Roblox: Hugely Popular, Yet Unprofitable
Matthew Ball has written an excellent deep-dive into Roblox:
Compared to its most similar competitors — the social virtual
world platforms, Minecraft and Fortnite — Roblox has about 5× and
2.25× as many monthly players. For non-gamers, Roblox has about
two thirds as many monthly users as Spotify and half as many as
Snap (though it probably has a lower share of daily-to-monthly
active users) and is roughly as popular as Instagram circa Q4
2015, and Facebook in Q3 2009.
Each month, players spend close to six billion hours using Roblox.
This time excludes the viewing of Roblox content on Twitch or
YouTube, the largest video platform on earth and which counts
non-live gaming content as its second most popular genre, with
Roblox one of its five most watched games. Most estimates suggest
the average Disney+ account watches no more than 20 hours per
month, which would mean about 3.1 billion hours in total monthly
watch time — barely half of Roblox’s total.
But:
So yes, Roblox is unquestionably “working.” Yet Roblox is also
unprofitable. Very unprofitable. What’s more, Roblox’s losses
continue to swell because its impressive rate of revenue growth
has been outpaced by that of its costs. […] Over the last twelve
months it has averaged $138 in costs for every $100 in revenue.
★
Matthew Ball has written an excellent deep-dive into Roblox:
Compared to its most similar competitors — the social virtual
world platforms, Minecraft and Fortnite — Roblox has about 5× and
2.25× as many monthly players. For non-gamers, Roblox has about
two thirds as many monthly users as Spotify and half as many as
Snap (though it probably has a lower share of daily-to-monthly
active users) and is roughly as popular as Instagram circa Q4
2015, and Facebook in Q3 2009.
Each month, players spend close to six billion hours using Roblox.
This time excludes the viewing of Roblox content on Twitch or
YouTube, the largest video platform on earth and which counts
non-live gaming content as its second most popular genre, with
Roblox one of its five most watched games. Most estimates suggest
the average Disney+ account watches no more than 20 hours per
month, which would mean about 3.1 billion hours in total monthly
watch time — barely half of Roblox’s total.
But:
So yes, Roblox is unquestionably “working.” Yet Roblox is also
unprofitable. Very unprofitable. What’s more, Roblox’s losses
continue to swell because its impressive rate of revenue growth
has been outpaced by that of its costs. […] Over the last twelve
months it has averaged $138 in costs for every $100 in revenue.