12 ms·

Roblox S-1

320 points by xoxoy 6y ago

okokok___ 6y ago
this is the s-1 I've been waiting for
par 6y ago
My 6 year old is going to be fired up for IPO day for this one.
ahmadss 6y ago
"Roblox is absolutely wild It has 110MM MAUs + delivers an est 1.25 BILLION hours of entertainment each month It does this not because it makes a good "game", but because players make games/worlds/experiences for and with one another This only exhausts when imagination does" --https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1236773493372596224 https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1236773493372596224
- cycop 6y ago
  My kids have access to some of the best games in their Steam library, but most of the time they prefer to discover new games on Roblox. I just hope they don't force advertising into the Roblox worlds, that would destroy the experience.
  - ricefield 6y ago
    I recently had a director reach out to me about joining their team to work on rebuilding an ad system from scratch, so unfortunately your fear may very well be valid.
    - chabad360 6y ago
      The ads are not in game, they appear only on the website and are solely for advertising other games.
      - ehnto 6y ago
        I think it would be naive to not imagine advertising as part of the long term strategy for a platform like this. After they go public, it's going to be a big tool in their toolkit for profitability.
        Kaveren 6y ago
        exact opposite, they've made a 180 on advertising. there used to be external offsite ads shown on the website, which were removed. there used to be a developer API to show video ads for revenue within games, which was removed. they've cut down heavily on event promotions from companies (think movies that appeal to kids) they have an extremely high revenue business model off actual customers, so they don't really need to do advertising, there's plenty of other ways to get more profitable. for example, they're at the scale where they might be able to do what Dropbox did by running more of their own infrastructure to save big.
      - Buge 6y ago
        It looks like currently their ads are all player-created, for their own content. For example refresh this page and see the banner at the top: https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=0 https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=0 But I seem to recall in the past there used to be some regular ads. For example see this archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20120427192637/http://www.roblox.com:80/Catalog.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120427192637/http://www.roblox... which has this embedded iframe: https://web.archive.org/web/20120308000433if_/http://www.roblox.com/Ads/IFrameAdContent.aspx?v=2&slot=Roblox_Default_Top_728x90&format=banner&v=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20120308000433if_/http://www.rob... which has Adsense javascript embedded in it.
        glaring 6y ago
        Correct, they used to display regular ads on their website (but never in the actual games) for those users that did not purchase the Premium subscription. Users with the premium subscription would then see only user-created ads for user-created content. It was honestly quite jarring and this new approach is better for developers on the platform, as they can reach way more people.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Most games are already full of ads for Robux microtransactions.
    - diegof79 6y ago
      Sadly that’s true. I’m very careful with the screen time of my 6yo kid, but the pandemic made it very hard. Many of his friends in the school started to use Roblox. So I played with him to check it, it ended with me uninstalling it: First time use and you’ll see tons of in-app purchases to build your character (all optional but kids that are starting to read cannot tell the difference), then the app is like the Wild West of ads and special offers. The Apple store classifies the app as 12+, and I think they are right (as a father I started to see the appeal of the closed App Store and Apple Arcade). The sad part is that it could be a great platform to experiment creating games and coding, is like the Alan Kay vision of Croquet but perverted by ads.
      - boogies 6y ago
        Minetest¹ is one game that I think in theory could be a great creative platform for kids, it’s kind of Minecraft + Roblox — a Minecraft clone except everything besides the most basic engine functionality — even mobs — is implemented as a mod — which is just a Lua script + (3D model, texture, and/or sound) assets. Edit: and each server can have any mods it wants and the client will load any it doesn’t have locally. [1]: https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/
      - RHSeeger 6y ago
        Honestly, it's not all that different from something like the Play Store. There's a LOT of games that are trying to get people (who don't know any better) to spend money. But there's also a lot of real quality games, too. Many of the best games have the option to spend money, but don't shove it down your throat. As an example, I played Bee Swarm Simulator with my daughter and I really enjoyed it. I decided to buy some robux and spend it on the game.I did this not because it gave me something I needed to enjoy the game, but because I felt the developer deserved it for creating something that entertained me.
  - philjohn 6y ago
    My daughter did that at first - now she has a private server where she and her friends (all 9 years old) build their own games to play with each other. They all build 3D models in the world builder, and even some Lua scripting to alter mechanics. It's a pretty neat way of getting kids into game dev.
    - yalogin 6y ago
      Can you please tell me more about the private server and how you set it up?
      - HomeDeLaPot 6y ago
        If I had to guess, they're using the "places" that every user gets allocated. You can have a bunch of them, but only so many active at once. Maybe you can adjust the privacy settings for a place to allow only your friends. Roblox does all the hosting and provides the IDE (Roblox Studio) and everything. All the games on Roblox are somebody's "place" that they've made public and developed into a fun game. This is from my own experience >5 years ago, so it could be outdated.
      - nomel 6y ago
        The owner of a "place" (game saved from the editor to the Roblox cloud) can set the permissions for who can participate in the live, collaborative, editing environment (invite basis), and who can play it (public, friends, or editors). The only problem with the collaborative editing (which is very very cool) is that it's really easy to click and delete/move/duplicate huge chunks of the game without realizing it. But, if you save often, the built in version control is really nice. It's pretty neat though, except for the marketplace is absolutely filled with assets that contain malware. A script can be linked with any object in the game, used to give the object life. But, that script has nearly global control. I think the scripting and standard libraries would really benefit from a huge overhaul, but it's pretty neat. There's quite a bit of friction getting started though. Much of it isn't intuitive, with magic undocumented names required, and you'll usually find well meaning, but very beginner, game developers providing colorful information in the forums.
      - 6y ago
  - gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
    Why? Because of two things: you do not need to re-learn a UI (the same way people would play mods in W3, CS, etc.) and because it is hard/there is friction in starting a new game. Think about it, why do you spend hours thinking about what movie you're going to watch on Netflix just to re-watch a movie you've already watched? It's easier for your brain.
    - tudorw 6y ago
      People watch movies twice? TIL
      - gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
        I do it all the time, TV shows as well.
- phkahler 6y ago
  How is minecraft doing these days?
  - derwiki 6y ago
    Not really an answer, but my niece loved Roblox and said “Minecraft is for boys”
    - dlhavema 6y ago
      My girls ( 8 and 9 ) love Minecraft. Especially any kind of dragon mod.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If my kids (late elementary, early middle school) and their friends are any guide, it's doing extremely well. The thing my kids most consistently spend their allowance on is hypixel (a minecraft curated multiplayer server with some scenario-based games is the best way I can describe it).
    - abraae 6y ago
      I found my 8 year old playing hypixel. I know jack about Minecraft, so I couldn't understand how come he was having some kind of chat dialog with someone. The only thing I've ever shown him on his Fedora laptop was how to log in, open a terminal and and start Minecraft from the command line. It seems that he taught himself to find the web browser, then find google, then search for Minecraft resources, then enter urls for Hypixel and Mineplex into Minecraft. I was torn between pride and trepidation of what's to come.
      - raunakdag 6y ago
        As someone who’s 17 - this is exactly how I learned about computers, but when I was 7 (so 10 years ago yeah). I will say that my parents turned on a chat filter pretty quickly, as incredible amounts of obscene stuff was posted on lots of the random servers I played on. Hypixel is pretty great (I actually still play sometimes!), and they have a good curse filter and it’s definitely family friendly. To be honest, I spent a ridiculous amount of time on MineCraft over the past 10 years (definitely over 5k+ hours), and it’s taught me an incredible amount. It’s where I picked up my first O Reilly book, on Minecraft mods, where I learned for the first time how to self host a server, and also where I made some really great friends. I’d be more worried about your kid finding something like social media FROM Minecraft - for example, I spent a ridiculous amount of time on Reddit, which I found through MC. As a kid whose parents don’t really care about what I do on the internet, unlimited access to viewing whatever I wanted wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
- gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
  My theory for making platforms that make money is: facilitate competition or creation. Any platform that facilitates competition or creation is ripe for $$$.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  Link from the tweet: https://www.matthewball.vc/all/digitalthemeparkplatforms https://www.matthewball.vc/all/digitalthemeparkplatforms Exciting, because I've been waiting for these platforms for like 15 years, since I played Warcraft 3. But also bittersweet, because I have already resigned to having to eventually make one myself, and now it's done.
desireco42 6y ago
Maybe I should get my kids a stock of their favorite game.
- briffle 6y ago
  We are doing that. Going to give each of them some shares, so we can teach them how stocks work
  - bentcorner 6y ago
    Are you doing anything special here, or just buying some in your brokerage account and telling them "Hi <kid>, you have <n> shares in RBLX"?
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      There are "minor" brokerage accounts that are co-signed by the parents and ultimately end up on the tax forms of the parents[0]. I had one at 16, but unsure if there's a lower age limit. [0]https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/can-someone-not-yet-legal-age-open-brokerage-account/ https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/can-someone-not-yet...
- Bluecobra 6y ago
  It would be a much better ROI then converting real money to Robux. All my daughter wants now is Robux (even her allowance) so she could buy crappy 3d items in the crappy 3d game she plays. People are actually selling/buying these items on eBay like they did years ago for Everquest/WoW.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Same with my son. For his birthday he wanted Robux over everything else. Some new Jordans? Where am I going to wear them? XBox Series X? Not yet. But I feel like every new fad has this. He spent all of his money on Pokemon cards years ago, that he never touches now. What's amazing is how Roblox has made an actual marketplace and scarcity for virtual items that have no monetary backing.
x87678r 6y ago
My daughter's class are all at home and often they're playing roblox during class. If we let her it'd be all day all night 7 days a week. Games look boring AF to me, but tweens seem to love em.
- leftnode 6y ago
  I had the same thought when my 10 year old showed me the games he plays on Roblox. Absolutely awful graphics, gameplay, "story", etc, but they are _obsessed_ with them.
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    On the other hand the graphics are simple enough that it runs smoothly on phones, tablets, and hand-me-down computers from the mid-2000s, which is what many kids are running. It's gotten my eldest son into Lua programing and 3D modelling, so I have no problems with the platform as it currently is. A few of the games/servers were interesting: Phantom Forces was a reasonably well polished FPS, and the Murder Mystery games (sneaky murderer vs sheriff and villagers, typical social deduction/betrayal game) were pretty fun. Hoping it doesn't get completely and totally overrun with ads.
  - dgr582systems 6y ago
    I think part of it (as some other comments have alluded to) is that maybe the low quality production brings the kids closer to it because they feel like they could possibly build something if they wanted to. Or that someone like them built the game they are playing. It’s perhaps more relatable than some ultra polished AAA title.
    - bemmu 6y ago
      Not even just a feeling - they really can build these experiences themselves. I just watched our 5-year old kitbash together a city full of cars in about 4 hours, which is now online for anyone to visit. I find the platform very appealing even as an adult, as you can script in Lua, and then watch as hundreds of visitors interact with what you just wrote. This week I hacked the Bad Apple music video to run on Roblox, and then had a great time seeing people react to it.
xoxoy 6y ago
On the one hand I think this will do really well in public markets and will probably buy some on the first day. On the other as someone who doesn’t play and doesn’t have kids it’s a bit unsettling seeing some of these engagement numbers eg average daily play time is 2.5 hours per active user. That sounds like a massive time suck. Perhaps one could justify this as inciting creativity and there’s a social aspect to it but spending hours a day on this can’t be healthy long term.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  Games like Roblox and Minecraft have an inherently social aspect to them in addition to being mostly creativity-based. Not only they allow to emulate some of the social contacts that are currently impossible due to the pandemic, they also make some things possible at all due to the flexibility of the game engines that does not exist in reality. (Compare e.g. asking the question of "Do you know how to make TNT? I need some for an experiment" on a Minecraft server and on a busy airport.)
  - xoxoy 6y ago
    there’s a balance. 2.5 hours spent on average means there’s kids spending much longer on this each day. i get there’s a creativity aspect to it but it still seems like a lot of time, to the point where it’s likely bordering on addiction level.
    - Cyph0n 6y ago
      I feel you haven’t played MMOs or online games in general. Yes, they can become a time sink, but there are worse time sinks out there ;) Edit: Note that I and others from my generation grew up spending hours playing MMOs, and we turned out fine. As responsibilities come up to the forefront, the majority of people adapt. I think the more concerning trend is social media addiction. With games, there is at least an interactive element. Social media use is as passive as you can get.
- cma 6y ago
  > Perhaps one could justify this as inciting creativity and there’s a social aspect to it but spending hours a day on this can’t be healthy long term. I wonder how that number changed with the pandemic. Also, it sounds better than one-way TV kids grew up watching for similar amounts of time each day.
mattfrommars 6y ago
Loving the risk factor section > We have experienced rapid growth in the three months ended June 30, 2020, September 30, 2020 and for a portion of the three months ended March 31, 2020, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic given our users have been online more as a result of global COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies. For example, our bookings increased 171% from the nine-months ended September 30, 2019 to the nine months ended September 30, 2020. We do not expect these activity levels to be sustained, and in future periods we expect growth rates for our revenue to decline, and we may not experience any growth in bookings or our user base during periods where we are comparing against COVID-19 impacted periods (i.e. the three months ended March 31, 2020, June 30, 2020, and September 30, 2020). Our historical revenue, bookings and user base growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance. We believe our overall acceptance, revenue growth and increases in bookings depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to: > We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We have incurred net losses since our inception, and we expect to continue to incur net losses in the near future. We incurred net losses of $97.2 million, $86.0 million, and $203.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. As of September 30, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $484.0 million.
- ricefield 6y ago
  > We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. This is boilerplate and isn't notable. [0] [0]: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-to-read-an-s1/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-to-read-an-s1/
  - pdmfz 6y ago
    Agreed but what is noticeable is how much greater the losses are this year (with still three months to go). 2018: $97.2m 2019: $86.0m 2020: $203.2m
    - darkwizard42 6y ago
      While in a vacuum larger losses aren't painting the full picture, but then if you take their revenue growth only increasing by 70% into context it looks even worse!
rel2thr 6y ago
Very hyped for this, the next generation of superstar coders and entrepreneurs are going to grow up in roblox
- okokok___ 6y ago
  Yeah, I've been looking at getting into myself. I couldn't find many resources last time I looked though. Does anyone have any?
  - hokumguru 6y ago
    The Roblox Wiki is an astounding piece of documentation.
    - glaring 6y ago
      Additionally, the Developer Forum is full of people willing to help and collaborate on things.
      - okokok___ 6y ago
        Thanks!
    - okokok___ 6y ago
      Thanks!
- QuinnWilton 6y ago
  I grew up learning to program on Roblox 14 years ago, and more than a few of my friends from back then are now wildly successful engineers. It's only gotten more advanced since then, and if I were a parent, I'd love for my kids to be making games on the platform.
- ermir 6y ago
  I always believed tools and games like these had great potential, and always wanted to make something like Roblox, but it's too capital intensive for my situation. I learned the basics of computing and programming by modding games in the early 2000s, with custom Starcraft maps being the most instructive. The web offers the possibility of authorship and distribution that simply don't exist in any other platform.
stu2b50 6y ago
Don't consider Roblox a traditional game. It's basically Gmod for kids and with official corporate support and a official way for developers to wring money out of its consumers with micro transactions. More platform than game. It's really easy for developers to develop a game, easily implement real money transactions, and have an audience.
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  My 8 year old and 5 year old girls spend literally their entire allowance on Robux. They would spend literally the entire day playing if I allowed it. The developer toolset is crazy strong too, I bet they're not even 10% of the way with their market penetration.
  - acomjean 6y ago
    My nieces the same.. very popular with the young ones. They even have an “among us” like game on there
    - worldsayshi 6y ago
      Feels like every moddable game platform with decent popularity has an among us clone nowadays.
      - kfichter 6y ago
        Brings me back to the days of gmod and TTT
      - shitloadofbooks 6y ago
        Among Us is already a clone of Mafia/Werewolf/The Resistance.
  - bladegash 6y ago
    Same here, with daughters 4 and 7! They beg me for Robux on a frequent basis and 100% of their weekly allowance goes towards it. I have no doubt Roblux will continue to make mountains of money. The amount of people playing it is mind blowing and I’m sure there are additional ways to monetize their ecosystem. As a side note - it’s cool to see them play so well together and I even play with them too to engage with them on something they enjoy. On the other hand, I sometimes get concerned with how much they play and how addictive the micro transactions are for kids their age. Then again, I spent most of my days growing up playing games like EverQuest, WoW, learning to program, etc. , so it’s hard for me to judge.
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
> We intend to apply for the listing of our Class A common stock on the NYSE under the symbol “RBLX.” They really missed $ROBUX?
- marc__1 6y ago
  Unfortunately they can't All of the companies traded on the Nasdaq have four-lettered ticker symbols, which are representative of the actual company. For example, the ticker symbol for Nasdaq-traded Microsoft is MSFT. However, in some cases, a ticker symbol on the Nasdaq will have five letters, and the fifth letter is an identifier symbol that tells market participants something about the company https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/nasdaqfifthletter.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/nasdaqfifthlette...
okokok___ 6y ago
I've been wanting to get into Roblox development for awhile now. Does anyone have any resources?
- percentcer 6y ago
  Their first-party docs are good, just use those: https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-First-Game https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi...
  - okokok___ 6y ago
    > https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi... Thanks!
- tindell 6y ago
  I found these videos to be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhieaQmOk7nIoGnFoACf33M3o0BOqB38a https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhieaQmOk7nIoGnFoACf3... It is a nice starting place if you don't know where to look in the docs to begin.
  - okokok___ 6y ago
    Thanks!
sjg007 6y ago
I’m buying this stock.
randomly1983814 6y ago
I was just putting together my resume to send them (and the thought crossed my mind that an IPO might be coming in the next year), then I see this. For anyone who's done this dance before, is it a bad, good, or great idea to apply to a company, right when S-1 is released? Don't know if, e.g., companies do a hiring lockdown right before IPO. Also, just on the emotional side, I joined a company very shortly after IPO years ago, and it was always a sore spot to see the life-changing millions of dollars of those who joined the company not long before me, and the constant reminder of "pre-" vs "post-" employees.
- xoxoy 6y ago
  i think you answered your own question
  - randomly1983814 6y ago
    Maybe. Was wondering other's opinions and experiences, especially if applying/joining during IPO roadshow or immediately after IPO. Mostly just curious. Getting hired is a big hurdle anway, and it takes a long time, and hell maybe I won't even get around to submitting.
    - xoxoy 6y ago
      i joined an early stage co that will go public within the next year and got very lucky in a junior role with a life changing amount of money. the compensation at private cos is so whacky depending on when you join. it’s just the nature of working in early stage cos.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Looking back at our timeline, we filed the S-1 about 3.5 months before the first day of trading. (I'd been there a little over 2 years before that, so well after it was clear we had a legitimate chance, but well before it was clear we could IPO.) I would say that employees who were there right before or shortly after the IPO weren't all that different in terms of initial grants. The only difference is that pre-IPO employees could get ISOs which have slightly better tax treatment than NQSOs. I would make the decision based on the work, the pay, and your overall feelings for the space rather than whether you applied 4 weeks ago or 4 weeks after IPO. You already missed the gains before the IPO, but most companies have a lot more gains after the IPO than before it. If you're the type to be jealous that you missed on the pre-IPO gains, don't go, of course. Those employees who made "millions" in the IPO didn't do it because they joined 2 months before you. They probably joined 2+ years before you.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Roblox seems like what Second Life was trying to be.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  At least I was hired by Amazon Web Services through Second Life. [0] [0]: https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-314ee8634da9 https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-...
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I am trying to use Roblox to teach my kids to code - my middle daughter loves the idea (we are trying to figure out how to build Hogwarts). Basically the hype machine for roblox is doing half my job for me. But boy do I wish there were decent tutorials on line. Learning Lua is fun I guess. I suppose i need to open investment accounts for them to buy Roblox stock next :-)
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is probably a really risky investment: Every parent I know has a "kid stole my credit card and bought hundreds of dollars of Robux on it" story. While I've reversed the ones that happened in my own family, it took my tech expertise and some research to figure out how to do so (via Google Play, where the refund request button is deliberately extremely obfuscated)... many parents probably just accept the money is gone and move on. Roblox has no real way to know, but I'd guess a not insignificant amount of their revenue is unauthorized charges. Better protections on parents' cards may cause their revenue to dry up a fair bit... And that's before we get into the problematic nature of pushing a monetized game on kids as young as five years old, who might be incentivized to steal from their parents now at an early age. I could see this company's business model getting nuked by future legislation.
- akgoel 6y ago
  My 7 year old daughter has stopped asking for (very pricy) American Girl accessories, and now asks for Robux. The coding schools around us are advertising Roblox Studio classes for kids. I'm not so pessimistic as you on the model, but those previous operating losses seem pretty big.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    What would be costing so much I wonder? The platform has been around for 15 years and whilst I understand it's a platform not a game per se, surely most of the work is done? I wouldn't expect it to get -more- expensive to maintain than it was to build in the first place year over year. They lost more in one year than it took to build GTAV over 7 years.
siavosh 6y ago
Do a lot of companies sit on their S-1's until the market swings up? Like how quickly is the turnaround on an S1 filing and actual listing to take advantage of short term market moves?
darkwizard42 6y ago
Hmmm... I really appreciate all the posts that express confidence in this product but I'm really suspect of the financials. How did their revenue grow 70% (9-mo 2019 to 2020) but their losses grew 5x?! I can see that there was considerable increase in total costs and expenses but I didn't get a sense of where that investment was going and what long term return there was going to be. Overall I'm surprised by this as I expected the variable costs to grow with usage and revenue but didn't think there would be a cost of revenue %...
- granto 6y ago
  A large part of this appears to be non cash expense associated with stock compensation that was recognized due to an investment round where they let employees and investors sell shares at above “market value”. Can helpful to look at cash flow.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ramsj 6y ago
Roblox has seen massive revenue growth in the pandemic, but by far biggest question is which costs can they get leverage on as they scale. A lot of existing costs seem to increase linearly with revenue/usage (e.g., app store fees, infrastructure, trust & safety).
tombert 6y ago
Damnit, those jerks wouldn't hire me back when I applied in 2012; I'll bet if I had gotten a job back then I'd have a relatively healthy stock package by now. (btw, I'm just messing around, I had almost no experience in 2012 so I don't really blame them for not hiring me)
madjam002 6y ago
Roblox was a fairly big part of my childhood, it made programming exciting and got me learning. I remember reaching the front page with my game at no.1 with the most players online and reaching 350k+ plays. After that hanging out in script builders was a lot of fun also (is that still a thing?) It was such a great experience, had a lot of fun, thank-you to the original devs for the good times :)
- lawrenceyan 6y ago
  What do you do now?
  - madjam002 6y ago
    I never went into game dev. I started off as a junior in web development, worked my way up to contracting for some UK financial services companies working on some large projects. More recently I’ve spent the better part of a year on my own startup in proptech. Game dev was something that appealed to me when I was younger (mainly because of Roblox) but I never really considered a career in it.
    - pyuser583 6y ago
      What is proptech?
      - madjam002 6y ago
        It’s a term being thrown around at least in the U.K. - property technology, solving problems in real estate with technology. My startup is over at https://propertyengine.co.uk https://propertyengine.co.uk if you want to take a look :)
        justicezyx 6y ago
        Good luck! The flowing banner of properties photos and short info makes me feel uneasy.
Deimorz 6y ago
If anyone wants to read an interesting technical article about Roblox, this "Eight Years at Roblox" one from August was excellent: https://zeux.io/2020/08/02/eight-years-at-roblox/ https://zeux.io/2020/08/02/eight-years-at-roblox/
krebs_liebhaber 6y ago
I grew up playing Roblox games (and later scripting in Studio) and the most memorable aspect was how surreal everything was. Most of the games were mishmashes of pre-existing assets, puerile humor, and pop culture references. I remember one game in which you started off on a massive platform full of food, and had to shovel the food onto a conveyor belt that led into a giant person's mouth. If you yourself fell onto the conveyor belt, you'd be treated to a grand tour of the person's digestive system before being turned to poop and dropped into the toilet bowl. Inside the toilet there was an obstacle course, and at the end of this obstacle course there was an array of fighter jets that you could use to get back onto the food platform. The jets didn't have throttle: they either went super fast or not at all. So the poop-people would bail out of their planes in mid-air, and the jet would crash into the baseplate, usually killing someone below. This was back when there was no way for developers to monetize their games. Some games had "VIP T-shirts" that gave you tools or allowed you to enter a special room, but devs had neither the technical ability nor the incentive to "do it for the money". Most games were like the one I described: bizarre one-off projects created with the intent of showing something really cool. A few "classics" kept stable player-bases, but for the most part the front page was a constant churn of weirdness. I've still never seen anything quite like it.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  This is actually how old Quake III-era FPS maps used to be. I played Star Trek: Elite Force (and Elite Force II), which were Star Trek-based Quake III games that supported third player multiplayer maps. You had plenty of maps where the creators tried to match the game's feel, and so many that were completely unrelated. Giant bathrooms where you are the size of a mouse was one of the standouts I remember. This level of customization is often just something businesses have moved away from allowing. And considering the "condo" problem with Roblox, it's understandable why: https://www.fastcompany.com/90539906/sex-lies-and-video-games-inside-roblox-war-on-porn https://www.fastcompany.com/90539906/sex-lies-and-video-game... (The bathroom map I recall above, had a photo of a topless woman in a hidden area.)
  - krebs_liebhaber 6y ago
ThomPete 6y ago
Ah Roblox... the reddit of games. My kids would be playing non-stop if I allowed it.
moneywoes 6y ago
How does Roblox differ than Minecraft that was acquired for 2.5 billion from Microsoft?
minikomi 6y ago
The ticker symbol has to be OOF
meddlepal 6y ago
Any guess what the public date and price will be?
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Wild guess: Disney will buy it before it goes public. I think it would just make complete sense. No idea if it's too expensive to buy or not.
- scottydelta 6y ago
  Probably around Dec 15th after the 21 days cooling period.
echelon 6y ago
Any market cap predictions?
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Probably a bit under Unity. Around ~20b after the first couple days.
jv22222 6y ago
My kid is 6 and has been playing Roblox for over a year. I thought I’d have a go at making a roblox game (my first game) and it’s been a blast! Here’s the game fyi: https://www.roblox.com/games/5893893844/Slider-alpha https://www.roblox.com/games/5893893844/Slider-alpha
scottisbrave84 6y ago
Welcome roblox overloads
lawrenceyan 6y ago
What are the average age demographics between Roblox and Minecraft? It feels like, anecdotally at least, most people switch to Minecraft once they get older as it's a more difficult/mature game with a higher skill ceiling.

Roblox S-1

320 points by xoxoy 6y ago

okokok___ 6y ago

this is the s-1 I've been waiting for

par 6y ago

My 6 year old is going to be fired up for IPO day for this one.

ahmadss 6y ago

"Roblox is absolutely wild It has 110MM MAUs + delivers an est 1.25 BILLION hours of entertainment each month It does this not because it makes a good "game", but because players make games/worlds/experiences for and with one another This only exhausts when imagination does" --https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1236773493372596224 https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1236773493372596224

cycop 6y ago
My kids have access to some of the best games in their Steam library, but most of the time they prefer to discover new games on Roblox. I just hope they don't force advertising into the Roblox worlds, that would destroy the experience.
- ricefield 6y ago
  I recently had a director reach out to me about joining their team to work on rebuilding an ad system from scratch, so unfortunately your fear may very well be valid.
  - chabad360 6y ago
    The ads are not in game, they appear only on the website and are solely for advertising other games.
    - ehnto 6y ago
      I think it would be naive to not imagine advertising as part of the long term strategy for a platform like this. After they go public, it's going to be a big tool in their toolkit for profitability.
      - Kaveren 6y ago
        exact opposite, they've made a 180 on advertising. there used to be external offsite ads shown on the website, which were removed. there used to be a developer API to show video ads for revenue within games, which was removed. they've cut down heavily on event promotions from companies (think movies that appeal to kids) they have an extremely high revenue business model off actual customers, so they don't really need to do advertising, there's plenty of other ways to get more profitable. for example, they're at the scale where they might be able to do what Dropbox did by running more of their own infrastructure to save big.
    - Buge 6y ago
      It looks like currently their ads are all player-created, for their own content. For example refresh this page and see the banner at the top: https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=0 https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=0 But I seem to recall in the past there used to be some regular ads. For example see this archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20120427192637/http://www.roblox.com:80/Catalog.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120427192637/http://www.roblox... which has this embedded iframe: https://web.archive.org/web/20120308000433if_/http://www.roblox.com/Ads/IFrameAdContent.aspx?v=2&slot=Roblox_Default_Top_728x90&format=banner&v=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20120308000433if_/http://www.rob... which has Adsense javascript embedded in it.
      - glaring 6y ago
        Correct, they used to display regular ads on their website (but never in the actual games) for those users that did not purchase the Premium subscription. Users with the premium subscription would then see only user-created ads for user-created content. It was honestly quite jarring and this new approach is better for developers on the platform, as they can reach way more people.
- boogies 6y ago
  Most games are already full of ads for Robux microtransactions.
  - diegof79 6y ago
    Sadly that’s true. I’m very careful with the screen time of my 6yo kid, but the pandemic made it very hard. Many of his friends in the school started to use Roblox. So I played with him to check it, it ended with me uninstalling it: First time use and you’ll see tons of in-app purchases to build your character (all optional but kids that are starting to read cannot tell the difference), then the app is like the Wild West of ads and special offers. The Apple store classifies the app as 12+, and I think they are right (as a father I started to see the appeal of the closed App Store and Apple Arcade). The sad part is that it could be a great platform to experiment creating games and coding, is like the Alan Kay vision of Croquet but perverted by ads.
    - boogies 6y ago
      Minetest¹ is one game that I think in theory could be a great creative platform for kids, it’s kind of Minecraft + Roblox — a Minecraft clone except everything besides the most basic engine functionality — even mobs — is implemented as a mod — which is just a Lua script + (3D model, texture, and/or sound) assets. Edit: and each server can have any mods it wants and the client will load any it doesn’t have locally. [1]: https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/
    - RHSeeger 6y ago
      Honestly, it's not all that different from something like the Play Store. There's a LOT of games that are trying to get people (who don't know any better) to spend money. But there's also a lot of real quality games, too. Many of the best games have the option to spend money, but don't shove it down your throat. As an example, I played Bee Swarm Simulator with my daughter and I really enjoyed it. I decided to buy some robux and spend it on the game.I did this not because it gave me something I needed to enjoy the game, but because I felt the developer deserved it for creating something that entertained me.
- philjohn 6y ago
  My daughter did that at first - now she has a private server where she and her friends (all 9 years old) build their own games to play with each other. They all build 3D models in the world builder, and even some Lua scripting to alter mechanics. It's a pretty neat way of getting kids into game dev.
  - yalogin 6y ago
    Can you please tell me more about the private server and how you set it up?
    - HomeDeLaPot 6y ago
      If I had to guess, they're using the "places" that every user gets allocated. You can have a bunch of them, but only so many active at once. Maybe you can adjust the privacy settings for a place to allow only your friends. Roblox does all the hosting and provides the IDE (Roblox Studio) and everything. All the games on Roblox are somebody's "place" that they've made public and developed into a fun game. This is from my own experience >5 years ago, so it could be outdated.
    - nomel 6y ago
      The owner of a "place" (game saved from the editor to the Roblox cloud) can set the permissions for who can participate in the live, collaborative, editing environment (invite basis), and who can play it (public, friends, or editors). The only problem with the collaborative editing (which is very very cool) is that it's really easy to click and delete/move/duplicate huge chunks of the game without realizing it. But, if you save often, the built in version control is really nice. It's pretty neat though, except for the marketplace is absolutely filled with assets that contain malware. A script can be linked with any object in the game, used to give the object life. But, that script has nearly global control. I think the scripting and standard libraries would really benefit from a huge overhaul, but it's pretty neat. There's quite a bit of friction getting started though. Much of it isn't intuitive, with magic undocumented names required, and you'll usually find well meaning, but very beginner, game developers providing colorful information in the forums.
    - 6y ago
- gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
  Why? Because of two things: you do not need to re-learn a UI (the same way people would play mods in W3, CS, etc.) and because it is hard/there is friction in starting a new game. Think about it, why do you spend hours thinking about what movie you're going to watch on Netflix just to re-watch a movie you've already watched? It's easier for your brain.
  - tudorw 6y ago
    People watch movies twice? TIL
    - gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
      I do it all the time, TV shows as well.
phkahler 6y ago
How is minecraft doing these days?
- derwiki 6y ago
  Not really an answer, but my niece loved Roblox and said “Minecraft is for boys”
  - dlhavema 6y ago
    My girls ( 8 and 9 ) love Minecraft. Especially any kind of dragon mod.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If my kids (late elementary, early middle school) and their friends are any guide, it's doing extremely well. The thing my kids most consistently spend their allowance on is hypixel (a minecraft curated multiplayer server with some scenario-based games is the best way I can describe it).
  - abraae 6y ago
    I found my 8 year old playing hypixel. I know jack about Minecraft, so I couldn't understand how come he was having some kind of chat dialog with someone. The only thing I've ever shown him on his Fedora laptop was how to log in, open a terminal and and start Minecraft from the command line. It seems that he taught himself to find the web browser, then find google, then search for Minecraft resources, then enter urls for Hypixel and Mineplex into Minecraft. I was torn between pride and trepidation of what's to come.
    - raunakdag 6y ago
      As someone who’s 17 - this is exactly how I learned about computers, but when I was 7 (so 10 years ago yeah). I will say that my parents turned on a chat filter pretty quickly, as incredible amounts of obscene stuff was posted on lots of the random servers I played on. Hypixel is pretty great (I actually still play sometimes!), and they have a good curse filter and it’s definitely family friendly. To be honest, I spent a ridiculous amount of time on MineCraft over the past 10 years (definitely over 5k+ hours), and it’s taught me an incredible amount. It’s where I picked up my first O Reilly book, on Minecraft mods, where I learned for the first time how to self host a server, and also where I made some really great friends. I’d be more worried about your kid finding something like social media FROM Minecraft - for example, I spent a ridiculous amount of time on Reddit, which I found through MC. As a kid whose parents don’t really care about what I do on the internet, unlimited access to viewing whatever I wanted wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
My theory for making platforms that make money is: facilitate competition or creation. Any platform that facilitates competition or creation is ripe for $$$.
Kinrany 6y ago
Link from the tweet: https://www.matthewball.vc/all/digitalthemeparkplatforms https://www.matthewball.vc/all/digitalthemeparkplatforms Exciting, because I've been waiting for these platforms for like 15 years, since I played Warcraft 3. But also bittersweet, because I have already resigned to having to eventually make one myself, and now it's done.

desireco42 6y ago

Maybe I should get my kids a stock of their favorite game.

briffle 6y ago
We are doing that. Going to give each of them some shares, so we can teach them how stocks work
- bentcorner 6y ago
  Are you doing anything special here, or just buying some in your brokerage account and telling them "Hi <kid>, you have <n> shares in RBLX"?
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    There are "minor" brokerage accounts that are co-signed by the parents and ultimately end up on the tax forms of the parents[0]. I had one at 16, but unsure if there's a lower age limit. [0]https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/can-someone-not-yet-legal-age-open-brokerage-account/ https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/can-someone-not-yet...
Bluecobra 6y ago
It would be a much better ROI then converting real money to Robux. All my daughter wants now is Robux (even her allowance) so she could buy crappy 3d items in the crappy 3d game she plays. People are actually selling/buying these items on eBay like they did years ago for Everquest/WoW.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  Same with my son. For his birthday he wanted Robux over everything else. Some new Jordans? Where am I going to wear them? XBox Series X? Not yet. But I feel like every new fad has this. He spent all of his money on Pokemon cards years ago, that he never touches now. What's amazing is how Roblox has made an actual marketplace and scarcity for virtual items that have no monetary backing.

x87678r 6y ago

My daughter's class are all at home and often they're playing roblox during class. If we let her it'd be all day all night 7 days a week. Games look boring AF to me, but tweens seem to love em.

leftnode 6y ago
I had the same thought when my 10 year old showed me the games he plays on Roblox. Absolutely awful graphics, gameplay, "story", etc, but they are _obsessed_ with them.
- NortySpock 6y ago
  On the other hand the graphics are simple enough that it runs smoothly on phones, tablets, and hand-me-down computers from the mid-2000s, which is what many kids are running. It's gotten my eldest son into Lua programing and 3D modelling, so I have no problems with the platform as it currently is. A few of the games/servers were interesting: Phantom Forces was a reasonably well polished FPS, and the Murder Mystery games (sneaky murderer vs sheriff and villagers, typical social deduction/betrayal game) were pretty fun. Hoping it doesn't get completely and totally overrun with ads.
- dgr582systems 6y ago
  I think part of it (as some other comments have alluded to) is that maybe the low quality production brings the kids closer to it because they feel like they could possibly build something if they wanted to. Or that someone like them built the game they are playing. It’s perhaps more relatable than some ultra polished AAA title.
  - bemmu 6y ago
    Not even just a feeling - they really can build these experiences themselves. I just watched our 5-year old kitbash together a city full of cars in about 4 hours, which is now online for anyone to visit. I find the platform very appealing even as an adult, as you can script in Lua, and then watch as hundreds of visitors interact with what you just wrote. This week I hacked the Bad Apple music video to run on Roblox, and then had a great time seeing people react to it.

xoxoy 6y ago

On the one hand I think this will do really well in public markets and will probably buy some on the first day. On the other as someone who doesn’t play and doesn’t have kids it’s a bit unsettling seeing some of these engagement numbers eg average daily play time is 2.5 hours per active user. That sounds like a massive time suck. Perhaps one could justify this as inciting creativity and there’s a social aspect to it but spending hours a day on this can’t be healthy long term.

phoe-krk 6y ago
Games like Roblox and Minecraft have an inherently social aspect to them in addition to being mostly creativity-based. Not only they allow to emulate some of the social contacts that are currently impossible due to the pandemic, they also make some things possible at all due to the flexibility of the game engines that does not exist in reality. (Compare e.g. asking the question of "Do you know how to make TNT? I need some for an experiment" on a Minecraft server and on a busy airport.)
- xoxoy 6y ago
  there’s a balance. 2.5 hours spent on average means there’s kids spending much longer on this each day. i get there’s a creativity aspect to it but it still seems like a lot of time, to the point where it’s likely bordering on addiction level.
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    I feel you haven’t played MMOs or online games in general. Yes, they can become a time sink, but there are worse time sinks out there ;) Edit: Note that I and others from my generation grew up spending hours playing MMOs, and we turned out fine. As responsibilities come up to the forefront, the majority of people adapt. I think the more concerning trend is social media addiction. With games, there is at least an interactive element. Social media use is as passive as you can get.
cma 6y ago
> Perhaps one could justify this as inciting creativity and there’s a social aspect to it but spending hours a day on this can’t be healthy long term. I wonder how that number changed with the pandemic. Also, it sounds better than one-way TV kids grew up watching for similar amounts of time each day.

mattfrommars 6y ago

Loving the risk factor section > We have experienced rapid growth in the three months ended June 30, 2020, September 30, 2020 and for a portion of the three months ended March 31, 2020, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic given our users have been online more as a result of global COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies. For example, our bookings increased 171% from the nine-months ended September 30, 2019 to the nine months ended September 30, 2020. We do not expect these activity levels to be sustained, and in future periods we expect growth rates for our revenue to decline, and we may not experience any growth in bookings or our user base during periods where we are comparing against COVID-19 impacted periods (i.e. the three months ended March 31, 2020, June 30, 2020, and September 30, 2020). Our historical revenue, bookings and user base growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance. We believe our overall acceptance, revenue growth and increases in bookings depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to: > We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We have incurred net losses since our inception, and we expect to continue to incur net losses in the near future. We incurred net losses of $97.2 million, $86.0 million, and $203.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. As of September 30, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $484.0 million.

ricefield 6y ago
> We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. This is boilerplate and isn't notable. [0] [0]: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-to-read-an-s1/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-to-read-an-s1/
- pdmfz 6y ago
  Agreed but what is noticeable is how much greater the losses are this year (with still three months to go). 2018: $97.2m 2019: $86.0m 2020: $203.2m
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    While in a vacuum larger losses aren't painting the full picture, but then if you take their revenue growth only increasing by 70% into context it looks even worse!

rel2thr 6y ago

Very hyped for this, the next generation of superstar coders and entrepreneurs are going to grow up in roblox

okokok___ 6y ago
Yeah, I've been looking at getting into myself. I couldn't find many resources last time I looked though. Does anyone have any?
- hokumguru 6y ago
  The Roblox Wiki is an astounding piece of documentation.
  - glaring 6y ago
    Additionally, the Developer Forum is full of people willing to help and collaborate on things.
    - okokok___ 6y ago
      Thanks!
  - okokok___ 6y ago
    Thanks!
QuinnWilton 6y ago
I grew up learning to program on Roblox 14 years ago, and more than a few of my friends from back then are now wildly successful engineers. It's only gotten more advanced since then, and if I were a parent, I'd love for my kids to be making games on the platform.
ermir 6y ago
I always believed tools and games like these had great potential, and always wanted to make something like Roblox, but it's too capital intensive for my situation. I learned the basics of computing and programming by modding games in the early 2000s, with custom Starcraft maps being the most instructive. The web offers the possibility of authorship and distribution that simply don't exist in any other platform.

stu2b50 6y ago

Don't consider Roblox a traditional game. It's basically Gmod for kids and with official corporate support and a official way for developers to wring money out of its consumers with micro transactions. More platform than game. It's really easy for developers to develop a game, easily implement real money transactions, and have an audience.

shiftpgdn 6y ago
My 8 year old and 5 year old girls spend literally their entire allowance on Robux. They would spend literally the entire day playing if I allowed it. The developer toolset is crazy strong too, I bet they're not even 10% of the way with their market penetration.
- acomjean 6y ago
  My nieces the same.. very popular with the young ones. They even have an “among us” like game on there
  - worldsayshi 6y ago
    Feels like every moddable game platform with decent popularity has an among us clone nowadays.
    - kfichter 6y ago
      Brings me back to the days of gmod and TTT
    - shitloadofbooks 6y ago
      Among Us is already a clone of Mafia/Werewolf/The Resistance.
- bladegash 6y ago
  Same here, with daughters 4 and 7! They beg me for Robux on a frequent basis and 100% of their weekly allowance goes towards it. I have no doubt Roblux will continue to make mountains of money. The amount of people playing it is mind blowing and I’m sure there are additional ways to monetize their ecosystem. As a side note - it’s cool to see them play so well together and I even play with them too to engage with them on something they enjoy. On the other hand, I sometimes get concerned with how much they play and how addictive the micro transactions are for kids their age. Then again, I spent most of my days growing up playing games like EverQuest, WoW, learning to program, etc. , so it’s hard for me to judge.

dj_mc_merlin 6y ago

> We intend to apply for the listing of our Class A common stock on the NYSE under the symbol “RBLX.” They really missed $ROBUX?

marc__1 6y ago
Unfortunately they can't All of the companies traded on the Nasdaq have four-lettered ticker symbols, which are representative of the actual company. For example, the ticker symbol for Nasdaq-traded Microsoft is MSFT. However, in some cases, a ticker symbol on the Nasdaq will have five letters, and the fifth letter is an identifier symbol that tells market participants something about the company https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/nasdaqfifthletter.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/nasdaqfifthlette...

okokok___ 6y ago

I've been wanting to get into Roblox development for awhile now. Does anyone have any resources?

percentcer 6y ago
Their first-party docs are good, just use those: https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-First-Game https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi...
- okokok___ 6y ago
  > https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Creating-Your-Fi... Thanks!
tindell 6y ago
I found these videos to be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhieaQmOk7nIoGnFoACf33M3o0BOqB38a https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhieaQmOk7nIoGnFoACf3... It is a nice starting place if you don't know where to look in the docs to begin.
- okokok___ 6y ago
  Thanks!

sjg007 6y ago

I’m buying this stock.

randomly1983814 6y ago

I was just putting together my resume to send them (and the thought crossed my mind that an IPO might be coming in the next year), then I see this. For anyone who's done this dance before, is it a bad, good, or great idea to apply to a company, right when S-1 is released? Don't know if, e.g., companies do a hiring lockdown right before IPO. Also, just on the emotional side, I joined a company very shortly after IPO years ago, and it was always a sore spot to see the life-changing millions of dollars of those who joined the company not long before me, and the constant reminder of "pre-" vs "post-" employees.

xoxoy 6y ago
i think you answered your own question
- randomly1983814 6y ago
  Maybe. Was wondering other's opinions and experiences, especially if applying/joining during IPO roadshow or immediately after IPO. Mostly just curious. Getting hired is a big hurdle anway, and it takes a long time, and hell maybe I won't even get around to submitting.
  - xoxoy 6y ago
    i joined an early stage co that will go public within the next year and got very lucky in a junior role with a life changing amount of money. the compensation at private cos is so whacky depending on when you join. it’s just the nature of working in early stage cos.
sokoloff 6y ago
Looking back at our timeline, we filed the S-1 about 3.5 months before the first day of trading. (I'd been there a little over 2 years before that, so well after it was clear we had a legitimate chance, but well before it was clear we could IPO.) I would say that employees who were there right before or shortly after the IPO weren't all that different in terms of initial grants. The only difference is that pre-IPO employees could get ISOs which have slightly better tax treatment than NQSOs. I would make the decision based on the work, the pay, and your overall feelings for the space rather than whether you applied 4 weeks ago or 4 weeks after IPO. You already missed the gains before the IPO, but most companies have a lot more gains after the IPO than before it. If you're the type to be jealous that you missed on the pre-IPO gains, don't go, of course. Those employees who made "millions" in the IPO didn't do it because they joined 2 months before you. They probably joined 2+ years before you.

Apocryphon 6y ago

Roblox seems like what Second Life was trying to be.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
At least I was hired by Amazon Web Services through Second Life. [0] [0]: https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-314ee8634da9 https://simon.medium.com/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-...

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

I am trying to use Roblox to teach my kids to code - my middle daughter loves the idea (we are trying to figure out how to build Hogwarts). Basically the hype machine for roblox is doing half my job for me. But boy do I wish there were decent tutorials on line. Learning Lua is fun I guess. I suppose i need to open investment accounts for them to buy Roblox stock next :-)

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

This is probably a really risky investment: Every parent I know has a "kid stole my credit card and bought hundreds of dollars of Robux on it" story. While I've reversed the ones that happened in my own family, it took my tech expertise and some research to figure out how to do so (via Google Play, where the refund request button is deliberately extremely obfuscated)... many parents probably just accept the money is gone and move on. Roblox has no real way to know, but I'd guess a not insignificant amount of their revenue is unauthorized charges. Better protections on parents' cards may cause their revenue to dry up a fair bit... And that's before we get into the problematic nature of pushing a monetized game on kids as young as five years old, who might be incentivized to steal from their parents now at an early age. I could see this company's business model getting nuked by future legislation.

akgoel 6y ago
My 7 year old daughter has stopped asking for (very pricy) American Girl accessories, and now asks for Robux. The coding schools around us are advertising Roblox Studio classes for kids. I'm not so pessimistic as you on the model, but those previous operating losses seem pretty big.
- ehnto 6y ago
  What would be costing so much I wonder? The platform has been around for 15 years and whilst I understand it's a platform not a game per se, surely most of the work is done? I wouldn't expect it to get -more- expensive to maintain than it was to build in the first place year over year. They lost more in one year than it took to build GTAV over 7 years.

siavosh 6y ago

Do a lot of companies sit on their S-1's until the market swings up? Like how quickly is the turnaround on an S1 filing and actual listing to take advantage of short term market moves?

darkwizard42 6y ago

Hmmm... I really appreciate all the posts that express confidence in this product but I'm really suspect of the financials. How did their revenue grow 70% (9-mo 2019 to 2020) but their losses grew 5x?! I can see that there was considerable increase in total costs and expenses but I didn't get a sense of where that investment was going and what long term return there was going to be. Overall I'm surprised by this as I expected the variable costs to grow with usage and revenue but didn't think there would be a cost of revenue %...

granto 6y ago
A large part of this appears to be non cash expense associated with stock compensation that was recognized due to an investment round where they let employees and investors sell shares at above “market value”. Can helpful to look at cash flow.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ramsj 6y ago

Roblox has seen massive revenue growth in the pandemic, but by far biggest question is which costs can they get leverage on as they scale. A lot of existing costs seem to increase linearly with revenue/usage (e.g., app store fees, infrastructure, trust & safety).

tombert 6y ago

Damnit, those jerks wouldn't hire me back when I applied in 2012; I'll bet if I had gotten a job back then I'd have a relatively healthy stock package by now. (btw, I'm just messing around, I had almost no experience in 2012 so I don't really blame them for not hiring me)

madjam002 6y ago

Roblox was a fairly big part of my childhood, it made programming exciting and got me learning. I remember reaching the front page with my game at no.1 with the most players online and reaching 350k+ plays. After that hanging out in script builders was a lot of fun also (is that still a thing?) It was such a great experience, had a lot of fun, thank-you to the original devs for the good times :)

lawrenceyan 6y ago
What do you do now?
- madjam002 6y ago
  I never went into game dev. I started off as a junior in web development, worked my way up to contracting for some UK financial services companies working on some large projects. More recently I’ve spent the better part of a year on my own startup in proptech. Game dev was something that appealed to me when I was younger (mainly because of Roblox) but I never really considered a career in it.
  - pyuser583 6y ago
    What is proptech?
    - madjam002 6y ago
      It’s a term being thrown around at least in the U.K. - property technology, solving problems in real estate with technology. My startup is over at https://propertyengine.co.uk https://propertyengine.co.uk if you want to take a look :)
      - justicezyx 6y ago
        Good luck! The flowing banner of properties photos and short info makes me feel uneasy.

Deimorz 6y ago

If anyone wants to read an interesting technical article about Roblox, this "Eight Years at Roblox" one from August was excellent: https://zeux.io/2020/08/02/eight-years-at-roblox/ https://zeux.io/2020/08/02/eight-years-at-roblox/

krebs_liebhaber 6y ago

I grew up playing Roblox games (and later scripting in Studio) and the most memorable aspect was how surreal everything was. Most of the games were mishmashes of pre-existing assets, puerile humor, and pop culture references. I remember one game in which you started off on a massive platform full of food, and had to shovel the food onto a conveyor belt that led into a giant person's mouth. If you yourself fell onto the conveyor belt, you'd be treated to a grand tour of the person's digestive system before being turned to poop and dropped into the toilet bowl. Inside the toilet there was an obstacle course, and at the end of this obstacle course there was an array of fighter jets that you could use to get back onto the food platform. The jets didn't have throttle: they either went super fast or not at all. So the poop-people would bail out of their planes in mid-air, and the jet would crash into the baseplate, usually killing someone below. This was back when there was no way for developers to monetize their games. Some games had "VIP T-shirts" that gave you tools or allowed you to enter a special room, but devs had neither the technical ability nor the incentive to "do it for the money". Most games were like the one I described: bizarre one-off projects created with the intent of showing something really cool. A few "classics" kept stable player-bases, but for the most part the front page was a constant churn of weirdness. I've still never seen anything quite like it.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is actually how old Quake III-era FPS maps used to be. I played Star Trek: Elite Force (and Elite Force II), which were Star Trek-based Quake III games that supported third player multiplayer maps. You had plenty of maps where the creators tried to match the game's feel, and so many that were completely unrelated. Giant bathrooms where you are the size of a mouse was one of the standouts I remember. This level of customization is often just something businesses have moved away from allowing. And considering the "condo" problem with Roblox, it's understandable why: https://www.fastcompany.com/90539906/sex-lies-and-video-games-inside-roblox-war-on-porn https://www.fastcompany.com/90539906/sex-lies-and-video-game... (The bathroom map I recall above, had a photo of a topless woman in a hidden area.)
- krebs_liebhaber 6y ago

ThomPete 6y ago

Ah Roblox... the reddit of games. My kids would be playing non-stop if I allowed it.

moneywoes 6y ago

How does Roblox differ than Minecraft that was acquired for 2.5 billion from Microsoft?

minikomi 6y ago

The ticker symbol has to be OOF

meddlepal 6y ago

Any guess what the public date and price will be?

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Wild guess: Disney will buy it before it goes public. I think it would just make complete sense. No idea if it's too expensive to buy or not.
scottydelta 6y ago
Probably around Dec 15th after the 21 days cooling period.

echelon 6y ago

Any market cap predictions?

reducesuffering 6y ago
Probably a bit under Unity. Around ~20b after the first couple days.

jv22222 6y ago

My kid is 6 and has been playing Roblox for over a year. I thought I’d have a go at making a roblox game (my first game) and it’s been a blast! Here’s the game fyi: https://www.roblox.com/games/5893893844/Slider-alpha https://www.roblox.com/games/5893893844/Slider-alpha

scottisbrave84 6y ago

Welcome roblox overloads

lawrenceyan 6y ago

What are the average age demographics between Roblox and Minecraft? It feels like, anecdotally at least, most people switch to Minecraft once they get older as it's a more difficult/mature game with a higher skill ceiling.