Roblox has a hefty goal: Go from nearly 80 million daily users to… 1 billion? There is far more interesting Roblox news incoming bundled into a Roblox Developer Conference keynote session, but let’s start there, because it’s amusing.
During the initial introductory presentation, available officially on YouTube, Roblox CEO David Baszucki talked about the accomplishments and ambitions of the internationally-popular, if deeply controversial in multiple ways, multiplayer gaming platform targeted towards children. Right now, it’s got 79.6 million daily active users, and that’s plenty! But who cares? No big deal. They want more…
Because he went on to brag about a goal of 1 billion active daily users and to move about 10% of the game industry’s revenue through the platform. He casually mentioned that the company is trying to find a “stepping stone of a billion active users,” and that on the way, “we believe 10% of all gaming content worldwide will flow through the Roblox ecosystem.” This’ll be accomplished through a series of partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Sony, Meta, and Tencent.
Baszucki pushed a safer estimate that the gaming industry sits at about $180 billion, though some basic Google searching shows that 2024 estimates sit as high as $282 billion. Therefore, 10% would be $18-28 billion.
In 2023, Roblox made about $2.7 billion, but the company takes about 50% of revenue that passes through the platform, so they’re probably responsible for upwards of $5.5 billion in flow. As a point of comparison, an again-quick Google search shows that Activision Blizzard King, which puts out the likes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush, made about $8.8 billion. So is it possible? Perhaps if those partnerships are really, really good.
As for the billion active user goal that they’re still staunchly insisting on… I like to think I’m informed enough to speak at least a little bit on this sort of forecast, but this one lost me. Sorry. Spec about it in the forums/comments, I suppose. He does try to bring it down to a more reasonable 300 million somewhere along the way as part of the “stepping stone,” but he said what he said.
Roblox’s More Significant Newly-Announced Features
That all said, it’s not like Roblox is a stale platform—the opposite in fact, as the keynotes also announced a series of major features and changes that will try to hook in players in the midst of its own simultaneous controversies and dominance.
For one, Roblox will increase revenue sharing for all games in an attempt to draw in more ambitious titles onto its platform. Games that sell at $9.99 will have a 50% revenue share, games at $29.99 or more get 60%, and those at a premium $49.99 get 70%. If developers aren’t sure what to set it at, a new “optimization” tool will give guidance.
A newly-announced affiliate program will help spread the word and encourage social sharing. Players whose followers (or friends) click and make purchases will earn 50% of purchases made, up to a $100 share.
Roblox will also finally get a party tool called First is Party, anticipated to be released by the end of the year. All players will be able to join in a party, and those 13 and up will be able to voice chat, cutting out the middle-man of programs such as Discord. Plus, there’s no more weird server coordination nonsense, as the party will allow players to join together on the same server. Save the server lists for the big kid games.
Meanwhile on the social front, the “Groups” feature for game developers will pivot to be “Communities” featuring new dedicated Forums.
The keynote also shared some nifty music-sharing and listing tools, and a generative AI tool that was apparently not nifty enough to get a crowd cheer except to the video’s transcriber, and they apparently want to lean into brands ranging from Walmart to Elf to Fandango. I guess some things in life never change, like bizarre tech keynotes by companies that will take a god to kill.
(Though if you want to ditch the presentation, there’s a blog post with most of the announcements.)
