[the_af]

Wow. I'm not very clued in lately but I do own plenty of games in GOG, Humble Bundle and yes, Steam. I was just thrilled that Planet of Lana II got released recently.

This is the first time I heard of Roblox. And it's supposedly this huge phenomenon?

I guess this is what getting old feels like.

[shagie]

A key part of that is a that its dominated by kids. The video I linked is one to start with...

https://www.takeaway-reality.com/post/roblox-demographics-st...

    There are 151.5 million daily active users on Roblox. (70% growth YoY)
    44% of Roblox users are over 17 years old. 56% are younger.
    APAC has the most users (29.5%), followed closely by US & Canada (28%). Europe is the third largest market with 23%, while the rest of the world has 19.4%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roblox

    As of February 2025, the platform has reported an average of 85.3 million daily active users. According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16.

[ares623]

I wonder how sticky Roblox is as the current cohort of kids get older. Of course more kids are being born, but last I checked that number is getting lower.

[doctorpangloss]

what is more likely:

- everything Roblox says is true

- a company that spent a decade throwing shit at the wall until something stuck, that seemingly has absolutely, utterly zero cultural impact, with a huge, inauditable non-US audience, where every game that any adult has tried is absolutely trash, that has tons of employees but seemingly not a single one has gone onto found a great game studio or do anything interesting in media unlike every other successful game studios, that Apple could ban for violating the mini-apps rule in an afternoon and hence ruin their entire business with a stroke of a pen... is overstating things.

[daemonologist]

Of interest to me regarding Roblox is that it's been around for a long time - public release in 2006, almost 20 years ago! It was around when I was a kid, and I vaguely remember being aware of it and thinking it was dumb (certainly, I didn't know anyone who played it).

I wonder what happened to make it so popular in the present day. Was it incremental improvement, or a better fit with modern devices/culture; maybe simply being free to play?

[sureglymop]

What made it so popular was a combination of it being cross platform as well as turning into a "game/experience platform" instead of just a game.

But it is legitimately incredible what some people created in it. I remember playing a very good/accurate counter strike source clone in roblox. Felt exactly like playing a source engine game. I doubt that it was made by a kid.