Roblox

Roblox is an online gaming and entertainment platform for a shared digital experience that brings people together through play. It enables anyone to imagine, create, and have fun with friends as they explore interactive 3D experiences produced by developers using their desktop design tool, Roblox Studio. 

The company is backed by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Investment Group of Santa Barbara, and Warner Music Group. The San Mateo, California-based company was established by Erik Cassel and David Baszucki in 2004.

2006: Roblox first entered the world of online gaming. The program passed beta testing and was renamed Roblox because DynaBlocks was quite challenging to remember. Initially, Roblox was not open to the public, was not open until this year.

2007: In March, Roblox added a safe chat feature which means that children under the age of thirteen can interact with other players via predefined messages from a menu. Some other features added in were private messaging, a search bar, tickets, Builders Club and character customizations.

2008: From Roblox's beginnings, until nearly the end of the year, the website was very basic.

2010: Roblox was small for most of its existence mainly because of the lack of press coverage and the release of a large no. of platforms. Around the same time, it began to rapidly grow in the second half of the year and this growth was then enhanced during the Covid pandemic.

2011: The first convention was held in San Francisco, California in August. Roblox put together an event to brainstorm ideas on how the company could reward each developer’s contribution.

2012: After being warmly received by Windows users, Roblox decided to branch out into iOS devices.

2013: Eric Cassel died from cancer on February 11. Now called the Developer Exchange Program, this feature was first launched that year. Roblox's own official virtual currency, Robux, was introduced.

2016: On March 15th, David Baszucki announced that tickets would be discontinued after thirty days. Tix tickets were removed from the platform. In April, Roblox partnered with Oculus and launched Roblox VR for the Oculus Rift. The company introduced virtual reality Roblox so that players can enjoy their games virtually. Considering that Roblox is very popular with children, the Safe Chat feature is handy. It is a necessary feature that is integrated as Roblox became compliant with COPPA. The safe chat feature was permanently removed and replaced by a new system based on a set of acceptable words for users under the age of 13 and a certain set of blacklisted words for users of older age.

2017: The company secured an $82 million investment in March through a round of funding led by Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures. The 5th major Roblox logo version is the neatest redesign to date. There were two locations and dates for Roblox Developers Conference (referred to as RDC).

2018: By September, Roblox Corporation had hired Dan Williams (previously of Dropbox) to move Roblox from a third-party cloud computing service to a proprietary one. The company acquired PacketZoom, a developer of mobile network optimization software, in October.

2019: Under Misner, Roblox was launched in Chinese (in partnership with Tencent), German, and French in 2019.

2021: The NYSE approved the direct listing of Roblox Corporation's class A shares by February. The company is forecasting continued revenue growth, albeit at a slightly lower pace of about 60% year-over-year.

Roblox's mission is “to build a human co-experience platform that enables billions of users to come together to play, learn, communicate, explore and expand their friendships.”

“To bring the world together through play. We enable anyone to imagine, create, and have fun with friends as they explore millions of immersive 3D experiences, all built by a global community of developers.”