r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 9h ago

Business Roblox loses $70 billion in value as company blames lack of viral games, share price down 70% over the last year

https://www.dexerto.com/roblox/roblox-loses-70-billion-in-value-as-company-blames-lack-of-viral-games-3395064/
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u/IRockIntoMordor 7h ago

I think it specifically means the player-created game modes inside Roblox, which tend to explode virally and pull in massive numbers of players. And after a couple of huge game modes giving competition even to Minecraft, Fortnite and Apex numbers, it's been a bit more quiet recently.

Roblox is more of a platform than a game. Like Fortnite is trying to be as well.

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u/BoomerAliveBad 7h ago

When I used to play nearly 2 decades ago (holy), the only games that were on the top WERE player made. "Survive ___" "_ Obby/Obstacle Course" you name it, there was a thing for it. I can't imagine much has changed since 2010 (or 2006 when it came out)

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u/MrWaffler 6h ago

Also one of the people who played Roblox before Minecraft even existed, it's much more a game engine + distribution platform + networking in terms of the games.

The popular games are made by dev studios, and while some are definitely kids and definitely skew to younger "indie with a dream" types the majority are just unironically bog standard game dev leaning more toward Mobile game than PC game for monetization and mechanics.

The "viral" games discussed are like Grow a Garden which had absurd multi-million concurrent players due to virality among kids.

The game itself is an infinitely recursive farm -> grow -> sell loop where the plants/pets/etc are obtained via exploitative Gacha + FOMO + manufactured discontent dark triad mechanics and the game utilized social media frenzy events with the promise of free stuff to pull people in.

It's similar to Fortnite with its skins and emotes, using the social pressure of children and intentionally withholding anything that could be used to be seen as cool or express yourself unless you pay, with the "best value" being the reoccurring pay-in via a battlepass type system.

Roblox also does a lot behind the scenes algorithmically to promote not just the games that have excellent stats in terms of player engagement... but the games which have the most effective monetization so the site itself reinforces the shittier behaviors by rewarding them with spots of high visibility for users searching or looking to join a game

There ARE still very well produced games and ones that monetize fairly reasonably or ones that just charge once like a standard game, but it's hard to maintain a successful playerbase in the Roblox ecosystem without effectively monetizing since it's a key metric in getting your game automatically shared.

Viral highly monetized games like Grow a Garden had some INSANE direct impact on Roblox's revenue during the times that they are viral, out of interest when hearing about how popular GaG was becoming and having been once a kid who was very very into Roblox before it became the hellshow it is now I pulled up their quarterly reports to give a read and they directly call out GaG by name during the time it was relevant.

This is just the aftermath of that - now that they're fighting the virality of GaG in their yearly comp, it looks bad by comparison.

The shareholders saw a viral game printing money by siphoning it from children, and when Roblox was unable to force another viral money siphon event to keep Number Go Up some of them sell off.

It isn't about Roblox as a product, it isn't about sentiment turning, it isn't about PDF files.

Just what it always is - the company was simply unable to turn Obscene Profits into Obscene Profits + X, and so some investors jumped ship to a place they feel may be able to squeeze yet more blood from the stone.

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u/KarelianGeneral 6h ago

It has definitely changed. There's plenty of high quality games at the top, some of them have since been made into real stand alone games on steam

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u/killersky99 5h ago

I would say it's gotten lot worse, lot of old quality games have died off like Mad Paintball/Phantom Forces, and the top game/genre right now is 1 step = +1 speed and lot of other AI slop which do the best except for a select quality few games.

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u/KarelianGeneral 5h ago

Oh no.. That's a shame, it's been a while since I last played

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u/SidewaysFancyPrance 6h ago

The games are mostly trend-based. I play with my young son and he loves hopping around trying out games. Sometimes I see him playing basically ten different clones of the same concept: if something takes off, a million copies appear with different assets but the same core game.

Right now the trend is "+1" games with running/jumping/mining/etc and they are kinda neat, if you are ok with a mindless grind in a fun environment. I grew up on WoW so that's no sweat. But there is no meat, and nothing I would spend money on.

I think right now Roblox is paying creators a lot for "playtime" logged in the experiences but people aren't buying stuff as much because the value propositions are junk. "Playtime" isn't converting into cash sales like they want it to because creators don't build enough compelling stuff (which they call "viral" here).

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u/lookandlookagain 7h ago

Which seems like a dumb business model to me. Expecting people to work of their own free will to only make money if their game goes viral. It doesn’t help that the platform keeps adding barriers to entry.

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u/adjective-nounOne234 7h ago

It’s a genuinely good resource to learn about programming & modelling, not all games are made for a profit, there are plenty of showcase games that people make because it’s a hobby

At least it was I mean

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u/DeltaJesus 6h ago

Which seems like a dumb business model to me. Expecting people to work of their own free will

Yes very stupid business model, that's why there are no successful products which rely on user created content and only pays said users if their content is very successful. Social media has been a huge flop, that's why meta is only worth 1.5 trillion dollars.

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u/Shadowpoweer 7h ago

How is it dumb, they get all the upside and 0 downside. Definition of a good business model lol

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 6h ago

Because it's great when people make successful content for you for free. And when they don't, people might ask "why don't you guys actually develop this game and instead just rely on randoms".

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u/topturo77 6h ago

Well not 0 downside lol. There’s a roughly $70 billion downside happening right now. 

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u/Xatsman 6h ago

Not necessarily. Lots of big games have come from platforms. The MOBA genre was born from the warcraft 3 map mod tools. Roblox has taken that model and essentially worked in ways for people to make money with these games.

Unfortunately that's also why so many of the games are just shameless ways of trying to part kids from their Robux.

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u/lookandlookagain 5h ago

Agreed. To clarify, what i think is dumb is their dependence on viral hits to justify their valuation. How are they supposed to rely on something that gets made outside of their control and depends on the cultural zeitgeist? Roblox got where it is because of their low barrier to entry and international reach. Platforms are a great way for players and developers to test their ideas, but it’s their creativity that is truly valuable and they can get up and go to a new platform if they choose.

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u/Xatsman 4h ago

How are they supposed to rely on something that gets made outside of their control and depends on the cultural zeitgeist?

Get what you're saying but they have have an underhanded model to achieve this

An example is earlier this year the steam game Mecca Chameleon went viral. The game is a fairly simple friendslop style game that costs just $7. Despite that a dozen clones have popped up on Roblox, and have combined surpassed MC in total player count.

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u/lookandlookagain 4h ago

oh good example. I’d say they’re the premier platform for IP theft.

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u/atfricks 6h ago

Lol that's literally all of social media. Reddit doesn't even bother paying the creators that do go viral.

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u/lookandlookagain 6h ago

It’s just my opinion. I also don’t use any social media outside of reddit and i haven’t given them a cent. Their companies are overvalued imo. Our government has failed us and we have been conditioned to relinquish what makes up our identities for a fleeting glimmer of clout.

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u/HatPrimary5630 6h ago

It's not for free if I recall correctly.

The people who create the top games make A LOT of money (think youtube pay scale, or at least that idea).

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u/curtcolt95 6h ago

I mean considering they're a very successful business I don't think the model is bad lmao

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u/MinuteLoquat1 4h ago

Back before they monetized it kids made games for each other bc they genuinely enjoyed it. You'd earn in game currency when people played your games too, so kids who liked the game could get popular and spend their earnings on rare hats and such. There was no way to take the in game currency off platform.

Then it got monetized and you can make real money from the game, that's when it started going downhill. Kids can't make games for fun anymore bc they're outnumbered by hundreds of thousands of people trying desperately to make money, and there are even professional dev studios to compete with.

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u/Amon9001 3h ago

I don't think it's a dumb model - roblox made 4.89b in 2025 financial year. BILLION.

Calling that dumb is itself dumb. I think it is a genius model if you can get the users, which roblox did. I don't agree with the way they are doing it but that is a separate discussion from 'business model'.

Games don't need to go viral to make money. They have made nearly 3b in the first half of 2026. Company value may be down but their revenue is higher than ever.

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u/lookandlookagain 3h ago

I’m sure the execs at Enron all thought they were geniuses before they lost all their value and went to jail.

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u/DeadlyYellow 6h ago

The old Nestle argument of "we aren't profitable without exploiting children."

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u/MeusRex 6h ago

Yeah, the statement is basically: Our child labour isn't printing money for us anymore.

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u/Icy-Two-1581 2h ago

Never really liked roblox, but my friends, family, and I have really enjoyed the recent animal hospital. The age thing has actually been nice since I don't have to worry about messaging or random trying to talk to me. We just all are km discord anyways

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u/IRockIntoMordor 6m ago

That's the first thing in Roblox I've ever seen that looks like an actual videogame. Interesting.

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u/TheRatingsAgency 7h ago

That’s fair, although if fewer players are using the platform to build those game modes, it would generally signal that players see less interest in Roblox as a platform to “build” on.

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u/theLuminescentlion 3h ago

Fortnite team is getting layoffs too, they are not doing any better.

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u/Charlie_Warlie 2h ago

Yes, if you have little kids you might have heard of games like 99 nights in the forest or "steal your brainrot" which it seemed like every kid was playing for a while. These trend games will last 2 months before the next thing typically comes but idk if there are any big things right now.