Dear Robloxians,
It’s been a great 2016 for Roblox; one of our biggest years yet. Our tenth anniversary year was a success, putting us in an ideal position to accelerate our vision well into the future. And as a result of the many breakthroughs we’ve had last year, big things are already well underway.
Looking Back at 2016
We’ve achieved record growth, hitting 44 million monthly active players and surpassing 900,000 peak concurrent users for the first time on 12/29/2016. On the U.S. app store charts over the peak of the holiday season, we ranked as the twelfth highest grossing iPhone app and the third highest grossing iPad app, the fourth most downloaded free-to-play app in Games and the top most downloaded free-to-play app in Family on Google Play, the sixth best-selling free-to-play game on Amazon, and the top free downloaded app on Windows 10 and Xbox One.
Our growth wouldn’t have been possible without our visionary developer community and team. Our top developers are raising the bar every year by creating more and more immersive games and experiences that are attracting the attention of popular YouTube celebrities and new players all over the world. And our developers are being rewarded for their work as they reach larger audiences, with some earning upwards of $50,000 a month. This past year, we also brought new creative talent to Roblox in all areas of the company, enhancing our ability to deliver on our vision to ultimately create the world’s largest social platform for play—our Imagination Platform.
There are several key factors that are fueling our success. Constant iteration has been one of our core tenets since our founding. We make an aggressive effort to ship new updates every week, adding continuous improvements and innovations based largely on community feedback. We collect hundreds of community-suggested ideas and then prioritize the most highly-requested projects in our development pipeline. Many of these suggestions come from a thriving community of over 700,000 passionate developers who are communicating with us every day on the forums, on social media, and sometimes in-house at our headquarters. Our developers are imagining the future of play, creating millions of mind-blowing games and experiences year after year. I also couldn’t be more thankful for having a great team that’s working non-stop to enhance the Roblox experience. I’d like to extend a heartfelt welcome to all of our new employees who continue to raise the bar around brilliance, creativity, and passion.
We’re kicking the new year off with a bang. And it starts with an announcement about the next evolution of our brand identity.
The Evolution of the Roblox Identity
Just as the Roblox platform has evolved over the years, so too has our logo. When Erik Cassel and I came together to start development on Roblox in 2004, we adopted the design below as our initial logo. It was simplistic, but the different colors helped to evoke the idea that Roblox was a fun, virtual world where you could unleash your imagination.
Generation I
By early 2005—around the time Erik, John Shedletsky, Matt Dusek, and I were shipping early versions of Roblox—my father-in-law re-designed our logo to better express our capabilities as a powerful physics engine, while ultimately strengthening our brand recognition at the same time. It was the first iteration to incorporate the bold red outline around the letters, as well as the accent mark over the “o” to indicate that Roblox is pronounced with a long vowel sound.
Generation II
In 2006, our brand identity had changed radically to coincide with our launch. We created a more contemporary brand mark that would go on to serve us well for over eight years. It introduced an original font, further bolstering our brand’s visibility and positioning as the Imagination Platform.
Generation III
In 2015, we iterated to improve and refresh the brand mark. This is the logo many of you will recognize. It’s a cleaner take on the previous generation.
Generation IV
And now, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to our new Roblox logo, which is going live today on January 10th.
Generation V
Over the past few months, we’ve been working hard to design a clean, timeless brand mark that stayed true to our roots of simplicity and BLOX. The new logo is a testament to our cross-platform vision, as well as our commitment to helping power the imagination of kids of all ages around the world. It’s also scalable, allowing us to integrate it into different mediums over time.
Our new anthem film demonstrates how we have incorporated dynamic motion into the tilted “o” to create an optical illusion that conveys the spirit of play and boundless creation. We will use the tilted “o” for use in icons throughout the product.
Looking Forward to 2017
In 2017, we will be working hard to continue providing the ability to create a range of shared, immersive experiences—playing games, learning, building, or hanging out and just having fun—with your friends across the globe. You will be able to engage in these experiences on more and more devices and platforms over time, including phones, tablets, computers, consoles, or VR headsets. And we will continue to work closely with our developers to greatly extend the range of content and avatars that can be used to create immersive 3D multiplayer experiences, as well as aggressively hire the best and brightest to continue scaling and improving our Imagination Platform.
Thank you for being part of our journey. I’m looking forward to a wonderful year!
– David Baszucki, Founder and CEO