2022 was an ideal 12 months for Roblox. We’re optimistically driving our imaginative and prescient to reimagine the best way folks come collectively, and we’re realizing it by enabling deeper types of expression, communication, and immersion.
The investments we’re making to increase the engagement of Roblox throughout geographies and age teams are paying off. Our neighborhood grew by 23% this 12 months to greater than 56 million day by day international customers. And our customers spent over 49.3 billion hours coming collectively to create, play, discover, be taught, and join. Right this moment, greater than half of the folks on Roblox are 13 and older, demonstrating our platform’s attraction to a broad vary of audiences.
Innovation and enhancements throughout each facet of Roblox performed a key position in driving our progress. Listed below are a few of our main accomplishments from 2022.
Enabling Self-Expression and Connection
With the launch of Layered Clothes, we continued to empower folks to specific themselves and their id creatively. This characteristic allows clothes and accessories to suit any avatar physique kind. Objects like shirts, attire, sweaters, jackets, and pants at the moment are worn in layers and replica the best way attire suits and drapes on people in the true world. This gives our neighborhood with the ability to create never-before-seen clothes and accent varieties. Customers can combine and match an unimaginable vary of physique kinds and outfits, taking avatar customization potentialities to the subsequent degree. Since launch, we’ve got seen over 115 million folks personal a layered clothes merchandise.
We additionally continued to increase the standard and immersion of social interactions on Roblox. Now, folks verified as ages 13 and older can use Chat with their voice to talk aloud with each other. This performance is constructed to imitate in-person conversations, and relies on avatars’ proximity to one another – that means you may whisper to a buddy close by or elevate your voice to hold throughout the room. Nearly 1,000,000 Roblox experiences have already enabled voice communications.
On the finish of the 12 months, we rolled out Contact Importer, a secure and safe manner for folks to seek out and join with real-life mates. Contact Importer makes use of the identical contact names saved on a consumer’s system, to allow them to shortly acknowledge their mates on the Roblox platform. We additionally launched Pal Suggestions, so folks ages 13 and older can simply overview and add mates immediately. These two options are necessary steps in making it simpler for folks to attach whereas persevering with to uphold the privateness and security of our neighborhood.
Increasing Creator Alternatives
Different necessary improvements have been targeted on accelerating our imaginative and prescient of creating creation accessible to everybody on Roblox. We’re constructing instruments so anybody from new creators to massive improvement studios can deliver their creations to fruition.
In 2022, our neighborhood visited greater than 15 million experiences on the platform, and builders and creators printed greater than 15,000 experiences each single day. To help this creation flywheel, we made developments to Roblox Studio, our free improvement software program for constructing and publishing 3D content material. Roblox Studio now has a refreshed look and new options — like help for high-resolution shows and redesigned icons for higher navigation — that enable creators to customise their workspaces and collaborate with teammates seamlessly.
In July 2022, we rolled out various developments to our materials system to reinforce the visible high quality of the complete library of current supplies and make them feel and look much more sensible than earlier than. Supplies on Roblox are akin to supplies in the true world. They’re used to not solely outline the floor look of a 3D object but in addition its bodily properties, which in flip influences how the article behaves. Our materials system will assist our creators extra simply notice their aesthetic imaginative and prescient.
We’ve additionally added a number of new options to Roblox Cloud, our developer ecosystem, to streamline expertise improvement and improve productiveness. Builders can now entry all their Roblox sources by way of APIs that allow a wealthy ecosystem of instruments for enhancing creator workflows and customization.
On the finish of the 12 months, we started rolling out our new Creator Hub, a useful resource that brings all of our on-line instruments and documentation for builders right into a unified platform. Creator Hub makes creation simpler, quicker, and extra streamlined by offering operational and administration help in a single place. The expertise we’re constructing for Creator Hub can even deliver higher constancy and capabilities to developer creations.
Evolving our Digital Economic system
In 2022, our Economic system workforce achieved an necessary milestone: greater than 90% of things printed in Market at the moment are made by creators, getting us even nearer to the purpose the place all content material inside Roblox is totally user-generated. We’re persevering with to enhance consumer discovery in Market, so folks can discover gadgets they need in a manner that can redefine the consumer journey. We envision a future the place choose gadgets are provided on a restricted foundation, and different gadgets are extra broadly obtainable, so folks can discover a breadth of things they love.
This September, at our greatest Roblox Builders Convention ever, we introduced Immersive Adverts. This modern 3D promoting expertise is designed to offer manufacturers and builders alike the power to succeed in their audiences in new methods.
Investing in Security and Civility
Because the Roblox neighborhood continues to develop, we’re deeply targeted on guaranteeing a secure and civil atmosphere for our customers. Over the past 12 months, we elevated our investments in AI and machine studying for autonomously detecting and stopping makes an attempt by dangerous actors to interact in dangerous communications or add dangerous content material.
We continued to enhance sophistication in our content material and chat moderation efforts. Utilizing pure language processing fashions, we’ve advanced our techniques to not simply flag prohibited language however to grasp context and act accordingly. In 2022, we used these fashions to energy automated moderation options in English, in addition to in Spanish, German, Portuguese and extra, and we are going to proceed to roll them out globally in 2023.
Because of our investments round AI and machine studying, we’ve been in a position to safely channel extra of our first-line moderation to automated techniques. Roblox has made significant enhancements to the time to motion on content material recognized as problematic. The upshot: whereas velocity sparsely has lengthy been a energy for Roblox, we’re now even quicker and extra correct.
Creating Alternatives for Manufacturers
Manufacturers of every type, from Alo Yoga and Spotify to the NFL, continued to make use of Roblox to attach and interact with thousands and thousands of individuals. Every single day, Roblox makes completely new on-line connections doable by giving firms the power to create thrilling activations and digital merchandise. There have been over 100 model activations launched in 2022.
By giving folks the instruments to specific themselves in any manner they need, we’ve seen some superb creativity and attention-grabbing tendencies from the neighborhood. These have been captured in our 2022 Metaverse Vogue Tendencies report, printed in collaboration with the Parsons College of Design. The report dives into the brand new tendencies and alternatives in digital trend, and the way attire within the digital world can encourage folks to specific themselves in new methods on Roblox.
We additionally continued to concentrate on supporting instructional builders, suppliers, and educators in bringing high-quality content material to the platform throughout a broad vary of topics, grade ranges, and expertise genres. We made progress within the training class by partnering with our first Roblox Group Fund recipient, the Museum of Science, Boston, on the launch of their Mission: Mars expertise on the platform.
As firms proceed to ascertain themselves on Roblox with the assistance of our neighborhood, the alternatives for creators improve. And the expansion of our neighborhood expands the alternatives for organizations to attach with their audiences on Roblox. We’re excited to see this momentum proceed.
Investing in Our Individuals
None of this could be doable with out our proficient workers. To help the continuing progress of our platform, we continued to put money into growing our expertise and management. Nick Tornow joined us to guide the Creator Engineering group, and most not too long ago John Stauffer joined us as our new VP of Engineering on the Engine group.
Within the spirit of collaboration driving innovation, we held our first all-employee in-person Roblox Week at our San Mateo headquarters in July. Groups gathered for per week of actions that fostered connections, strengthened our neighborhood, and celebrated the technical improvements we’re constructing to form the long run. And on the finish of the 12 months, we returned to an in-person Hack Week, with greater than 225 groups pursuing self-directed tasks that pushed boundaries and accelerated the way forward for our platform.
Lastly, we have been honored to rank third on Quick Firm’s High 100 Workplaces for Innovators in 2022. This award displays our innovation-first tradition that empowers our technical groups to be accountable, take the lengthy view, and get stuff completed, all whereas respecting our international neighborhood of thousands and thousands of creators.
The Journey Forward
Trying forward, I’m excited to see how creativity and invention proceed to gasoline progress at Roblox. At each degree, we’re seeing new alternatives to attach a billion folks with optimism and civility.
I’d wish to thank our workers, our Roblox board, and the whole Roblox neighborhood for all of the issues they’ve achieved and made doable this 12 months. We’ve got an thrilling 12 months forward.
David Baszucki, a.okay.a Builderman
Founder and CEO, Roblox