2022 was an incredible 12 months 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 broaden the engagement of Roblox throughout geographies and age teams are paying off. Our group grew by 23% this 12 months to greater than 56 million day by day international customers. And our customers spent over 49.3 billion hours coming collectively to create, play, discover, study, and join. Right now, greater than half of the folks on Roblox are 13 and older, demonstrating our platform’s attraction to a broad vary of audiences.
Innovation and enhancements throughout each side of Roblox performed a key function 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 specific themselves and their identification creatively. This characteristic allows clothes and niknaks to suit any avatar physique kind. Objects like shirts, attire, sweaters, jackets, and pants at the moment are worn in layers and duplicate the way in which attire suits and drapes on people in the actual world. This supplies our group with the ability to create never-before-seen clothes and accent sorts. Customers can combine and match an unbelievable vary of physique types and outfits, taking avatar customization prospects to the following degree. Since launch, now we have seen over 115 million folks personal a layered clothes merchandise.
We additionally continued to broaden 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 relies on avatars’ proximity to one another – which means you would possibly whisper to a buddy close by or increase your voice to hold throughout the room. Nearly one million Roblox experiences have already enabled voice communications.
On the finish of the 12 months, we rolled out Contact Importer, a protected and safe manner 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 Good friend Suggestions, so folks ages 13 and older can simply overview and add mates straight. 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 group.
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 huge improvement studios can convey their creations to fruition.
In 2022, our group 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 improvement 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 enable 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 complete library of current supplies and make them appear and feel much more lifelike than earlier than. Supplies on Roblox are akin to supplies in the actual world. They’re used to not solely outline the floor look of a 3D object but in addition its bodily properties, which in flip influences how the item behaves. Our materials system will assist our creators extra simply notice their aesthetic imaginative and prescient.
We’ve additionally added a number of new options to Roblox Cloud, our developer ecosystem, to streamline expertise improvement and improve productiveness. Builders can now entry all their Roblox assets by way of APIs that allow a wealthy ecosystem of instruments for bettering creator workflows and customization.
On the finish of the 12 months, 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 know-how we’re constructing for Creator Hub may also convey larger constancy and capabilities to developer creations.
Evolving our Digital Financial system
In 2022, our Financial system workforce 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 totally user-generated. We’re persevering with to enhance consumer discovery in Market, so folks can discover gadgets they need in a manner that may redefine the consumer journey. We envision a future the place choose gadgets are supplied on a restricted foundation, and different gadgets are extra extensively obtainable, so folks can discover a breadth of things they love.
This September, at our greatest Roblox Builders Convention ever, we introduced Immersive Adverts. This progressive 3D promoting expertise is designed to present manufacturers and builders alike the power to succeed in their audiences in new methods.
Investing in Security and Civility
Because the Roblox group continues to develop, we’re deeply centered on guaranteeing a protected and civil surroundings for our customers. During the last 12 months, we elevated our investments in AI and machine studying for autonomously detecting and stopping makes an attempt by unhealthy 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.
Because of 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 pace carefully has lengthy been a energy for Roblox, we’re now even quicker and extra correct.
Creating Alternatives for Manufacturers
Manufacturers of all sorts, from Alo Yoga and Spotify to the NFL, continued to make use of Roblox to attach and have interaction with hundreds of thousands of individuals. Daily, Roblox makes completely new on-line connections attainable by giving corporations 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 specific themselves in any manner they need, we’ve seen some superb creativity and fascinating traits from the group. These had been captured in our 2022 Metaverse Style Tendencies report, printed in collaboration with the Parsons Faculty of Design. The report dives into the brand new traits and alternatives in digital vogue, and the way attire within the digital world can encourage folks to specific 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 Group Fund recipient, the Museum of Science, Boston, on the launch of their Mission: Mars expertise on the platform.
As corporations proceed to determine themselves on Roblox with the assistance of our group, the alternatives for creators improve. And the expansion of our group 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 continuing development of our platform, we continued to put money into growing our expertise and management. Nick Tornow joined us to guide the Creator Engineering group, and most just 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 per week of actions that fostered connections, strengthened our group, and celebrated the technical improvements we’re constructing to form the long run. And on the finish of the 12 months, we returned to an in-person Hack Week, with greater than 225 groups pursuing self-directed tasks 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 executed, all whereas respecting our international group of hundreds of thousands of creators.
The Journey Forward
Trying forward, I’m excited to see how creativity and invention proceed to gas development at Roblox. At each degree, 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 complete Roblox group for all of the issues they’ve achieved and made attainable this 12 months. We’ve an thrilling 12 months forward.
David Baszucki, a.ok.a Builderman
Founder and CEO, Roblox
