We’ve celebrated plenty of video games on this website, and honored many of them on the days of their anniversaries. With Roblox, though, it’s not fair to say it celebrated an anniversary yesterday, as it’s more like a birthday. How so? Well, it went only 19 years ago, and it has kept going ever since. That alone is worthy of praise, as longevity of this nature and the success that comes with it is incredibly rare in the gaming space. What truly separates it, though, is that in just the last few years, it’s exploded in popularity to the point that it’s technically the most popular gaming platform out there right now.
When Roblox first launched, it was hardly the biggest thing around, and we mean that both literally and figuratively. The point of this universe, as noted by its CEO, was to create a space where players could not only have fun but also add to the world in their own way. They were given freedom to create games and areas for others to partake in, thus making it a true community experience.
It took a while for it to get to that point, but it did happen, especially once creators got paid for the interactions that occurred in their space.
Fast forward to now, and the game has pretty much 90-100 million people on it every single day. That’s a huge deal. If you’re thinking, “Why isn’t this the biggest game ever?” That’s because of context. In a certain way, it IS the biggest game ever; however, it’s also a free-to-play title which takes a lot to make run. Furthermore, the game actually isn’t profitable despite all that happens within it and all the 3rd party advertising you see going on.
Many gamers honestly don’t play it for that long due to how it has a “drop in and out” nature to it. That helps bring it a lot of worldwide gamers, but it doesn’t help in other key factors, like profit.
It also doesn’t help that, from a certain point in its early days to now, Roblox has been one of the most infamous gaming titles around. It’s become a “haven” for predators, and while many within the community have called the dev team out for it, the team itself has only taken small steps to try and stop things, and has angered its community constantly as a result.
Even still, things don’t look to be slowing down for the title, and we’d bet if nothing drastic happens, its 20th birthday next year will be special.
