Having surpassed a significant milestone of picking up 100 million monthly active users, Roblox CEO David Baszucki said a new internal mission for the company is to pay out $1 billion to its developer community.
The firm is currently on track to pay out $100 million to developers by the end of 2019. That’s up from the $70 million it previously announced would be handed out to devs for 2018. Many of the creators building games for the platform and making money are under 18.
While money made in Roblox comes from in-game purchases, the company is currently looking at new ways for developers to make money.
One avenue already being explored is through physical toys. Since starting two years ago, Roblox has sold more than 40 million toys based off the content built by creators, for which those developers receive royalties.
“We’ve created an early inkling in the toy market place that someday will be probably copied in the movie industry or the episodic content market on Netflix, where Roblox fades into the background and we have an infinite variety of just amazing creative content," said Baszucki.
"And our toy system, it’s a lot easier than making Hot Wheels - we don’t have to think this stuff up, we go to our amazing community and we just crank them out."
Monetising engagement
In future, Roblox hopes to introduce developer payments for engagement time - not just sales. Baszucki said that some of the games in the top 50 most played still aren’t monetising much.
He said that there are thousands of developers who, when they get started, are focused on fun and engagement over monetisation.
As part of the company’s plan to deliver $1 billion in one year to the community, the firm is looking at rewarding creators for the amount of time people spend in their games.
The current goal is to get the top 1,000 developers based on time spent to an income of $30,000 a year.
The scheme is likely set to roll out in the next six to 12 months, with more information to come at a later date.
Baszucki said that by 2022, Roblox will see a studio hitting $40 million to $50 million a year. One of the goals for the company is to help support studios employing 100 people to get to that point.
Baszucki added that Roblox is also looking into advertising as a monetisation option. He clarified that this won’t be through banners or pre-roll ads, but rather the firm is exploring immersive 3D advertising.
One of the company’s ambitions is to have a major national movie advertise in Roblox, getting more engagement than TV or online video.