The current status of Roblox today would have been completely unfathomable for the average Roblox player five years ago.
Today, you can go up to any child or teenager, and there is an extremely high chance that they either play on it, or have heard about it.
The second half of the 2010s on Roblox have been nothing but nonstop exponential growth for the platform. Records are being shattered every year, and numbers in the billions are commonplace in statistics. For example:
- $1 billion is the estimated amount of revenue Roblox has generated on mobile alone.
- 10 games have over 1 billion place visits, including Welcome to Bloxburg, which is paid access.
- There are over 1.3 billion accounts registered, with over 100 million of them being active monthly users.
- Roblox was the 5th most viewed game on YouTube in 2019, with over 29.6 billion views.
How the 2010s Started
2010–2012
In 2010, almost half a decade had already passed since the inception of Roblox. However, if you had asked anyone back then whether they knew what Roblox was, you would almost be guaranteed that they would reply, “no.”
The community felt very close small too. The introduction of any new feature would cause opinions to be very vocal and widespread on site features such as the Forum, and long-lasting impressions on community members that were actively using them. The most popular games on the front page would only average around a couple hundred concurrent players.
It wasn’t like the website was completely unknown either. 2010 was the year Roblox received its first sponsored event from Disney XD.
Gift cards were also introduced in 2010. They were made available in the United States at Toys R Us, GameStop, Best Buy, and 7-Eleven stores.
By 2011, those gift cards were available in Canada and the United Kingdom. This was also the year Roblox had hosted their first ever convention, ROBLOX Rally 2011, in San Francisco.
2012 is the transition year between the extremely close community Roblox had, and their path towards the beginning of mainstream growth and success. Roblox was growing steadily during this time. In fact, Roblox was named one of the TIME Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2012, among sites such as Reddit, BuzzFeed, and The Verge.
Statistics began growing into the millions. According to blog posts by Roblox, games such as Base Wars: The Land received over 15,000,000 visits in 2012. Total gameplay hours exceeded 176.3 million. By the end of the year, Roblox was available to play on iOS.
2013–2015
Sales and events were numerous and prolific. One of the most successful events was Roblox Egg Hunt 2013, which broke the record for the most concurrent users at 19,000. The record wasn’t to be broken again until 2016, where the Egg Hunt that year crossed 36,000 concurrent players.
Roblox launched itself on to Twitch in 2014 as an attempt to expand into streaming platforms. What we currently know as the Bloxy Awards came into existence as a part of Virtual BLOXcon 2014, a 6-hour long Twitch stream, where Roblox also announced their release on Android.
By the end of 2015, Roblox was shaping up closely into what it is today. taymaster earned $50,000 in one month using the Developer Exchange, front page thumbnails were ditched in favor of icons, and smooth terrain was introduced.
Mainstream YouTubers Play Roblox
It could be argued that this is the fire that lit the match for Roblox’s explosive growth.
Gaming on YouTube had been consistently dominated by the game Minecraft ever since the start of the decade. It’s the game that exploded the popularity of gaming content on YouTube, launching it into what is currently now the all-time best selling video game. After its peak in 2013 however, there was a very steady and obvious decline.
One of the largest Minecraft YouTubers, DanTDM (known as TheDiamondMinecart at the time), chose to play Roblox after receiving numerous amounts of suggestions for him to play it. His videos were well received, receiving tens of millions of views, and thus he started to create more. Whatever he would play would immediately launch that game onto the front page.
Roblox YouTubers Becoming Mainstream
While YouTubers such as DanTDM migrated their Minecraft audience onto Roblox, those that switched their content into being Roblox-focused began to experience becoming mainstream.
YouTubers such as Tofuu and Poke originally started off with Minecraft videos, but gained millions of subscribers when they shifted towards Roblox content. The formation of The Pals, which included Denis and Sketch, provided a boy band like group to idolize.
A feedback loop began where massive groups of people were discovering Roblox, which gave it a larger player base. With a larger player base, developers became incentivized to create games of higher quality and more content. With an increase of quality, came an increase of revenue. An increase of revenue meant that Roblox was encouraged to empower developers to continue providing better games. Better games further attracted YouTubers and their audiences and increased the player base. Then the loop continued.
A Complete Overhaul
Roblox decided to coincide their largest site changes during its period of rapid growth. Focus on the general community started to fade as it started to become too large. More emphasis began to be placed on developers. Roblox was turning into what it now calls a platform that powers imagination, with a more hands off approach, while also providing more tools to allow developers to become more independent.
The Removal of Tickets
On March 15, 2016, David Baszucki made an announcement that was shocking, yet in hindsight, wasn’t a surprise. One of the largest features of the site, Tickets, which were introduced all the way back in 2007, were going to be discontinued. At the time, this was the largest change to the site.
Tickets, also known as Tix, were created in order to drive loyalty (as you earned 10 for each day you logged in), and participation (as each place visit would reward you with 1). It was one of the only ways for players to get items from the Catalog for free, as there were a few items released that could exclusively be purchased by Tix.
Unfortunately, as Roblox grew bigger, Tickets fell into the same fate as the Ambassador program. Inside of the announcement, the primary reasons stated for the removal were botting, and product simplicity.
Rebranding During Record Growth
After surpassing 900,000 peak concurrent users at the end of 2016, peaking in charts on Windows 10, Xbox One, and Google Play, and hitting 44 million monthly active players, Roblox carried out their second massive change.
David Baszucki unveiled the new Roblox logo on January 10, 2017, alongside a new trailer for it. The logo unveiled that day is what the current logo is, except with a red theme instead of the current gray one. It removed the Ō from RŌBLOX, and the branding guidelines indicated that the name would no longer be fully capitalized.
The Present
Roblox has began to completely erase traces of its past as it on the path towards expansion into the billions of active players. Growth can not come without losses, and an example of that was the removal of the Forums, which became impossible to maintain and moderate.
Recent removals and changes include events, Builders Club, the Robux icon, the Catalog being renamed Avatar Shop, and the selection of default characters.
Updates such as a new lighting system, the UGC Catalog, the removal of limits on the Developer Exchange, and allowing anyone to join up to 100 groups, have been positively received by the community, however.
Although Rthro, which aims to give Roblox characters human characteristics, has received very mixed opinions. Despite that, Roblox continues to aggressively push the feature by making it a dedicated section on the front page, and solely featuring Rthro characters in advertisements and sponsorships.
The Roblox Video Stars Program
It is clear that Roblox is aware of how it achieved its explosive growth.
The Roblox Video Stars program aims to support and incentivize Roblox video content creators, which usually have high amounts of influence on external platforms, to expand themselves. Benefits and perks include commissions through Star codes, promotion, the ability to create items for the UGC Catalog, and awards.
It’s very likely that you, the one reading this, are actively engaged with a Roblox YouTuber, or heard of Roblox through one. Roblox knows that in order to maintain and continue its current growth, it needs to support the force accelerating it.
The Future
The decade is over, and a new one has started. Roblox is beginning 2020s at the opposite direction it did in 2010. Awareness of the platform is at an all-time high.
The community is what will dictate what is to come in the future, and that includes you. Throughout what I’ve covered, it should be clear that one person can have a massive effect, and one person can be the start of something gigantic. It is obvious where Roblox is headed, and Roblox is heading towards a direction where it is up to us to give it an identity. Developers, artists, YouTubers, and players, all have a role.
What will you build?
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