At RDC, Roblox’s sixth annual developer conference, this year held virtually, Roblox unveiled its developer community was on pace to earn over $250 million in 2020. Roblox also announced it now has over 150 million monthly active users. In addition, the company updated developers on the suite of tools and platform services aimed at empowering its global community of creators to more easily collaborate and build immersive and massive 3D experiences. And finally, Roblox announced a music label partnership with Monstercat to give developers access to a library of high-quality music content.
“The accomplishments of our developer community have eclipsed even our loftiest expectations; I am incredibly impressed by the unique and creative experiences being introduced on the Roblox platform,” said David Baszucki, founder and CEO, Roblox. “Our focus is to give developers the tools and resources they need to pursue their vision and create larger, more complex, more realistic experiences and collectively build the Metaverse.”
Economy
Developers are on pace to earn $250 million in 2020, up from the $110 million earned in 2019. In addition to earning through the sale of in-game products, developers are now also able to monetize their games through engagement. Earlier this spring Roblox introduced Premium Payouts which pays developers based on the engagement time of Premium subscribers in game. In June 2020, Roblox developers earned $2 million as part of this program alone.
Tools
Roblox formally rolled out its cloud collaboration tools in late 2019 and continues to add new features for large development teams. The company will unveil a talent marketplace by end of year to help developers connect with other members of the community who have specialized skills. In addition, Roblox is making it easier for larger teams of developers to work together on projects, and simultaneously giving developers the ability to grant permissions to team members/contractors/employees to work on a certain part of a game.
To expand the global reach of a developer’s game, Roblox will begin rolling out automatic machine translation for all supported languages including Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, German, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Spanish making it easier for creators to offer experiences in localized markets and languages worldwide.
Platform
Roblox is working to help developers better connect with their peers and fans by launching Developer Events, a service that will help facilitate finding and creating community events. Later this summer developers will be able to create their own events, both virtually (at first) and eventually in person, to engage with members of the Roblox community in a simple, but powerful way.
In addition, Roblox is entering into its first music label partnership with Monstercat to expand its music offering to developers, so they can in turn offer even better experiences to players. Monstercat is an independent electronic music label known for its collaborations with AAA gaming titles and chart-topping music releases. To start, 51 high-quality tracks are now available for Roblox developers to use for free in their games, with more being added to Roblox Studio on a regular basis. The first installment of Monstercat music includes favorite songs from a variety of leading EDM genres, including Drum & Bass, Synthwave, Electro, Chillout, Electronic, Breaks, Future Bass, etc.
Developer Milestones
Roblox developers are building deep, engaging experiences that are attracting record numbers of players as users are increasingly coming to the Roblox platform to stay connected with friends. For example:
- Adopt Me! now has over 10 billion plays and surpassed 1.6 million concurrent users in game earlier this year.
- Piggy, launched in January 2020, has close to 5 billion visits in just over six months.
- Jailbreak surpassed 500,000 concurrent users during a live event in April 2020.
- There are now 345,000 developers on the platform who are monetizing their games.
- Over 50% of Robux being spent in catalog is now being spent on UGC items, less than 12 months after launching the UGC catalog program.
About Roblox
Roblox’s mission is to bring the world together through play. Every month, more than 150 million people around the world have fun with friends as they explore millions of immersive digital experiences. All of these experiences are built by the Roblox community, made up of over two million creators. We believe in building a safe, civil, and diverse community—one that inspires and fosters creativity and positive relationships between people around the world. For more information, please visit corp.roblox.com.