What is Roblox?

But as of right now, Roblox fever has spread throughout the entire world. All of a sudden, prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CNN are writing about this thing that is called Roblox. In the month of March, the number of people searching Google for information on Roblox stock has skyrocketed, and even celebrities like Reese Witherspoon are making jokes about it. However, it's possible that you are unaware of the reasons why Roblox has become so popular in 2021.

WHAT IS THIS ROBLOX GAME?

Users go to Roblox, an online platform that also functions as a storefront, to play video games. Roblox is not a game; rather, it is a platform on which users can play games created by a variety of different developers. In this regard, it is more analogous to the PC platform known as Steam than it is to any online game geared toward children. The fact that every game on Roblox was created by its users sets it apart from every other platform in the gaming industry, including digital distribution platforms such as Steam. The enjoyment that can be had on Roblox comes not only from playing games but also from creating one's own games. The Roblox Corporation does not take credit for the development of these games; rather, users of the platform are responsible for their creation. At the moment, the official website brags that users have published over 20 million games on the platform they are using.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT ROBLOX THAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

Simply because anyone, even children, can make a significant amount of money using the platform. When their games are properly monetized, some game developers can make as much as one million dollars in a single year. Even though Roblox and all of its games are free to play, many children purchase and spend a form of virtual currency known as Robux in order to acquire aesthetically pleasing items within Roblox games. The Roblox developers get to keep a certain percentage of the Robux that are generated from these transactions. When a developer has earned a sufficient amount of money in Robux, they are able to use a program known as the Developer Exchange, which is also known as DevEx, to exchange their Robux for real-world currency.

The creators who are profiting from this trend are not limited to being sole proprietors. It may come as a surprise to learn how much Roblox Corporation is actually worth. On Wednesday, the Roblox Corporation became a publicly traded company, which means that it began offering its shares for sale to the general public. Its stock, which trades under the ticker symbol $RBLX, had a fantastic first day, beginning with a reference price of $45 and ending at $69.50 per share. According to a report published in The Wall Street Journal, the final market capitalization of the company came out to be somewhere around $45 billion. To give you an idea of how enormous that is, Epic Games, the company that makes the incredibly popular software titles Fortnite and Unreal Engine, was valued at $17.3 billion in the late year of 2020. (Epic Games is still operated behind closed doors.) The success that Roblox has had on the market, coupled with the fact that almost the entire Roblox economy is run by young people who can make a great deal of money, has piqued the interest of a great deal of people.

HOW POPULAR ARE ROBLOX GAMES?

Extremely well-liked in a few specific contexts. The developers of Adopt Me!, a pet simulation game in which players buy and care for virtual animals, announced in April 2020 that the game had reached more than 1.6 million concurrent users and that it had been played more than 20.4 billion times. (The developer has chosen not to make the number of individual logins available to the public.) At the time of this article's publication, another game called Brookhaven had the most concurrent users. More than 420,000 people were playing it at the same time.

WHO MAKES ROBLOX GAMES?

On Roblox, anyone can create their own games. Young people now have the opportunity to bring their own game concepts to life thanks to the platform. It achieves this goal by providing a set of game development tools that are intuitive enough to be used by almost anyone, including children. Roblox also makes it simple to transform your creation into an online multiplayer game, so it will be possible for these developers to scale their operations if one of their games becomes popular.

Lua is the name of the scripting language used in the games; it is significantly simpler to learn than the majority of other programming languages. The company offers developer forums where individuals who make things can learn new skills and find solutions to problems. With Roblox, game designers only need to focus on creating the game itself instead of worrying about the nitty-gritty details of game production, such as how to configure servers. Once the game is complete, players can enjoy it via online multiplayer. It is up to the individual developer to decide how involved they want to get in the creation of the game.

WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE STANDARD FOR A ROBLOX GAME?

The answer to this question that is easiest to understand is that there is no such thing as a "average Roblox game." On the platform known as Roblox, users are free to create anything they can imagine. There is a diverse selection of games, ranging from first-person shooters to platformers played by a single player. Having said that, the games that tend to be the most popular are simulators in which players can act out a variety of different situations, such as going to school or visiting a pizza shop.

IS IT FREE TO USE ROBLOX?

Both the platform and the games that can be downloaded from it are entirely free. Roblox games, on the other hand, may allow players to make in-game purchases of cosmetic items, skins, or other upgrades. A child can purchase an egg that will hatch into a pet in the video game Adopt Me!, for instance, and then care for the pet they have adopted. Because of this, the in-game items that can be purchased will vary from game to game.

WHERE DOES ROBLOX SEE ITSELF IN THE FUTURE?

Roblox's vibrant and whimsical worlds have been isolated from the larger gaming industry for a considerable amount of time. Since its inception in 2006, the company has been relatively unnoticed due to the fact that it caters to the specific demographic of people who play "children's games." As time has passed, the company has continued to expand and provide assistance to the younger game developers who use the Roblox platform to distribute the games they create. Because of this, the company was able to establish a platform that operates in a manner analogous to a separate games industry. Roblox hosts its own games, was developed by its own staff, and organizes its own developer conferences.

Many of the platform's creators are currently feeling optimistic as a result of the company's current valuation. Now that the larger company has gone public, a number of developers are already discussing the possibility of purchasing their own stock. Alex Hicks, cofounder of a Roblox studio called Red Manta, told Polygon that he is thrilled about the public offering because it is "definitely bringing more attention to studios." Hicks is excited about the public offering because he believes it will help his studio attract more users. He went on to say, "A lot of children are already familiar with Roblox, but with the older audience, they're just beginning to scratch the surface." Roblox has been expanding for quite some time, and it is very likely that its creators will achieve a greater degree of widespread recognition in the years to come.