Roblox Corporation

Roblox Corporation was founded by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel. Baszucki had previously founded Knowledge Revolution, an educational software company, in 1989. With him and Cassel, the company developed Interactive Physics, a 2D physics simulation released in the same year. Knowledge Revolution followed this up with Working Model, a software that simulated mechanical devices. The company was eventually purchased in December 1998 for US$20 million by MSC Software, where Baszucki and Cassel obtained senior positions. Baszucki was the company's vice president and general manager from 2000 until 2002, when he left MSC Software to establish Baszucki & Associates, an angel investment firm. He and Cassel founded Roblox Corporation in 2004. Working from an office in Menlo Park, California, they began preliminary work on the video game DynaBlocks, which was launched in a beta state later that year. The game's name was changed to Roblox in 2005, and the game was formally released on September 1, 2006.

Cassel died from cancer on February 11, 2013. In December 2013, Roblox Corporation had 68 employees, which it raised to 163 by December 2016. The company secured an $82 million investment in March 2017 through a round of funding led by Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures. Eyeing international expansion, Roblox Corporation established Roblox International and hired Chris Misner as its president in May 2018. Under Misner, Roblox was launched in Chinese (in partnership with Tencent), German, and French in 2019. By September 2018, Roblox Corporation had hired Dan Williams (previously of Dropbox) to move Roblox from a third-party cloud computing service to a proprietary one. In October 2018, the company acquired PacketZoom, a developer of mobile network optimization software. PacketZoom, including its employees, founder, and chief technology officer Chetan Ahuja, was merged into Roblox Corporation.

A "series G" funding round in February 2020, led by Andreessen Horowitz, raised $150 million for Roblox Corporation and valued the company at $4 billion. By October 2020, Roblox Corporation had begun planning to become a public company, evaluating whether to perform a regular initial public offering (IPO) or use the less common method of a direct listing. Later that month, the company filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to prepare an IPO worth $1 billion, looking to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker symbol "RBLX". By this time, the company had more than 830 full-time employees and 1,700 "trust and safety agents". The company acquired Loom.ai, a company that creates 3D avatars from photographs, in December 2020. In January 2021, Roblox Corporation announced that it would pursue a direct listing instead of an IPO. The SEC had also requested that Roblox Corporation change how it reports the sales of its virtual currency, Robux. In the same month, Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group led a "series H" round of funding that valued the company at $29.5 billion. The NYSE approved the direct listing of Roblox Corporation's class A shares by February 2021. The shares began trading on March 10 that year, with the initial buys giving the company an estimated $41.9 billion valuation. In August 2021, Roblox Corporation acquired the online communication platforms Bash Video and Guilded, paying $90 million in cash and stock for the latter.

In March 2023, Roblox and Guidewire Software agreed to switch office buildings under sublease agreements, with Roblox moving to the former Guidewire building at Bay Meadows, with 180,000 ft2 (17,000 m2) of office space, and Guidewire moving to the former 80,000 ft2 (7,400 m2) Roblox building near the Franklin Templeton campus. In July 2023, Roblox Corporation rolled out a "Roblox Partner Program" with seven initial developers partnered to create playable Roblox experiences for brands interested in advertising through Roblox's platform as a medium.

In August 2023, Roblox unveiled plans to create an in-game career center, where players can turn up for events, podcasts, and conversations with actual employees. A month later, Roblox laid off 30 employees in its talent acquisition, citing a slowdown in hiring.

Criticism

On August 19, 2021, the YouTube channel People Make Games released the results of their investigation into the Roblox Corporation. In their video report, they allege the company exploits young video game developers by taking an outsized share (75.5%) of the revenue made from games on their platform. In a discussion with Axios, Roblox chief product officer (CPO) Manuel Bronstein responded by saying that Roblox intends to give more money to its community developers.

After the report's publication, Roblox asked People Make Games to retract the video. Instead, they released a follow-up video report which further outlined several child safety issues they felt were present in Roblox.

Legal disputes

In June 2016, Cinemark Theatres filed a lawsuit against Roblox Corporation over trademark infringement. The plaintiff cited several user-created games within Roblox that recreated Cinemark locations, including the trademarked branding.

In February 2018, YouTuber Kerstin Hoffmann, known as Keisyo, claimed that Roblox Corporation owed her $150,000 because the company had stopped her from converting her 42 million Robux balance into real-world money for no given reason. In response, Roblox Corporation stated that she could not transfer her Robux because she had earned them through "fraudulent activities".

In May 2021, an unnamed litigant filed a class-action lawsuit against Roblox Corporation, accusing the company of ripping off players with bogus purchases. Stating "The company's decision to sell first and 'moderate' later has obvious monetary benefit for Roblox, by the time defendant has deleted items from the Avatar Shop and users' inventories, it has already taken its 30% commission from the sale." Roblox Corporation said that they review all content submitted by developers through a multi-step review process before it appears on the platform. In May 2023, Roblox agreed to settle the suit for $10 million, in the form of a Robux refund to any users who bought an item before May 11, 2023.

In June 2021, the National Music Publishers' Association filed a lawsuit against Roblox Corporation for $200 million, accusing the company of infringing copyright laws. The complaint states, "Roblox actively preys on its impressionable user base and their desire for popular music, teaching children that pirating music is perfectly acceptable." Roblox Corporation responded to the lawsuit by contending that they "do not tolerate copyright infringement" and expressing an intent to contest the lawsuit.