Roblox

Roblox is a massively multiplayer online game creation platform that allows users to design their own games and play a wide variety of different types of games created by other users through Roblox Studio. The platform hosts social network games constructed of Lego-like virtual blocks. The platform was officially released on August 27, 2006 by the Roblox Corporation. As of September 2018, Roblox has 70 million monthly active users.

Roblox Studio
Roblox is a game creation platform which allows players to create their own games using its proprietary engine, Roblox Studio. Games are coded under a object oriented programming system utilizing the programming language Lua to manipulate the environment of the game. Users are able to create game passes, which are purchasable content through one-time purchases, as well as microtransactions through developer products. Developers on the site exchange Robux earned from various products on their games into real world currency through the Developer Exchange system. A percentage of the revenue from purchases is split between the developer and Roblox. Roblox Studio supports importing meshes, shadow mapping, parallax mapping, and screen post-processing effects.

Games created through Roblox Studio are hosted through Roblox’s proprietary cloud software for server hosting and matchmaking.

Players
Roblox allows players to buy, sell, and create virtual items. Clothes can be bought by anyone but only players with a Builders Club membership can sell them. Only Roblox administrators can sell accessories, body parts, gear, and packages under the official Roblox user account. Items with a limited status can only be sold on the catalog or traded with Builders Club.

Robux is the virtual currency that can allow a player to buy various items. Players can obtain Robux through real life purchases, another player buying their items, or from earning daily Robux with a membership.

Groups
Groups allow users to group up with other users similar to a guild-like system. Group leaders can advertise their group, participate in group relations, shout out to other members of the group, and manage the roles of other group members. Groups can only be created by Builders Club members, but ownership of groups persists if they lose their membership.

Groups function as ways for players to organize various types of communities and teams. They can publish their own assets such as clothing and games, which funds earned go towards group funds. Those funds can be used to run advertisements for the group or games under the group's name, and can be distributed among the members through the group's payout system. Groups also have a clan feature. Clans can only have a limited number of users per group.

Events
Roblox occasionally hosts real life and virtual events. One such event is their Developers Conference. They hold virtual Easter egg hunt events annually and previously hosted events such as BloxCon. Other virtual events are sales that commonly occur in America, such as Black Friday, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

Development
The beta version of Roblox was created by co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004. Baszucki started testing the first demos that year. The website became available for PCs in 2005.

In March 2007, Roblox became compliant with COPPA, with the addition of safe chat, a change that limited users under the age of thirteen to communicating by selecting predefined messages from a menu. In August 2007, Roblox added Builders Club, a premium membership, and applied server improvements.

In December 2011, Roblox held their first Hack Week, an annual event where Roblox developers work on innovative outside-the-box ideas for new developments to present to the company.

On December 11, 2012, Roblox released an iOS version of the game platform.

On October 1st, 2013, Roblox released the Developer Exchange system, allowing developers to exchange Robux earned from their games into real world currency.

On May 31, 2015, a feature called 'Smooth Terrain' was added, increasing the graphical fidelity of the terrain and changing the physics engine from a block-oriented style to a smoother and more realistic style. On November 20, 2015, Roblox was launched on Xbox One, with an initial selection of 15 games chosen by Roblox staff. New Roblox games for this console will have to go through an approval process, and are subject to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board standards.

In April 2016, Roblox launched Roblox VR for Oculus Rift. At the time of release, more than ten million games were available in 3-D. Also by this time, Roblox had 30 million monthly active users, and a peak of 900,000 concurrent users. Around the same time period, the safe chat feature was removed and replaced by a system based on a whitelist with a set of acceptable words for users under 13 years old and on a blacklist for other users.

In June 2016, the company launched a version compatible with Windows 10. While the game platform has had a PC presence since 2004 with its web version, this is the first time it was upgraded with a standalone launcher built for Windows.

Legacy
During the 2017 Roblox Developers Conference, officials said that creators on the game platform (about 1.7 million) collectively earned at least $30 million in 2017. A developer covered his undergraduate education at Duke University using funds from his creation.

Toy line
In January 2017, Jazwares, a toy fabricator, teamed up with the Roblox Corporation to produce toy minifigures based on user generated content created by large developers on the platform. The toys were announced on Roblox's blog in February. The minifigures had limbs and joints similar to that of Lego minifigures. The minifigures also had limbs and accessories that are interchangeable. The first series contained 40 minifigures in all, being sold in sets of three or six, or individual minifigures. All of these sets included a code that could be used to redeem virtual items. In August, Roblox announced the second series of minifigures, introducing 40 more minifigures of characters from popular games on the platform, along with the online avatars of popular developers. There are also blind boxes that contain random minifigures and have a chance to contain a mystery figure.

Awards and recognition
Roblox has received the following accolades:
 * Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies (2016, 2017)
 * San Mateo County Economic Development Association (SAMCEDA) Award of Excellence (2017)
 * Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 (2017)
 * San Francisco Business Times’ Tech & Innovation Award – Gaming/eSports (2017)