Gaming giant Roblox reported its first-ever earnings report as a public company on Tuesday, beating Wall Street analysts expectations for revenue but missing on losses. The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $134.2 million, but strong user growth of 79% year over year to 42.1 million daily active users and a revenue jump of 140% year over year to $387 million.
Roblox makes a platform and toolset for user-generated video games, combining elements of Minecraft and other creator-focused games with the features and connectively of massively multiplayer online titles. It is extremely popular in the U.S., where over half of kids under the age of 16 play the game and numerous developers now have entire businesses dedicated to building and maintaining games within the Roblox universe.
The company earns 30% of all transactions that occur in games built on the platform, similar to the cut taken by other app store vendors, while many of the titles on the platform are free-to-play. But Roblox also gives roughly 30% of the revenue it does take to the platform owners that host it, including Apple, Microsoft and Sony. Its unique structure has made the game a focus of the ongoing Epic v. Apple antitrust trial, where the definition of the types of games and experiences Roblox offers on its platform has led to disputes over whether Roblox is in fact operating an app store of its own.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE