Apr 4
Gaby Del Valle
Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is ‘a gift’
Image: Roblox
Roblox, one of the most popular gaming platforms in the world, has taken a lot of heat from critics who accuse it of exploiting its users, the vast majority of whom are children and teenagers. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, however, Roblox’s studio head, Stefano Corazza, said the platform has actually been a gift to the young developers who make money by creating games on the platform.
“You can say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labor,’ right? Or you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income,” Corazza said. “So I can be like, 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now with just a laptop, I can create something, make money, and then sustain my life.” (An unidentified Roblox PR person present during the interview told Eurogamer that most of the developers earning money on Roblox are 18 or older.)
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Apr 4
Alex Heath
Roblox heads to Washington
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge, Photo by Jerod Harris / Getty Images
In late January, a handful of social media CEOs were hauled before Congress to testify about what they were and weren’t doing to project kids on their services. Noticeably absent from the group was Roblox, the gaming-meets-hangout platform that is, to put it mildly, quite popular among young people.
“I watched that, and I had so many thoughts and so many feelings because we’ve been building safety for going on 20 years,” Roblox CEO and co-founder David Baszucki tells me. “And so after I saw that, independent of the Senate hearing, I thought, ‘I have to get out there and start talking to these people.’”
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Feb 5
Emilia David
Roblox releases real-time AI chat translator
Illustration: The Verge
Roblox built an AI model that it says translates text chats so quickly users may not even notice it’s translating the messages of other players at first. It works with 16 languages, including English, French, Japanese, Thai, Polish, and Vietnamese.
Dan Sturman, Roblox CTO, said in an interview with The Verge that the goal is to make Roblox users feel more comfortable engaging with each other by letting them understand what they are saying. The translator automatically translates chats, but users can click an icon to see the original message.
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Dec 14, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox has a new music-themed metaverse experience, too.
The experience, called Beat Galaxy, was made in part by Universal Music Group (UMG), and features a runner / music game you can play with music from UMG artists. It’s not nearly as polished as Epic’s newly-launched Fortnite Festival, but if you’ve been looking for something like that in Roblox, Beat Galaxy is in the ballpark.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Dec 1, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox’s chatbot assistant for developers is available now in beta.
The Assistant, which Roblox recently showed off at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference, can answer questions, insert scripts, explain code, and generate materials for in-game assets, according to a post on Roblox’s developer forums.
Many game studios are experimenting with AI tools for making games, but some developers worry about how the tools could affect their jobs. Roblox seems very invested in AI; CEO David Baszuckihas said the company is aiming for Westworld-like ease of design with its generative AI tools.
Image: Roblox
Nov 15, 2023
Jay Peters
You can now buy subscriptions in Roblox experiences that offer them.
The company rolled out the ability for developers to make them in September, and now, if you want, users can actually start paying for them. I’m curious to see if or how this might change the way Roblox developers build businesses around their experiences — subscriptions in the App Store ended up being a huge deal, after all.
Subscriptions within experiences: Now available for users to purchase
[https://devforum.roblox.com/]
Nov 14, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is launching its take on video calls.
You can read more about the launch of Roblox Connect on the company’s developer forum. Roblox is also introducing APIs so that developers can build Roblox Connect into their experiences.
Roblox is putting its own spin on video chat
Jay Peters
Nov 8, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is still popular — and still growing.
Here’s just a few stats from its Q3 2023 earnings:
📈 Average daily active users hit “a new milestone” of 70.2 million, up 20 percent from the same quarter last year
📈 Daily active users grew across “all age groups”
📈 Average monthly unique players (MUP) hit 14.7 million, while the average bookings per MUP was $19.02
Basically, more and more people are playing Roblox, and many of them are spending money, too. I have to imagine the expansions to PlayStation and Meta Quest have helped.
Oct 20, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is taking less money from subscriptions, but for a limited time.
If a developer introduces subscriptions before December 15th, Roblox says it will only take a 15 percent cut of those subscriptions instead of 30 percent, according to a post on its developer forum. However, that reduced rate will only be in place through March 15th, 2024. And, importantly, the “fee savings” from the reduced rate will be paid in a lump sum in April, Roblox says.
You can read more about Roblox’s subscription plans in my post from September.
Roblox is rolling out in-experience subscriptions, but you can’t buy them yet
Jay Peters
Oct 19, 2023
Jay Peters
Here’s your TL;DR on some Roblox news tidbits.
In this blog post about how the platform connects people, Roblox said that:
😀 You’ll be able to customize the names you see for your Roblox friends “in the next month.”
📱The company will make it easier to share in-Roblox captures, using a GIF to show what that might look like.
📞 “Eventually,” you’ll be able to use Roblox’s new Roblox Connect video call feature to call people from within a Roblox experience.
Oct 17, 2023
Jay Peters
Here’s a few more things I wanted to share about Roblox.
In addition to Tuesday’s news that Roblox is asking employees to return to its offices, I have a few other Roblox tidbits you might be interested in.
🎮 Roblox launched on PlayStation last week, and it already has more than 10 million downloads, spokesperson Samantha Spielman tells The Verge.
😀 The company published a long blog post on Tuesday about how it’s “evolving” its avatar technology to make it more modern. It’s an interesting read, though there’s no news.
📺 Earlier this month, the company added the ability for developers to include short videos into their experiences. I worry this feature could be used for bad, but the company says videos must adhere to its community standards.
Roblox says employees must return to office because the metaverse still isn’t good enough
Jay Peters
Oct 17, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox says employees must return to office because the metaverse still isn’t good enough
Illustration: The Verge
Roblox — a company that builds a hugely popular virtual experiences platform, recently introduced its own spin on video chat, and even created an in-Roblox career center — is “transitioning away” from remote work and will be asking “a number of our remote employees to begin working from our headquarters in San Mateo by next summer,” CEO David Baszucki wrote in an email to staff shared publicly on Tuesday.
Like many other companies, Roblox will be shifting to a model where employees are expected to work three days in the office (Tuesday through Thursday). Staffers will have until January 16th, 2024, to decide if they want to stay on at the company under the new rules. If an employee chooses to stay at Roblox and relocate, the company will help with relocation costs and expects them to report into the company’s San Mateo, California, offices by July 15th, 2024.
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Oct 10, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is now available on PlayStation.
After an announcement last month, Roblox has officially been released for PS4 and PS5. Roblox is already available on a bunch of other platforms, including PC, iOS, Android, Xbox, and even Meta’s Quest VR headsets.
Sep 27, 2023
Jay Peters
The CEO of Bumble says that the metaverse is “kind of contrary to everything I believe in in terms of getting humans to look each other in the eye.”
Roblox CEO David Baszucki thinks people will be dating in Roblox, but at Code 2023, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd doesn’t sound like a fan of that idea. “Maybe that is how people will originally connect,” she said, but noted that “I will be much more sad for humanity than myself if people just stop really meeting in real life.”
Sep 27, 2023
Jay Peters
I asked David Baszucki about the potential of interoperability between different virtual worlds platforms.
The short answer seems to be no. But in his response, he talked a lot about file formats and how they might differ for things like a pair of virtual shoes and wheels that fall off a virtual car. That might make any interchangeability would be a tricky problem to solve; companies like Roblox, Meta, and Epic Games would have to agree on file formats that could sync across systems. My sense is they might be reticent to do that right now.
Sep 27, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox hasn’t given up on China.
The company shut down the Chinese version of its app that was operated by Tencent in early 2022, but Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki says that the company is still working on something for the Chinese market.
The idea would be that Roblox can “literally print a copy of Roblox in China and bring it to market there” and that Roblox would have less and less data going back and forth between the US and China.
Sep 19, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is rolling out in-experience subscriptions, but you can’t buy them yet
Image: Roblox
Roblox is now rolling out the ability for developers to create subscriptions that they can sell in their experiences, according to a forum post. The company announced in July that it was working on these tools, saying that they could help developers “establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earning,” and now developers can actually start to plan out their offerings.
Roblox users won’t be able to buy subscriptions just yet, however; that won’t be possible until sometime in November, according to the post. When they can, users will pay for subscriptions in their local currency, but the money will make its way to developers as Robux, Roblox’s on-platform currency.
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Sep 14, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is finally coming to PlayStation
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Roblox will finally be available on PlayStation soon. At its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) on Friday, Roblox announced that its popular social and gaming app is coming to PS4 and PS5 in October. And during Sony’s September 14th State of Play, the company announced that the game would be released on October 10th.
Roblox, which is free to download, is already out on a bunch of platforms, including PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and Xbox, but the lack of support for Sony’s consoles has felt like a notable hole in Roblox’s lineup. There have been some clues that a PlayStation version has been in the works, though: a 2022 job listing indicated that Roblox was hiring for a PlayStation engineer, and CEO David Baszucki hinted on an August earnings call that the company has been looking at bringing the app to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
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Sep 8, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is putting its own spin on video chat
Image: Roblox
Roblox is launching its own take on video chat called Roblox Connect, the company announced at its Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) 2023 on Friday. The feature, which is set to launch later this year, lets you chat with other people as your Roblox avatar, and your avatar will be able to mimic your real-life facial movements. The call will also take place in a shared virtual space that you can run around in, like a campsite or a dock.
Roblox is already designed to be a social app where you can use text and voice chat to keep in touch while exploring virtual experiences with your friends, so it’s not too much of a stretch for the company to make a video-focused feature that’s also designed as a place to hang out and talk. It’s also an easy way for Roblox to show off its recently launched facial animations. (I have to imagine Roblox Connect will be Roblox’s preferred way to do interviews at its in-Roblox career center, especially when paired with Roblox’s plan to introduce support for real names.)
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Sep 8, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is going to let creators that make assets and tools keep nearly all of their sales
Image: Roblox
Roblox is going to let creators that sell assets and tools for other creators on its marketplace keep all of the revenue from their sales minus taxes and payment processing fees, the company announced at its Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) 2023 on Friday. The change goes into effect starting sometime next year.
This will be a big change — though it will only apply to sales on the Creator Marketplace, which is for creators to sell to creators, and not to sales on the Marketplace (formerly Avatar Shop) where people can sell avatar-related goods.
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Sep 8, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox’s new AI chatbot will help you build virtual worlds
Image: Roblox
Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app. The new tool, the Roblox Assistant, builds on previously announced features that let creators build virtual assets and write code with the help of generative AI.
With the Roblox Assistant, creators will be able to type in prompts to do things like generate virtual environments. In one demo, somebody types in “I want to make a game set in ancient ruins,” and Roblox drops in some stones, moss-covered columns, and broken architecture. “Make the player spawn by a campfire in the ruins” adds a campfire and a stool. “Add some trees for the player to chop down” adds trees nearby. Roblox will grab assets from either its marketplace or your own visual asset library, according to Roblox spokesperson Roman Skuratovskiy.
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Aug 16, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is about to let users sell custom-made avatar bodies and heads
Image: The Verge
Roblox will let users sell “full avatar bodies and standalone heads” that they create by Thursday, Roblox said in a post on its developer forums (via VentureBeat). The new line of creator-made virtual goods (something Roblox calls user-generated content, or UGC) could help more people build businesses on Roblox, which might keep them from making things for competing metaverse platforms like Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Epic Games’ Fortnite.
There will be some limits on what users can sell. The bodies and heads must follow the company’s community standards, marketplace policy, and “pass proactive checks against Roblox IP,” so you won’t be able to sell an obvious Shrek look-alike. Bodies will need to have “modesty layers built in,” which is a good restriction for a platform that’s very popular with children. The sellable parts will have to be within the limits of a maximum and minimum size so that the avatar functions properly across different experiences.
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Aug 10, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox makes an in-Roblox career center that’s all about Roblox
Roblox has created a virtual career center inside Roblox where people can learn more about the metaverse platform, prepare for interviews at the company, and attend events hosted by Roblox itself, according to a blog post. In the future, some initial interviews will even happen directly in the experience, Roblox says.
You can get an idea of what it looks like in this video, which I’ve also embedded at the top of the post. “You’ll see what it’s like to work here and how you can join us in shaping the future of human connection and communication,” says a voiceover in the clip. In the experience, you can go to places like a lobby (with plaques featuring the company’s values), a library, an auditorium, a boba cafe, and more.
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Aug 9, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox is aiming for Westworld-like ease of design with generative AI tools
Illustration: The Verge
Roblox CEO David Baszucki envisions that its generative AI systems might someday work in a way that’s somewhat similar to what you might have seen on the sci-fi show Westworld, based on comments during Roblox’s Q2 2023 earnings call on Wednesday.
The Westworld comparison came up as part of a longer answer about how AI might be able to help Roblox developers.
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Aug 2, 2023
Jay Peters
Roblox on Quest VR headsets has gotten ‘well over’ 1 million downloads
Illustration: The Verge
Roblox just launched in open beta on Meta’s Quest VR headsets last week, and it’s already been downloaded “well over” 1 million times, according to Roblox CEO David Baszucki. That number suggests that the app could potentially be a very popular one for VR devices; according to a February report from The Verge’s Alex Heath, Meta has sold nearly 20 million headsets, so it appears that a good number of those Quest owners are dabbling with Roblox.
That said, Roblox and Meta have been positioning this open beta as a way for developers to test and optimize their experiences for Quest headsets, and for good reason: I’ve tried a few Roblox experiences on a Quest 2 and run into a handful of issues. But I imagine that many of the most popular Roblox experiences will get fixed up before the app officially launches for Quest headsets.
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