Kylie Robison/Business Insider
- Roblox, the gaming platform that soared to 32.6 million daily users, is going public this Wednesday.
- In 2020, the company paid out more than $328.74 million to Roblox game developers.
- Roblox games are built by independent developers – helping some teens pay for college.
- Read more on the Insider homepage.
The wildly popular gaming platform Roblox will go public Wednesday through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
Unlike "Minecraft" or "Fortnite," Roblox isn't exactly a game, but rather a platform where players can jump from one user-generated experience to the next. Roblox allows kids to play games created by others or try building games themselves.
Popular titles include "Adopt Me!" in which players "adopt" pets, care for them, and then share them with other players, and "Brookhaven," a game in which players can role-play in a large city and buy homes, vehicles, and other items. While all games are free to play, most offer premium features or benefits in exchange for Robux, an in-game currency that can be purchased for real money.
Developers get a 70% commission on all the Robux spent in their game, which can help young developers reel in significant amounts of money – in some cases, enough to pay for their college educations.
The stock will begin trading under the ticker RBLX on Wednesday. Its reference price of $45 per share, set Tuesday, was in line with its its most recent private funding valuation, though the actual offering price won't be known until trading begins.
Here are some eye-popping stats about Roblox ahead of its debut:
- The platform has 32.6 million daily active users as of 2020, an explosive surge from the 12 million it had in 2018
- There were over 18 million games, called "experiences," on Roblox as of September 30, 2020.
- In 2017, Roblox said that it would pay out $30 million to developers - that figure jumped to $328.74 million in 2020.
- Roblox users spent 22.2 billion hours engaged in gameplay in the first nine months of 2020, more than double the 10 billion hours in the first nine months of 2019
- Roblox said in July that it counts over half of all Americans under the age of 16 as users
- Its valuation soared from $4 billion in early 2020 to $30 billion in early 2021 as it raised $520 million in fresh funding
- The most popular games can have 500,000 concurrent players during peak times.
- The pet simulation game "Adopt Me!" became the first game in the platform's history to cross a total of 20 billion visits in November 2020, and at the time of writing, it had 391,000 concurrent players.
- The role-playing game "Brookhaven" has 457,000 concurrent players at the time of writing.