Roblox floated in NYE valued at £30bn

David Baszucki’s video-game platform Roblox is being floated on the New York Stock Exchange valued at £21.6bn ( $30bn) and hopes to become the center of Metaverse- an online world not just for gaming but for work and learning as well.

Roblox, a marketplace where you can create games, pick and choose whether you play an adventure game, a shooter, or a puzzle, is the world’s largest user-generated games site, free to play, solely relying on purchases paid for in currency known as Robux, where players use building components to create and share online worlds that anyone can explore.

More than 1250 developers earned at least $10, 000 in Robux in 2020, and 300 earned more than $100, 000.

Roblox is available on various platforms including PCs, Xbox to apps on iPhones and Android devices.

Lockdown spurred a huge boost to Roblox, as children who were physically cut off from their friends embraced it as daily active users leaped 85 per cent in 2020 and have now 37 million users globally. Three in four US children between nine and 12 are on it, and also one in two UK-based 10-year-olds.

Over 200 million have played it at least once a month according to tacking site RTrax, making a 67 per cent increase on the same month a year earlier.

The average time people play on Roblox is about 2 hours 36 minutes per day.

With the popularity comes issues as well, as Scammers and hacker lurk, eager to steal kid’s hard-earned Robux and also been attempts to groom children.

Mr. Baszucki said: “We’ll see a shift in the way people play, work, and learn or simply hang out in 2021. Some of these connections will move into the Metaverse, a digital place where people seamlessly get together and interact in millions of 3D virtual experiences.”

In September, Game developer Epic Games announced a three-week-long concert series that took place on the Game’s Party Royale Island., where Epic built a studio space in Los Angeles, with a large LED wall and floor and remotely operated Robocams, hoping the future is to add mixed and augmented-reality effects to it.

Roblox also hosted American rapper Lil Nas who performed a virtual concert in November attended it, 33 million times and the firm held an event for its own staff at Christmas complete with a nightclub and bar.