Blog
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See Exciting Announcements Live from RDC West Next Saturday
One week from today marks the end of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the beginning of the ROBLOX Developers Conference West (RDC West). ROBLOX staff and creators from our community will be participating in both of these events, and, for those of you who can’t be there, we’re planning to bring you coverage here on the ROBLOX blog. Of particular note to the ROBLOX community is our RDC West livestream, which starts next Saturday at roughly 10 a.m. Pacific Time (12 p.m. CT / 1 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. GMT). The livestream will feature big announcements about the ROBLOX engine, Studio, and more, plus some other assorted fun. We expect that the stream will run for approximately two hours. You’ll be able to watch it in an embedded player at blog.roblox.com or, if you want to participate in the chat and get hyped up with other viewers, at twitch.tv/roblox . We hope to see a lot of you there!
| February 28, 2015 -
Friends and Followers Makes ROBLOX More Social, and Even More Fun
ROBLOX has more than 4.5 million active players every month. Many of you have told us that you would like a more comprehensive social experience. You would like to be able to play and join games with your Friends. You would like to be able to gauge how you’re doing, in any game, in relation to your Friends. You would like to be able to create games with these social aspects in mind. Basically, you’ve told us that friends should be able to play and compete with one another – easily. Friends and Followers is a new way of making social connections on ROBLOX, and a feature that lays the groundwork for these exciting social gameplay and game development possibilities.
| February 4, 2015 -
How Engaging With Players In and Out of ROBLOX Makes Your Game Better
Game development is about so much more than building a game and publishing it. The games you see on the front page of ROBLOX consistently have something in common: the developers continue to improve their games, keeping them fresh with new content and finding new and innovative ways to engage with players. Many developers are using social media and video streaming as a way to not only promote their game pre-release, but also keep the excitement going. You may have seen members of the Mad Studio team streaming the development of new modes for Mad Paintball on Twitch. On Twitter, if you check the hashtag #ROBLOXDev, you’ll find many users posting progress of their builds. And then there’s Taymaster , who has been pulling all the right levers on social media over the last year to keep his games popular and fresh.
| January 26, 2015 -
Happy Holidays from ROBLOX!
2014 has been a fantastic year for ROBLOX. With 4.4 million monthly active users now logging 70 million hours of engagement per month, we’ve reached new levels of gaming, building, game development, character customization, Twitch streaming, and all the other fun stuff that comes with being part of this platform and community. And with other industry happenings — such as Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch and Microsoft’s purchase of Mojang — we’re confident that user-generated content truly is the future. We’re banding together to make it happen in the gaming space. We’ll be off celebrating this successful year and enjoying the holidays with our friends and family for the next few days, but we didn’t want to leave without wishing you all a safe and happy holiday week. Enjoy your break, play and create as many games as you possibly can, and stay tuned for some cool year-in-review stories as we approach the new year. We’ll see you in 2015. Fan art seen at the top of this post by
| December 22, 2014 -
An Inside Look at ROBLOX Player Patterns and Popular Games
The world of ROBLOX is a big and diverse place. With millions of players and thousands upon thousands of popular games, there’s something for everyone out there. You can see the diversity of ROBLOX players in the Games page and the titles that are popular and highly rated. But we know not every gamer is the same, and the most popular games are so different that it’s clear people have different tastes. The people who are enjoying ROBLOX High School are probably not the same people surviving bloody zombie attacks in Apocalypse Rising every day.
| December 20, 2014 -
Developer Attribution: A New and Unique Revenue Stream for Game Creators
Andre “Thr33pakShak3r” Srinivasan also contributed to the development of this feature and blog article. Over the last couple years, ROBLOX has steadily built up an arsenal of tools that allow developers to take their craft to new levels of quality and legitimacy. Among those tools are several monetization features, including Game Passes, in-game mobile ads , and Developer Products – the latter of which has become the go-to method for selling items in-game and delivering the goods to players immediately. All of these features exist to reward developers who pour hours upon hours into making and updating great games. We’ve now introduced Developer Attribution, a new and unique way for game creators to earn ROBUX, further diversifying the paths to success available on ROBLOX.
| December 19, 2014 -
ROBLOX Hack Week 2014 Begins!
Starting today and running through Friday, our team is wrapping up a strong 2014 with five days of exploration — of visionary ideas, process improvements, experimental technology, and other cool things that don’t quite fit our immediate pl...
| December 15, 2014 -
Watch the Complete ROBLOX “Hour of Code” Tutorial Series
We’ve heard from many of you this week that your schools and STEM programs are participating in the global Hour of Code event, which is intended to introduce people of all ages to valuable computer science concepts and runs through this Sunday, December 14th. Even so, thousands of aspiring ROBLOX game developers participated in ROBLOX’s own Hour of Code event by following along with our series of four tutorial videos that teach everything from the very basics of Lua scripting to writing while loops and if/then statements to make a fireball-launching cannon. Now that all the videos in the series are available on our YouTube channel , we’re publishing them here as well to make sure nobody misses this great learning opportunity.
| December 13, 2014 -
Learn Basic Lua Coding This Week in Our Hour of Code Event
From today through December 14th, Code.org is running its annual “Hour of Code” event , in which educators around the globe leverage simple, hour-long coding programs to help people of all ages learn the basics of coding, or improve their existing skills. Since ROBLOX has a hand in both entertainment and education , we’ve decided to participate in this year’s Hour of Code by rolling out a series of fun Lua programming video tutorials — adding up to a total of 60+ minutes — over the course of this week. By following along with our Hour of Code, you’ll learn the fundamentals of programming in Lua and even how to create some exciting elements of a fast-paced platform game!
| December 8, 2014 -
Get Merry with ROBLOX’s Holiday Giftsplosion and Game Events
The holidays are here, and ROBLOX is getting all festive with in-game events and 12 days of awesome prizes! You may have noticed some mysterious gifts appearing in your inventory and the catalog lately. These are the first prizes in the 12 Days of the 2014 “Giftsplosion.” Here’s how it works: for each of the first 12 days of December, a gift will appear in the ROBLOX inventory. Some gifts will be for meeting past requirements – such as playing ROBLOX a lot for the last 30 days – while others will contain clues on how you can earn them. If you complete the task, the gift box will be awarded to you (sometime after the deadline, usually about 24 hours). After the gift box is awarded, it goes on sale in the catalog, so everyone has the opportunity to snag it. A day or so after each gift box goes off sale, it opens, awarding you a special prize.
| December 3, 2014 -
The ROBLOX Black Friday Sale Extravaganza!
It’s that magical time of year, where we all stay up way past our bedtimes so we can get super sweet deals for holiday goods! And while your friends and family might be lining up for Blu-Rays and video games, you can stay inside all toasty and warm for the ROBLOX Black Friday Sale. We got a huge response from the ROBLOX community, and you guys helped decide which stuff got into the sale. Over 60 items will be discounted, put back on sale, released for the first time (ie new!), or made limited during the sale, which runs through Monday, December 1.
| November 26, 2014 -
Zeekerss Puzzles Players in 2.5 Dimensions
ROBLOX is traditionally home to 3D, multiplayer, physics-based games. So, when players discovered that Zeekerss was making narrative-driven, single-player, game in 2.5D – restricting players to a single plane of movement, but built using 3D assets – they quickly took notice. Inspired by the game Choices by GollyGreg , Zeekerss is now one of the top creators of side-scrolling ROBLOX titles. What’s even more stunning than the quality and aesthetic of his games is that Zeekerss is a mere 12 years old (going on 13), and already designing clever levels and puzzles that have stumped even adult players.
| November 21, 2014 -
BLOXgiving Is a Feast of Games and Prizes
Thanksgiving is nearly here, and ROBLOX is bringing you a cornucopia of awesome events, sales, and cool prizes to earn. This month’s ROBLOX event, BLOXgiving , takes three of the most popular games on ROBLOX and adds a Thanksgiving twist! The three games, The Mad Murderer , ROBLOX High School , and Super Bomb Survival , have all added a Thanksgiving theme, and have special badges for you to earn sweet prizes! Each game has two unique prizes to earn. The first is earned by completing a specific task in-game; the second is earned by finding a special Thanksgiving-themed item that randomly spawns in-game. Completing each objective earns you an exclusive hat and badge. Get all six prizes and you’ll earn a pilgrim BLOXikin!
| November 19, 2014 -
ROBLOX Streamers Have a Big October — and Three Win Prizes
The ROBLOX Twitch streaming community has been growing steadily since we formally launched there several months ago — and, in October, the community really came together and made waves for the 24-hour Extra Life streaming marathon. It was great...
| November 13, 2014 -
In-game Mobile Ads Now Pay 2 ROBUX Per Impression
Mobile, mobile, mobile! We’ve had a couple of exciting announcements, for both gamers and developers , in the realm of tablets and phones over the last week alone. Now, we have one more update to add to the list. The rate at which we reward de...
| November 4, 2014 -
Test Your Games on Mobile — Without a Mobile Device
As ROBLOX continues to expand to more mobile platforms (just last week we launched on Kindle and Fire Phone ), developers are looking for more ways to ensure good gameplay experiences for mobile players. We recently had TylerMcBride, creator of ...
| November 3, 2014 -
Configuring Your Game for Mobile
ROBLOX is going increasingly mobile and, as evidenced by the 1.2 million new mobile installs this summer, our mobile player numbers are rising quickly. That being the case, we have added a new configuration option for game developers that allows ...
| October 13, 2014