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ROBLOX vs Steam: How We Measure Up

May 27, 2014

by jackintheblox


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rvssquareWe’ve seen plenty of individual success stories on ROBLOX through the first six months of 2014. Nikilis went from zero to 6,000 players overnight with his trend-setting Murder Mystery. Loleris jumped in and stole the show with his own take on the murder genre, amassing 3 million play sessions in about a month’s time – or roughly 100,000 play sessions per day. Three games have cracked the 30-million-visits threshold.

But what about ROBLOX as a whole? We wanted to share some exciting numbers about ROBLOX, but we get it, statistics don’t make for a particularly exciting article. And we can spout numbers all day, but without context they’re meaningless.

So we did something a little different. We took our ROBLOX metrics and applied them to Steam, the popular PC gaming service, to ask the question, “Where would we rank in the Steam store?”

Thanks to sites like Steam Charts and ArsTechnica’s latest report on Steam games, we’ve been able to get a more accurate snapshot of the games there, and more importantly, how they compare to ROBLOX. Check out some of these stats – they might surprise you.

robloxgames2

Aspiring game developers, take note. When it comes to getting players to try out your games, collecting feedback, and even monetizing your work, the ROBLOX community is the best resource around. We have dozens upon dozens of games created by people like you that have over six million plays. And as you can see our top games go well over 10 million.

hoursspent

As with most stats on Steam, Dota 2 is in the lead. But check out how ROBLOX compares to other popular games on the service. We’re right up there with Counter-Strike: GO, and significantly ahead of Team Fortress 2. (And, not to brag, but we have WAY more hats.) ROBLOX players are some of the most dedicated gamers around, rivaling the biggest first-person shooters and strategy games.

peakplayersalltime

These are all-time peaks for each of these games. What makes this data interesting is that ROBLOX now peaks in the 150K+ range every month. While games like Borderlands 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 peak shortly after release, then drop off significantly a few months later, ROBLOX’s ever-changing game lineup keeps players coming back month after month.

In fact we’ve got a graph to analyze that as well.

peakplayersovertime

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the lack of Dota 2 on here. It’s so high up there it breaks the chart, so we removed that outlier (Dota 2 wins everything). There’s a lot of other interesting stats in here, though. That huge spike for Left 4 Dead 2 is when Valve gave the game away for free in late December. After that players, well, left it for dead. The huge surge in Counter-Strike: GO player after the Arms Deal update shows the importance of keeping games fresh for the fanbase.

ROBLOX has been steadily rising in terms of players, keeping a rather substantial chunk month after month. It’s a long-burning game with a massive (and growing) user base that few games even come close to for a short time, much less for months and years.

That’s part of why ROBLOX is such a great place to make a game. There are millions upon millions of hungry gamers looking for the next cool thing. On top of that, ROBLOX makes the experience of developing, beta testing, publishing, and finding an audience easy by integrating it all into one environment and community.

We know ROBLOX fans are some of the most dedicated, passionate gamers on the Internet. And now you can see just how dedicated.