Roblox: the Biggest Game in the World
Matthew Ball (via Hacker News):
During the average day, more than 80MM people log onto Roblox. As a historical point of contrast, this means that more people log onto Roblox every 10 or so minutes than used Second Life in a month at its peak. On a monthly basis, Roblox now counts more than 380MM users according to RTrack – 2x as many as PC gaming leader Steam, 3x that of Sony’s PlayStation, 3x the number of unique annual users of the Nintendo Switch in a year, and 5x as many as have bought an Xbox console in the last decade. After accounting for duplication across these platforms, as well as the gap between monthly and annual Switch users, it’s likely Roblox has more monthly users than the entire AAA gaming ecosystem combined. What’s more, NPD/Circana reports that Roblox is typically one of the 3–7 most played games on PlayStation and Xbox (Roblox is not available on Switch or Steam), and SensorTower says that in 2023, Roblox averaged more iOS/Android monthly active users than any other game (including Candy Crush!).
Compared to its most similar competitors—the social virtual world platforms, Minecraft and Fortnite — Roblox has about 5x and 2.25x as many monthly players. For non-gamers, Roblox has about two thirds as many monthly users as Spotify and half as many as Snap (though it probably has a lower share of daily-to-monthly active users) and is roughly as popular as Instagram circa Q4 2015, and Facebook in Q3 2009.
When you’re that popular, you don’t have to follow Apple’s rules about not having App Store–like interfaces, apps within apps, or downloading code.
So yes, Roblox is unquestionably “working.” Yet Roblox is also unprofitable. Very unprofitable. What’s more, Roblox’s losses continue to swell because its impressive rate of revenue growth has been outpaced by that of its costs. Over the last four quarters, Roblox’s income from operations was ($1.2B) on revenues of $3.2B, representing a -38% profit margin.
[…]
Unfortunately, many of these costs are outside of Roblox’s control. To start, an average of 23% of revenues are consumed by various App Store/platform fees (this sum is less than 30% because roughly 20% of sales are direct via browser or PC, where Roblox pays credit card processing fees but not 30% store commissions). Another 26% of revenues are paid out to Roblox’s UGC developers.
Previously:
- Epic Games Store for iOS in the EU
- Creator Platforms and the App Store
- DOJ Investigates Apple’s Treatment of Roblox
- Roblox in the App Store
- WeChat’s Apps Within an App
Update (2024-09-09): Alex Heath:
CEO David Baszucki announced that creators of these games, which Roblox calls experiences, will be able to keep between 50 and 70 percent of revenue from their paid titles when they’re purchased in real currency on desktop computers. That’s significantly more than the roughly 30 percent revenue split Roblox gives developers for purchases made with its native Robux currency inside freemium experiences.
The move could help incentivize the creation of more premium games as Roblox looks to attract older users. Baszucki says the intention is to also bring these new economics to paid experiences bought on other devices, including mobile phones and consoles, though app store fees will likely get in the way on iOS and Android.
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Something just don't feel right when you can be that popular and still lose money.
Obviously I don't think Apple are entitled to any of that money, but it's also the general idea of becoming a market leader with a non functioning business.
Yeah, f Apple and their ability to steal money from software companies. But if you can't even make money when you have the ability to exploit children all over the world to work for you for free, platform fees can't be your only problem.
The article mentions that Roblox might be able to get out from the 30% thing thanks to eu changes or whatever, but if they’re not paying Apple that money I wonder if Apple might enforce the rules more strictly on them and prevent game downloading…
Saying Roblox is the biggest game in the world is a little misleading, it's almost but not quite, like saying all of Steam is the biggest game in the world. Roblox is a toolset and store front for games, not a game itself. The fact Apple lets a store selling games operate within it's own store is very interesting.
