Roblox Is More Than Just a Gaming Platform — It’s a Growing Economy

Our kids understand it better than we do. And it’s training them for the token economy.

Tabarak Khan
Marker

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Image: Roblox SEC filing

The stock market, still caught up in the GameStop trading frenzy, recently put a spotlight on the gaming industry’s latest entrant: Roblox. It debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last week via direct listing and was valued at a mind-boggling $45 billion. The gaming platform of the future has proven itself to be a pandemic mainstay among youth, with daily screen-time usage nearly doubling in the past year alone.

For many parents, this marks a crucial inflection point as many witness an innocent pandemic pastime transform into a booming business. The last time emotions were riding this high was when “Baby Shark” hit the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 list. But Roblox is more than just an annoyingly addictive tune — it’s a moneymaking machine. Throughout the past year, even if parents haven’t participated on the platform directly as gamers, they were either observant bystanders or reluctant financial endorsers, loaning out their credit cards for in-game purchases. That’s a role Roblox is more than happy to let them play.

While Roblox is a gaming community open to all ages, it has seen its popularity surge particularly among school-age…

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