What is the true goal of a video game company? It honestly depends on the company and who’s running it. For many gamers, they hope that the “true goal” is to ensure that the best games possible are released; that way, they can enjoy them and look forward to whatever comes next. However, what is also true is that these companies need to make a certain amount of money to be successful. Finding that balance between “quality and profit” has tripped up many over the last several years, and you have to wonder if Roblox might head down that path if it’s not careful.
The reason we say that is that Roblox CEO David Baszucki was talking with Yahoo Finance and stated that he wanted the company to have a much bigger stake in the gaming industry as a whole:
“We’ve shared that the gaming market is a $190 billion market, and we have the goal of having 10% of that run on our Roblox platform. We’re starting to see more content that’s appealing. So all of these things are really creating an ecosystem for better content, a wider range of people all around the world.”
Currently, the game is doing rather well on the player count side of things. During their latest financial briefing, the company revealed that gamer numbers were up year-to-year, including having over 90 million daily users. That’s insane. Plus, when you factor in a certain gardening title that’s been getting plenty of player focus, they were breaking records that even Steam couldn’t catch up to. That should show you the impact that they’re having.
However, while it’s fair for the CEO to want a ‘bigger piece of the pie,’ that’s not exactly the right mindset to have if you ignore the other issues going on in the game right now. For example, while the game dev team has been doing very well with expanding upon user features and allowing them more freedom with creation, there have been just as many complaints about things like safety features and how easy it is for its underage audience to use microtransactions without parental consent.
Another thing is that the game itself is still unprofitable, so you have to ask if the CEO wants that “bigger gaming audience” to help lift the game up or to simply finally get the game in the black. Two things can be true at once, just so you know.
