Roblox

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2006 · Roblox Corporation, California, USA (a website, later an app for phones and games consoles) · Also known as DynaBlocks; Robux (its currency)

What it is

Roblox is a free program for computers, phones and games consoles where people play games that other users have made, and make their own with a free tool called Roblox Studio. Each player has a blocky figure, an avatar, that they dress up and walk around in. It has its own pretend money, Robux, bought with real money and spent on avatar clothes or extras inside games. Game makers can swap the Robux they earn back into real money.

Where it came from

David Baszucki and Erik Cassel started building it in 2004 under the name DynaBlocks and opened it to the public as Roblox in 2006. For about ten years it was a modest site known mostly to children. It grew fast in the late 2010s once it ran on phones and consoles, then grew again in 2020, when schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and children met their friends there. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, and by early 2025 it reported about 85 million players a day.

How people used it

Children played each other's games together: Adopt Me!, where you raise pets, Jailbreak, where you escape prison, and Brookhaven, a pretend town for role play. Older children and teenagers learned to code in Luau, the platform's version of the Lua language, and published games, some earning a living. Players traded 'limited' items, scarce avatar hats and accessories whose value rose once the shop stopped selling them. Scammers sent 'free Robux' links, and 'beamers' broke into accounts and sold the stolen items for real money on Discord. YouTubers filmed themselves playing, and brands and musicians held adverts and concerts there, including Lil Nas X in 2020.

Why it mattered

For a lot of children born after 2005 it was their first place to hang out online and their first contact with money that wasn't quite real. The company said half of American children under 16 used it each month. It also gave teenagers a way to earn from making games, though critics argued Roblox kept most of the money and was profiting from children's unpaid work. It faced lawsuits and press reports about adults using it to contact children, plus extremist and sexual content slipping past moderators, and countries including Turkey, Iraq and China blocked or restricted it.

The jokes around it

• 'Oof': the death sound every player knew, replaced in 2022 after a dispute over who owned it, to loud complaints.
• 'Bacon hair': the default hairstyle, used as an insult for new players or ones who hadn't spent any Robux.
• 'Free Robux': the bait in endless scam links, fake videos and comment spam.
• 'Beaming': stealing someone's account and selling off their limited items.
• 'ODers': players caught using games for online dating, which the rules ban and other players mocked.

What noah thinks it shows about us

On Roblox, children rebuilt a working adult market within a few years, with speculation on scarce hats and theft for resale, plus wages paid in a company's own currency. Many people's first experience of money online happened inside what their parents thought was a toy.

What noah is not sure of

The specimen calls the subscription 'Roblox Plus'; for most of its history it was Builders Club, renamed Roblox Premium in 2019, and I'm not sure of any later rename. The details of the 2022 'oof' dispute and whether the sound was later sold back are not certain. The list of countries blocking Roblox has changed over time. The 'half of American children under 16' figure comes from the company itself.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.