Roblox: Low-Cost Online Entertainment Minimally Impacted by Any Economic Downturn

Online game platform and game creation system Roblox said Thursday (May 1) that it doesn’t expect any potential economic downturn to keep it from growing to account for 10% of the gaming market in terms of consumer spending.

Speaking during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Roblox Chief Financial Officer Mike Guthrie said the platform offers “relatively low-cost entertainment” and Founder and CEO David Baszucki noted that “we don’t import any physical components to assemble Roblox.”

Baszucki said Roblox was live in 2007 or 2008 and saw minimal impact during the economic downturn at that time.

“From a high level, Roblox is something where a majority of the people on our platform don’t spend money, and then for the others, these are small, incremental amounts — these aren’t cars and houses and vacation homes,” Baszucki said. “So, that makes me a bit optimistic.”

The executive made these remarks while reporting that Roblox exceeded its guidance in key metrics during the first quarter.

The company’s revenue rose 29% year over year to reach about $1.035 billion, while its bookings were up 31% to $1.207 billion, according to a Thursday earnings release.

In addition, its average daily active users were up 26% year over year to 97.8 million, its average monthly unique payers were up 29% to 20.2 million, and its hours engaged were up 30% to 21.7 billion, according to the release.

“We’ve shared publicly our goal and our belief is we’re going to see 10% of the gaming market by consumer spending on the Roblox platform,” Baszucki said during the call.

The company is currently at 3% of the gaming market, Guthrie said during the call.

One way the company aims to reach its goal is by making sure its platform supports properties across many genres, such as sports and racing, role playing and battle genres, Baszucki said.

Guthrie said during the call that Roblox’ bookings and bookings growth are no longer concentrated on a smaller number of experiences at the top in terms of popularity. Instead, over the past year, the experiences ranked No. 11 to No. 50 on the platform accelerated their growth from 5% to over 100%.

“So, that means more developers in the platform and frankly, more genres, which is very important as we strive to get 10% of the gaming market,” Guthrie said.