{"id":44559,"date":"2024-08-19T16:51:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T20:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44559"},"modified":"2024-09-09T10:24:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T14:24:58","slug":"roblox-the-biggest-game-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/19\/roblox-the-biggest-game-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Roblox: the Biggest Game in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Ball<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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 <\/em>users of the Nintendo Switch in a year<\/em>, 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<\/a> 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<\/a>, Roblox averaged more iOS\/Android monthly active users than any other game (including Candy Crush<\/em>!).<\/p>

Compared to its most similar competitors—the social virtual world platforms, Minecraft <\/em>and Fortnite<\/em> — 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

When you’re that popular, you don’t have to follow<\/a> Apple’s rules about not having App Store–like interfaces, apps within apps, or downloading code.<\/p>\n\n

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So yes, Roblox is unquestionably “working.” Yet Roblox is also unprofitable. Very<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n