 200 million, while the current figures for Minecraft are less than 130 million. Roblox CTO Dan Shturman calls the world created by players a metaverse. In addition, although virtual cube heroes do not look like real people, they allow players to build a new reality and interact with it and other players.

In Roblox, you can organize concerts and invite real musicians to them. For example, the concert of the Swedish singer Zara Larsson was attended by millions of players – more than her real concerts. Larsson made $1 million selling her skins on Roblox – clothes, hair, dance moves, accessories.

Roblox does not disclose the number of players in different countries. People all over the world enjoy it and contribute to its success.