Roblox ( , 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. It was created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004,
and released to the public in 2006. As of February 2025, the platform has reported an
average of 85.3 million daily active users. According to the company, their monthly
playerbase includes half of all American children under the age of 16.
The platform hosts millions of user-created games (officially referred to as
"experiences"), all created using a dialect of the programming language Lua and the
platform's game engine, Roblox Studio. 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. Furthermore, the platform hosts a
large virtual economy centered around those items and Robux. Using the platform's
"Developer Exchange" program, creators on the platform are able to exchange their
earned Robux for real-world currency. The platform has also been used to host virtual
concerts and events, as well as advergames.
Early in Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and as a company. In
the second half of the 2010s, the platform began to grow rapidly, and this growth was
accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2020, over 5,000 games on Roblox had been
played over a million times, and over 20 had been played over one billion times.
Although Roblox has been positively received by critics, it has faced heavy criticism for
its content moderation, which in turn has led to a large amount of sexual or politically
extremist material on the platform. It has also been criticized for its alleged exploitative
practices toward children and microtransactions. The platform has been restricted or
completely blocked in several countries, such as China, Turkey, Jordan, and others.
== Overview ==
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system built around
user-generated content and games, officially referred to as "experiences". Games can be
created by any user through the platform's game engine, Roblox Studio, and then shared
to and played by other players. The games featured on Roblox vary in genre, from
role-playing games to ones centered around escaping prison, among others. The
platform is made to appeal to a family-friendly audience, and has been described as a
massively multiplayer online game (MMO).
While Roblox is free-to-play, it features a virtual currency known as Robux that can be
purchased with real-world money. Robux can be used to purchase virtual items that the
player can use on their virtual character (or "avatar") on the platform, or access
experiences that require payment. As with games, avatar items on Roblox are mainly
user-generated, though most items on the platform were made by Roblox themselves
for most of the platform's history. Through the platform's "Developer Exchange"
program, creators on the platform are able to exchange their earned Robux to real-world
money. In addition, Roblox features a monthly service called "Roblox Premium", with its
subscribers gaining access to more features on the platform and a monthly stipend of
Robux.
=== Virtual economy ===
Roblox features a large virtual economy centered around its aforementioned virtual
currency, Robux. The currency allows users to buy, sell, and create virtual items. Roblox
also has a service called "Roblox Premium", a monthly subscription that gives users
monthly stipends of Robux (with the amount depending on the selected subscription
tier), discounts when purchasing items, access to the item trading system, the ability to
buy more Robux for less, and more.
Similarly to games, many items on Roblox are user-generated. While only Roblox
developers were able to create avatar items early on, the capabilities of user-generated
content has expanded greatly over time. Since 2019, select users have gained the ability
to publish avatar accessories, animations, bundles, and more. Some items on Roblox
have a "limited" status, with only a few being available and the price of the item based
on supply and demand rather than a fixed price. These items function similarly to
non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The prices of limited items range, with the most valuable
ones costing millions of Robux. After the original supply of that item runs out, players
can resell them for a higher price. Additionally, users with an active Roblox Premium
subscription are able to trade limiteds amongst each other; limited items made by the
community cannot be traded, and this feature is restricted to official items.
Developers on the platform are able to create purchasable content through one-time
purchases. Through the Roblox "Developer Exchange" program, users are able to
exchange their earned Robux for real-world money, as long as they have at least 30,000
Robux. In 2020, Roblox reported that roughly 345,000 game developers on the platform
earned money through the program. Avatar item creators have also been able to
generate profit with the platform, with some individuals designing items as a full-time
job. It has been reported that the highest-earning creators have earned over $100,000 a
year from item sales.
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.
Furthermore, there are people in the community known as "beamers" who compromise
Roblox accounts to steal and sell their items on the platform's black markets. They
employ various techniques, such as creating phishing websites or create ploys in order
to acquire a victim's session token. Once they gain access to the victim's account, these
"beamers" steal and subsequently sell valuable limited items owned by the victims for
real-world currency or cryptocurrency through marketplace sites or Discord chat rooms.
The slang term "beaming" is commonly used to describe this entire process on Roblox.
Roblox does offer hacking victims a "rollback" for their items, although this is only
offered once per account.
=== Roblox Studio and game design ===
Roblox Studio is the platform's game engine and game development software. The
engine and all games made on Roblox predominantly uses Luau, a dialect of the Lua 5.1
programming language. Since November 2021, the programming language has been
open sourced under the MIT License. Some aspects of the engine were created using
C++. To assist in the creation of games, Roblox Studio features multiple pre-made
templates that users can modify.
As of 2020, Roblox reported that more than 2 million developers used Roblox Studio to
create more than 20 million games per year. They also reported that a majority of
developers were minors. While some developers might not make money by creating
games on Roblox, it has been noted that the platform still assists with teaching people
game design and how to code.
=== Games ===
Due to its status as a user-created games platform, Roblox has a variety of popular
games; as of 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. TechCrunch noted in
March 2021 that Roblox games are largely distinct from established traditions in
free-to-play video games, finding that successful Roblox games were geared towards
immediate satisfaction, and finding that the addition of tutorials significantly decreased
player engagement, contrary to established wisdom about free-to-play games. Many
companies have used Roblox to host advergames promoting their products.
== History and development ==
=== 2004–2009: Creation and early history ===
Roblox was created in 2004 by co-founders and software engineers David Baszucki and
Erik Cassel. Prior to the creation of the platform, both Baszucki and Cassel worked for
Knowledge Revolution, a company that specialized in creating educational and physics
simulation software. After Knowledge Revolution was acquired by MSC Software, the
two left the company and Baszucki began investing in earlier social media sites like
Friendster. Around this time, Baszucki came up with the idea of a physics sandbox with
creation tools and a social networking aspect. Baszucki and Cassel began development
on Roblox shortly afterwards, modeled after Baszucki's vision, and also created the
Roblox Corporation. Early in its development, Roblox was known as Dynablocks. It was
determined early on in development that the two would design Roblox to rely entirely on
user-generated content, only providing the tools necessary for people to develop games,
as well as the server hosting later in development.
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.
These early versions of Roblox were extremely basic, with player avatars having not
been animated yet and various features only being present in their most simplified form.
They also advertised Roblox on some websites, leading to a few dozen players joining
the platform as playtesters. In mid-2006, the first two employees that weren't Cassel or
Baszucki were hired to work on the platform's other features. These employees were
Matt Dusek and John Shedletsky, with Dusek being responsible for working on the
platform's communication aspects.
Roblox was officially released on September 1, 2006, with Roblox Studio being made
available that same year. Games that were made by the community early in the
platform's history included paintball games, haunted houses, and model trains that
players could ride. In 2008, the Roblox Corporation stopped actively creating their own
games to demonstrate the platform's capabilities, becoming entirely reliant on
user-created games. 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. Early in the platform's history, it had two separate currencies: Robux and
Tickets, with the latter often being referred to as "Tix".
=== 2010–2015: Early growth ===
Roblox's growth continued throughout 2010 and the following years. By August 2011,
Roblox had about 6.8 million active users monthly, becoming the second-most popular
kids entertainment site. 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. 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 this point in the platform's history, several games had been played million of times.
One of the most successor creators on the platform at the time was Luke Weber, known
on Roblox as "Stickmasterluke", who had a following of over ten million plays across all
of his games combined. In August 2011, the first in-person convention centered around
Roblox, known as the Roblox Rally, was held in San Francisco. It was attended by over
1,000 people. In 2013, the platform's co-founder Cassel died from cancer.
Throughout 2012, versions of Roblox for mobile devices were developed. 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. A version of the game for
macOS was also released by that point. 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. After completing development on the iOS version, Roblox
began looking into releasing a version for Android devices, as well as video game
consoles. The version for Android was released on July 16, 2014. A version of Roblox
for Xbox One was announced in September 2015 and released on November 20. This
version initially only released with selection of 15 games chosen by Roblox staff, due to
concerns regarding Entertainment Software Rating Board standards. A system that
allowed users to publish their games on the platform was later released, based on an
approval process.
From 2013 to 2014, Roblox released several updates to their development tools, adding
new features. Among these new features was the Developer Exchange program, which
initially only allowed payouts of up to $500. 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. In May 2015, Roblox
released an update that adjusted its physics engine to be more smooth and realistic,
rather than being oriented around blocks. This also came with a feature called Smooth
Terrain, which increased the graphic fidelity of in-game terrain.
=== 2016–2020: Accelerated growth and COVID-19 ===
In the latter half of the 2010s, Roblox began to rapidly grow in popularity. By December
2016, the platform had about 30 million monthly active users, a number that had
increased 90 million by April 2019. The platform's growth was further accelerated by the
COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020, where lockdowns led tens of millions of children
to use Roblox as a means of communication. Between March and April, Roblox reported
having over 120 million monthly active players, which by