A sizeable amount of scams are on Roblox, largely revolving around messages promoting websites and games that are designed to appear to give out free Robux. Developers on the platform are able to create purchasable content through one-time purchases. While Roblox is free-to-play, it features a virtual currency known as “Robux” that can be purchased with real-world money. The games featured on Roblox vary in genre, from role-playing games to ones centered around escaping prison, among others. The platform has also been used to host virtual concerts and events, as well as advergames. As of February 2025, the platform has reported an average of 85.3 million daily active users.
Features that were introduced around this time included Developer Events, a service that would allow creators to create and manage in-game events, and allow users to easily discover these events. While only Roblox developers were able to create avatar items early on, the capabilities of user-generated content has expanded greatly over time. Games can be created by any user through the platform’s game engine, Roblox Studio, and then shared to and played by other players. In response to perceived moderation issues, there have been instances where players have formed “vigilante groups” to mass report predatory content and users on the platform.
In May 2015, Roblox released an update that adjusted its physics engine to be more smooth and realistic, rather than being oriented around blocks. Among these new features was the Developer Exchange program, which initially only allowed payouts of up to $500. Its profits also continued to increase, with the platform’s profit that year up 75% from 2010; in June 2011, the company held a fundraiser that raised over $4 million.
It has also been accused by Hindenburg Research of artificially inflating its monthly active player count. In April 2022, Truth in Advertising filed a complaint against Roblox with the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising, mainly failing to disclose when advertising is present, such as with advergames and brand ambassadors. Roblox has been criticized several times due to the content that is present on the platform, specifically the presence of sexual or politically extremist-related material.
He also discussed the Ready Player One and Ready Player Two books as being inspirations for the company’s ideas. Roblox’s business model throughout this time has continued to be based around creating a metaverse, and attempting to increase the platform’s appeal. In January 2022, LuoBu was shut down, with Roblox stating that they were going to redevelop the release, and that LuoBu was only ever intended to be a test version. The growth of Roblox, both as a platform and as a company, continued into 2021 and the following years.
By May, they had already released a stripped-down version of the platform for iOS that only included its social features, but did not allow users to play games on it. Also announced in 2022 were age ratings for games, a system created by the company to increase the platform’s appeal to the young adult audience, which was the fastest growing demographic on Roblox, by allowing for more mature experiences. Other updates released around this time included adding support for character animations, Roblox Studio plugins, and Developer Stats, a feature that shows developers various statistics about their games, such as how many players were playing their game and for how long. On December 11 of that year, a full version of Roblox for iOS was released that allowed users to play games, although users were not able to use Roblox Studio. During this time in 2007, Roblox introduced the “Builders Club” membership subscription, which allowed for users to create more games under their account, sell virtual clothing, remove outside advertisements from the site and gain Robux daily.
The most popular game on the platform around this time was the role-playing game Adopt Me! Additionally, the average number of daily active players in 2020 had increased by 85% compared to 2019. By December 2016, the platform had about 30 million monthly active users, a number that had increased to 90 million by April 2019. By January 2014, the platform’s monthly player count had increased 10 to 12 million monthly players, although a majority of those players did not have registered accounts and instead played as “guests”. By August 2011, Roblox had about 6.8 million active users monthly, becoming the second-most popular kids entertainment site.
According to the company, the monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16. In October 2017, Roblox removed the ability for people to play as a “guest”, which allowed users to play games on the platform without having to use an account. Between March and April, Roblox reported having over 120 million monthly active players, which by that point the company said included over half of all kids in the United States that were under the age of 16. A system that allowed users to publish their games on the platform was later released, based on an approval process. In 2008, the Roblox Corporation stopped actively creating their own games to demonstrate the platform’s capabilities, becoming entirely reliant on user-created games. Baszucki and Cassel worked alone while making the earlier versions of Roblox, and created their own games on the platform before the creation tools were completed.
Due to its status as a user-created games platform, Roblox has a variety of popular games; by July 2020, at least 20 games had been played more than one billion times, and at least 5,000 have been played more than one million times. While Roblox is free-to-play, it features in-game purchases done through its virtual currency known as “Robux”, and game developers on the platform are able to create items that cost Robux. The platform hosts millions of user-created games (officially referred to as “experiences” since 2021), all created using a dialect of the programming language Lua and the platform’s game engine, Roblox Studio. Roblox (/ˈroʊ.blɒks/ ⓘ, ROH-bloks) is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users.
Initially, the highest rating that games could be given was 13+, although in June 2023, a 17+ rating was introduced that would permit games to feature more graphic violence, romantic themes and alcohol usage. Voice chat was then followed by facial animations based on the real-world motion tracking of the players face, which was announced in 2022 and released in 2023. This version of the platform, officially known as LuoBu, was published and operated by Tencent, and was heavily restricted due to China’s regulations on video games.
In April 2021, Hasbro released Roblox-themed Nerf blasters and a Roblox-themed version of Monopoly. The sets included a code that was used to redeem virtual items, as well as blind boxes that contained random minifigures. At the same time, a port of Roblox to the PlayStation 4 were announced, and later released on October 10. In 2023, Roblox released public beta versions of the platform for Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro on July 27, with full versions released in September. Efforts were also made towards making Roblox more accessible, with automatic machine translation being added to in-game spinnaus login chat in 2020, initially supporting 9 languages. The company also expressed interest in porting Roblox to other virtual reality devices in the future.
Investigative journalism YouTube channel People Make Games accused the platform of “exploiting” younger game developers by promising them large amounts of money from creating games, only to apply high revenue cuts and leaving creators with little to no income. However, these restrictions did not apply to advergames, leading to further criticism by Truth in Advertising and children’s digital rights organization 5Rights. As a response, Roblox hid advertisements from users under the age of 13 starting in March 2023.
In June of that year, Roblox was sued by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), alleging that the platform allowed users to upload copyrighted music without obtaining proper licensing, and made children believe that pirating music was acceptable. In 2021, Roblox made it to where games on the platform are referred to as “experiences” following the platform’s involvement in the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit. Throughout 2021, Roblox averaged 45.5 million daily active users, a 40% increase from the end of 2020.
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