- Roblox, a gaming platform with 32.6 million daily users, entered the public market on Wednesday.
- In 2020, the company paid out more than $ 328.74 million to Roblox game developers.
- Roblox games are built by independent developers, who help some teens pay for their college.
- Read more on the Insider homepage.
The hugely popular gaming platform Roblox was announced on Wednesday through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock rose 15% to value the business at almost $ 44 billion.
Unlike ‘Minecraft’ or ‘Fortnite’, Roblox is not exactly a game, but a platform where players can jump from one user-generated experience to the next. Roblox enables children to play games created by others or to try to build games themselves.
Popular titles include “Adopt Me”, in which players “adopt” pets, take care of them and share them with other players, and “Brookhaven”, in which players can play in a city and houses, vehicles and other items.
Though all the games are free to play, most offer premium features or benefits in exchange for Robux, an in-game currency that can be purchased for real money.
Developers get 70% commission on all the Robux spent in their game. It can help young developers raise significant amounts of money – in some cases enough to pay for their university education.
The stock started trading below the ticker RBLX on Wednesday. Here are some striking statistics about Roblox on the day of its market debut:
- The platform has 32.6 million daily active users from 2020, an explosive increase from the 12 million it had in 2018.
- It was over 18 million games, called “experiences” on Roblox on September 30th.
- In 2017, Roblox said it would pay out $ 30 million to developers. That figure jumped $ 328.74 million in 2020.
- More than 1,250 developers earn at least $ 10,000 in Robux from the platform, and more than 300 earn $ 100,000 or more.
- Roblox users spend 22.2 billion hours of gaming in the first nine months of 2020, more than double the 10 billion hours in the first nine months of 2019.
- Roblox said in July it counts more than half of all Americans under the age of 16 as users.
- Its valuation rose from $ 4 billion in early 2020 to $ 30 billion early in 2021 when it raised $ 520 million in new financing before its listing.
- The most popular games may be 500,000 concurrent players during peak times.
- “Adopt Me” became the first game in the history of the platform to surpass in total 20 billion visits in November. On Wednesday, it had 391,000 concurrent players.
- ‘Brookhaven’ had 457,000 concurrent players on Wednesday.
- Alex Hicks, a 24-year-old Roblox developer, earned more than $ 1 million in one year as the owner of RedManta, a studio that creates games for Roblox.
- The platform has 8 million active developers, Roblox said in his S1 prospectus.
- Infrastructure and trust and security were Roblox’s second largest costs after development fees. Last year, these expenses increased by 69%, to $ 264.2 million.
- The company earned $ 923.9 million in revenue in 2020, with a net loss of $ 253 million.