RTrack: total active players on Roblox grew ~35% since Feb. to 164M in July, helping many of its 2M+ game developers, some as young as 16, make a lot of money
Kellen Browning / New York Times : Tweets: @kellen_browning , @myzta_ , @tpcarney , @gibbogame , and @ennisnyt Tweets: Kellen Browning / @kellen_browning : Three quarters of all U.S. kids ages 9 to 12 are playing Roblox, an online world that has exploded in popularity since the pandemic. “It is the only thing that matters to us right now,” one said. My latest for @nytimes: https://www.nytimes.com/... Anne Shoemaker / @myzta_ : I got interviewed by @nytimes 🤯 https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tim Carney / @tpcarney : The only time I know of our kids sneaking a video game was Roblox during the pandemic. https://twitter.com/... David Gibson / @gibbogame : Great update about Roblox in this NYT article, young developers making it work, its a real games platform. I think Nintendo should partner with them but they won't. https://www.nytimes.com/... Connor Ennis / @ennisnyt : My 10-year-old is obsessed with Roblox. Good look by @Kellen_Browning at the gaming site whose popularity has increased dramatically during the pandemic https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands between two milestones already in our coverage: a pre-IPO profile noting Roblox outsources game development to its own players, with more than 300 of them earning $100K+ in 2020, and the March listing that closed at a $38.26B valuation. What the NYT adds is the pandemic-era engine behind both numbers — RTrack counting total active players up ~35% since February to 164M in July, with three quarters of U.S. kids ages 9-12 playing.
First-order effects
- Roblox's 2M+ developers — some as young as 16 — see direct income gains as the player base surges, turning a hobby platform into a real revenue stream for teenagers during lockdowns.
Second-order effects
- A creator base made largely of minors earning significant money sharpens the safety-and-fairness questions covered later, including reporting on young developers facing stress, burnout, and exploitation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Roblox's player-built catalog keeps compounding — the coverage later estimates average daily users above 80M, over 2x Steam or Minecraft — pushing the games business toward platforms whose content is produced by their users rather than studios.
The trend: User-generated-content gaming platforms are converting pandemic-era kid engagement into a developer economy, forcing the industry to treat teenage creators as a labor and safety question, not just a growth metric.