- During the 2024 Roblox Developer Conference, creators were given insight into Party plans, “Harmony”, and more
- Founder and CEO David Baszucki strives to see “10% of all gaming revenue” flow through the Roblox ecosystem
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Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki aspires to see “10% of all gaming revenue” flow through the Roblox ecosystem and is on a mission to grow the platform’s daily active users from 79.5 million to one billion.
These ambitious goals were shared during the 10th annual Roblox Developer Conference in San Jose, California, which gave brands, devs, 3D artists and influencers a glimpse of what’s to come for the popular platform.
Party planning
At the forefront of Roblox’s new plans is its party system, which will be launched later this year and will offer players aged nine and up the ability to join experiences together and seamlessly chat via text inside and outside of the experiences themselves.
Text functionality is due to launch first, with voice chat to follow, though the latter will only be available to phone-verified users aged 13 and up.
Through this new feature, developers can drop party members into private lobbies, pre-pair them into teams, and teleport them to the same starting point within an experience.
Roblox focused on this addition during the conference on the basis that a large portion of new players “will come to Roblox to play together”, so easing that connection process offers a clear path of encouragement to newcomers. In fact, on its journey to 300 million daily active users, Roblox foresees 80% coming with the direct intent of playing together.
Baszucki said: “We believe that about 80% of those people will come to Roblox to play together, with the rest coming to shop, consume entertainment, learn, or simply communicate with one another,”
Living in Harmony
Roblox also gave creators an early peek at Harmony, a piece of technology designed to optimise CPU, GPU, RAM and bandwidth to ensure players have the best possible experience across a range of devices. The tool actually optimises engine streaming for clients and on the server.
Meanwhile, on the AI front, Roblox’s 3D foundational model – which powers its generative AI creation – is going open source and multimodal, with capabilities to be provided in a “resource-efficient way”.
“The Roblox community is playing, building, communicating, and connecting more than ever, as evidenced by the 79.5 million daily active users (as of June 30th, 2024) from around the world coming to our platform,” said Baszucki.
“In the second quarter of 2024, daily active users grew by double digits in each of the regions where Roblox is available – and more than 20% in the US and Canada, Asia, and Rest of World. Of the 79.5 million users who come to Roblox daily, 58% are aged 13 or older. That age group saw 26% growth year over year in the second quarter of 2024.”
The company has also introduced new economic levers like dynamic price floors and publishing advances for creators on its marketplace.
