What is Roblox and why does it have momentum?

Online gamer and game controller.

What is Roblox, why is it different and does it have real momentum? Roblox is a gaming platform and app that offers players a broad array of user-created games, but not until 2020 did the platform seen a surge in popularity.

In late 2019, Roblox was valued at $4 billion but on March 10th, 2021 when Roblox went public, it closed its first day of trading at a valuation of $45 billion. Momentum for Roblox over the past year has been relatively consistent as it has retained a larger portion of the conversation volume over the past 12 months. From March of 2020 to March of 2021 its MFactor has gone from 90 to 98.

The MFactor of Roblox. MFactor is a proprietary tool that measures cultural momentum through topic modeling and sentiment analysis.

From its release in 2006, Roblox has seen a steady increase in popularity, particularly among school-aged users. Amid the 2020 quarantine, however, its popularity surged. Today, Roblox has a whopping 32.6 million daily active users, a majority of which are under age 13—that’s nearly double the 2019 average of 17.6 million users.

Roblox 2020 Revenue

Owing to the pandemic and quarantine, kids have spent significantly more time indoors and significantly more money online. In 2020, a record $56.9 billion was spent on gaming, up 27 percent from 2019. Microsoft reported $5 billion in quarterly gaming revenue for the first time ever and Sony reported a 62 percent profit jump that same quarter. Roblox’s successful IPO is evidence of the economic impact of kids’ spending.

Will Roblox Maintain Momentum?

Relaxed lockdown measures in certain states already have some investors worried about the growth opportunity for Roblox. While it’s unlikely that Roblox will repeat its 2020 successes in 2021, CEO and founder David Baszucki isn’t worried. He believes in the future of the platform because of “the amazing users [they’ve] gathered.”