- Roblox, a gaming platform with 32.6 million daily users, hit the public market on Wednesday.
- In 2020, the company paid more than $ 328.74 million to Roblox game developers.
- Roblox games are developed by independent developers – helping some teenagers to pay for college.
- Read more on the Insider homepage.
The extremely popular gaming platform Roblox went public on Wednesday through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares soared 15%, valuing the company 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 allows children to play games created by others or try to build games themselves.
Popular titles include “Adopt me”, where players “adopt” pets, care for and share them with other players, and “Brookhaven”, where players can play in a city and buy houses, vehicles and more items.
While all games are free, most offer premium features or benefits in exchange for Robux, a game currency that can be purchased for real money.
Developers receive a 70% commission on all Robux spent on their game. This can help young developers to earn significant amounts of money – in some cases, enough to pay for their university studies.
The shares started trading under the RBLX ticker on Wednesday. Here are some impressive statistics about Roblox on the day of his debut on the market:
- The platform had 32.6 million daily active users in 2020, an explosive outbreak of the 12 million it had in 2018.
- It was over 18 million games, called “experiments”, at Roblox on September 30th.
- In 2017, Roblox said it would pay developers $ 30 million. That figure jumped to $ 328.74 million in 2020.
- More than 1,250 developers won at least $ 10,000 in Robux from the platform, and more than 300 won $ 100,000 or more.
- Roblox users have spent 22.2 billion hours of gameplay 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 that he counted more than half of all Americans under the age of 16 as users.
- His valuation skyrocketed from $ 4 billion in early 2020 to $ 30 billion in early 2021 since it raised $ 520 million in new funds before its listing.
- The most popular games may have 500,000 simultaneous players during peak hours.
- “Adopt me” became the first game in the history of the platform to cross a total of 20 billion visits in November. As of Wednesday, there were 391,000 simultaneous players.
- “Brookhaven” had 457,000 simultaneous players on Wednesday.
- Alex Hicks, a 24-year-old Roblox developer, made 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, Said Roblox in its S1 prospectus.
- Infrastructure, trust and security were Roblox’s second highest cost after developer fees. Last year, these expenses increased 69%, to US $ 264.2 million.
- The company earned $ 923.9 million in revenue during 2020, with a net loss of $ 253 million, said its S1.