San José (United States) (AFP) – The American company behind the wildly popular gaming platform Roblox announced on Friday that it is launching a new digital wallet to make it easier for creators to get paid quickly. Roblox is a highly customizable gaming platform where users can create their own games and related content, and then share them for others to play and even purchase. The platform, which has millions of users, is particularly popular among kids, which has prompted regulators to scrutinize its safety.
Roblox announced the new wallet during its annual developer conference in San Jose, California. It’s part of an effort to attract new players and retain creators. Around 123 million people played on Roblox every day in the second quarter of 2026, up 10 percent from a year earlier, but down steadily from a peak of 151 million in the summer of 2025. Until now, creators who get paid had to manually request conversion of their Robux — the game platform’s virtual currency — into dollars once they reached a certain threshold, then wait through a long payment delay. The “Roblox Wallet” will now allow them to automatically receive, on every business day, the real-world revenue generated by their games and transfer it to a bank account. It will be made available starting in December to adult creators in the United States, then rolled out internationally in 2027, alongside the launch of an associated payment card.
“Roblox will not become a bank. The wallet is a financial account, not a bank account,” Enrico D’Angelo, the company’s chief commercial officer, said at a press briefing. The wallet will be managed by payment company Airwallex. Since 2013, Roblox says it has paid out more than $5 billion to creators, including $1.7 billion over the past twelve months. According to the company, the median earnings of the roughly 42,000 paid creators are about $1,500 a year. Roblox told AFP that the wallet will be extended in 2027 to teenagers with parental consent, and the payment card will be available to any wallet holder.
By the end of the year, users will also be allowed to launch games directly from the Chrome browser via a simple shared link, without going through the Roblox app. Creators will then be able to distribute their games as standalone apps on mobile, PC, and consoles; an offline mode is also planned. The platform did not specify how its restricted-function accounts — introduced in June for users who are 5 to 15 years old — and its age verification system, required since January to access messaging, will apply outside its app. Those measures have slowed sign-ups, the company acknowledged; about one-third of its users are under 13. Roblox is forecasting a 14 percent to 18 percent drop in overall purchases made by players in the current quarter, and its share price has lost more than two-thirds of its value since its high.
Roblox is also under close scrutiny around children’s safety and has been accused of failing to adequately protect children from sexual predators. During Friday’s conference, a protestor was escorted out after jumping on stage and shouting, while wearing a t-shirt that said “kids deserve better.” In the United States, two senators opened an inquiry in August, and around ten states have sued the company or reached financial settlements with it. The European Commission stated in August that, given the size of its market, Roblox now falls under its strictest digital services regulations, which notably require it to assess risks to minors.
The company is also betting on artificial intelligence. Its Build tool, which generates an entire game from a written description, is being tested in Serbia and Singapore; around 9,000 games have been published this way by users, 71 percent of whom had never used its creation tools before. Co-founder and CEO David Baszucki aims to capture 10 percent of the global video game market. Its next earnings report is expected at the end of October.
© 2024 AFP
