2022 was an ideal yr for Roblox. We’re optimistically driving our imaginative and prescient to reimagine the way in which folks come collectively, and we’re realizing it by enabling deeper types of expression, communication, and immersion.
The investments we’re making to increase the engagement of Roblox throughout geographies and age teams are paying off. Our neighborhood grew by 23% this yr to greater than 56 million each day world customers. And our customers spent over 49.3 billion hours coming collectively to create, play, discover, be taught, and join. As we speak, greater than half of the folks on Roblox are 13 and older, demonstrating our platform’s enchantment to a broad vary of audiences.
Innovation and enhancements throughout each facet of Roblox performed a key position in driving our development. Listed here are a few of our main accomplishments from 2022.
Enabling Self-Expression and Connection
With the launch of Layered Clothes, we continued to empower folks to precise themselves and their id creatively. This characteristic allows clothes and accessories to suit any avatar physique kind. Objects like shirts, attire, sweaters, jackets, and pants at the moment are worn in layers and replica the way in which attire matches and drapes on people in the true world. This offers our neighborhood with the facility to create never-before-seen clothes and accent varieties. Customers can combine and match an unbelievable vary of physique types and outfits, taking avatar customization prospects to the subsequent stage. Since launch, we’ve got seen over 115 million folks personal a layered clothes merchandise.
We additionally continued to increase the standard and immersion of social interactions on Roblox. Now, folks verified as ages 13 and older can use Chat with their voice to talk aloud with each other. This performance is constructed to imitate in-person conversations, and is predicated on avatars’ proximity to one another – that means you would possibly whisper to a good friend close by or increase your voice to hold throughout the room. Nearly 1,000,000 Roblox experiences have already enabled voice communications.
On the finish of the yr, we rolled out Contact Importer, a protected and safe means for folks to search out and join with real-life mates. Contact Importer makes use of the identical contact names saved on a consumer’s gadget, to allow them to shortly acknowledge their mates on the Roblox platform. We additionally launched Buddy Suggestions, so folks ages 13 and older can simply evaluate and add mates immediately. These two options are essential steps in making it simpler for folks to attach whereas persevering with to uphold the privateness and security of our neighborhood.
Increasing Creator Alternatives
Different essential improvements had been centered on accelerating our imaginative and prescient of constructing creation accessible to everybody on Roblox. We’re constructing instruments so anybody from new creators to large growth studios can carry their creations to fruition.
In 2022, our neighborhood visited greater than 15 million experiences on the platform, and builders and creators printed greater than 15,000 experiences each single day. To help this creation flywheel, we made developments to Roblox Studio, our free growth software program for constructing and publishing 3D content material. Roblox Studio now has a refreshed look and new options — like help for high-resolution shows and redesigned icons for higher navigation — that permit creators to customise their workspaces and collaborate with teammates seamlessly.
In July 2022, we rolled out quite a few developments to our materials system to reinforce the visible high quality of the total library of current supplies and make them feel and look much more lifelike than earlier than. Supplies on Roblox are akin to supplies in the true world. They’re used to not solely outline the floor look of a 3D object but additionally its bodily properties, which in flip influences how the item behaves. Our materials system will assist our creators extra simply understand their aesthetic imaginative and prescient.
We’ve additionally added a number of new options to Roblox Cloud, our developer ecosystem, to streamline expertise growth and improve productiveness. Builders can now entry all their Roblox assets by way of APIs that allow a wealthy ecosystem of instruments for enhancing creator workflows and customization.
On the finish of the yr, we started rolling out our new Creator Hub, a useful resource that brings all of our on-line instruments and documentation for builders right into a unified platform. Creator Hub makes creation simpler, quicker, and extra streamlined by offering operational and administration help in a single place. The expertise we’re constructing for Creator Hub may even carry better constancy and capabilities to developer creations.
Evolving our Digital Economic system
In 2022, our Economic system staff achieved an essential milestone: greater than 90% of things printed in Market at the moment are made by creators, getting us even nearer to the purpose the place all content material inside Roblox is absolutely user-generated. We’re persevering with to enhance consumer discovery in Market, so folks can discover objects they need in a means that may redefine the consumer journey. We envision a future the place choose objects are supplied on a restricted foundation, and different objects are extra broadly out there, so folks can discover a breadth of things they love.
This September, at our greatest Roblox Builders Convention ever, we introduced Immersive Advertisements. This progressive 3D promoting expertise is designed to offer manufacturers and builders alike the power to succeed in their audiences in new methods.
Investing in Security and Civility
Because the Roblox neighborhood continues to develop, we’re deeply centered on making certain a protected and civil surroundings for our customers. Over the past yr, we elevated our investments in AI and machine studying for autonomously detecting and stopping makes an attempt by dangerous actors to interact in dangerous communications or add dangerous content material.
We continued to enhance sophistication in our content material and chat moderation efforts. Utilizing pure language processing fashions, we’ve developed our techniques to not simply flag prohibited language however to know context and act accordingly. In 2022, we used these fashions to energy automated moderation options in English, in addition to in Spanish, German, Portuguese and extra, and we are going to proceed to roll them out globally in 2023.
Due to our investments round AI and machine studying, we’ve been capable of safely channel extra of our first-line moderation to automated techniques. Roblox has made significant enhancements to the time to motion on content material recognized as problematic. The upshot: whereas velocity sparsely has lengthy been a power for Roblox, we’re now even quicker and extra correct.
Creating Alternatives for Manufacturers
Manufacturers of all kinds, from Alo Yoga and Spotify to the NFL, continued to make use of Roblox to attach and interact with tens of millions of individuals. On daily basis, Roblox makes totally new on-line connections attainable by giving firms the power to create thrilling activations and digital merchandise. There have been over 100 model activations launched in 2022.
By giving folks the instruments to precise themselves in any means they need, we’ve seen some superb creativity and attention-grabbing traits from the neighborhood. These had been captured in our 2022 Metaverse Trend Developments report, printed in collaboration with the Parsons Faculty of Design. The report dives into the brand new traits and alternatives in digital style, and the way attire within the digital world can encourage folks to precise themselves in new methods on Roblox.
We additionally continued to give attention to supporting instructional builders, suppliers, and educators in bringing high-quality content material to the platform throughout a broad vary of topics, grade ranges, and expertise genres. We made progress within the training class by partnering with our first Roblox Neighborhood Fund recipient, the Museum of Science, Boston, on the launch of their Mission: Mars expertise on the platform.
As firms proceed to ascertain themselves on Roblox with the assistance of our neighborhood, the alternatives for creators enhance. And the expansion of our neighborhood expands the alternatives for organizations to attach with their audiences on Roblox. We’re excited to see this momentum proceed.
Investing in Our Folks
None of this could be attainable with out our proficient staff. To help the continued development of our platform, we continued to spend money on creating our expertise and management. Nick Tornow joined us to guide the Creator Engineering group, and most lately John Stauffer joined us as our new VP of Engineering on the Engine group.
Within the spirit of collaboration driving innovation, we held our first all-employee in-person Roblox Week at our San Mateo headquarters in July. Groups gathered for every week of actions that fostered connections, strengthened our neighborhood, and celebrated the technical improvements we’re constructing to form the long run. And on the finish of the yr, we returned to an in-person Hack Week, with greater than 225 groups pursuing self-directed initiatives that pushed boundaries and accelerated the way forward for our platform.
Lastly, we had been honored to rank third on Quick Firm’s Prime 100 Workplaces for Innovators in 2022. This award displays our innovation-first tradition that empowers our technical groups to be accountable, take the lengthy view, and get stuff finished, all whereas respecting our world neighborhood of tens of millions of creators.
The Journey Forward
Trying forward, I’m excited to see how creativity and invention proceed to gas development at Roblox. At each stage, we’re seeing new alternatives to attach a billion folks with optimism and civility.
I’d prefer to thank our staff, our Roblox board, and the whole Roblox neighborhood for all of the issues they’ve achieved and made attainable this yr. We have now an thrilling yr forward.
David Baszucki, a.ok.a Builderman
Founder and CEO, Roblox
