Roblox Shows Real Strength in Virtual World: Q2 Preview

While not immune to real-world economic pressures, virtual world operator Roblox showed a lot of strength in the second quarter as measured by transactional traffic related to the virtual economy for the games and online experiences. Although Roblox also generates revenue with advertising and promotional placements, we get the clearest signals of its fortunes by studying metrics related to converting freemium users of the service into paying customers.

Roblox will report Q2 earnings on August 9.

Key takeaways

• Overall, web traffic to roblox.com was up 7.8% year over year in July, according to preliminary Similarweb estimates.
• Traffic to the pages for redeeming gift cards – one of the main ways Roblox users gain access to its virtual currency – shot up in December but has continued to rise – up another 25% since then as of July. Sales of gift cards on Amazon aren’t quite as high as they were in December but still amounted to 406,532 units sold for $7.5 million in June.
• Traffic to the pages for purchasing Roblox virtual currency was down 8% for the quarter, most notably in May when it was down 15% on a year-over-year basis. However, preliminary numbers for July show a 4.6% increase.

Strong interest in Roblox, overall

Roblox operates a virtual world within which independent creators can field games and other experiences. People get introduced to the service and buy the Roblox currency used in the virtual world through the roblox.com website. The website is also how users navigate the catalog of games and experiences they might want to enter, although actual gameplay happens primarily within desktop and mobile apps.

As an overall signal of interest in the service, desktop and mobile web traffic to the site are positive – up 3.7% in the second quarter and 7.8% in July, year over year.

Gift cards galore

Although creators and other third parties can make money in the Roblox world, the company makes money as the custodian of the world’s virtual currency, Robux. Robux gift cards can be purchased through both brick and mortar and online retailers.

Traffic to the page for redeeming gift cards has grown dramatically over the past year, and traffic to the Roblox general checkout page is also up slightly.

Sales strong on Amazon

Gift card sales on Amazon are also strong, many times higher (at least for the particular SKU we’re tracking) than they were a year ago by both revenue and units sold. These statistics are from Similarweb’s Shopper Intelligence service, which gets ecommerce metrics directly from Amazon and other digital retailers.

In June, Amazon sold 406,532 Roblox gift cards for $7.5 million. That’s not bad in comparison to the peak of the holiday shopping season when 473,328 units sold for $10.8 million.

In-world economy suffers along with the real world

One potential sign of trouble is the traffic to the roblox.com pages for purchasing Robux directly from the company, rather than via a gift card. Robux traffic had been lower on a year-over-year basis since February, bottoming out with a 15% decline in May. In other words, players may be less motivated to buy the currency as opposed to receiving it as a gift.

However, Robux-related traffic bounced positive in July, when it was up 4.6% based on preliminary Similarweb estimates.

Conclusion

What we see in these web metrics is consistent with what investment analyst MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler said about the company when he raised his price target on Roblox based on strong bookings of future sales, as reported in The Motley Fool. Roblox hasn’t necessarily made as much noise about the metaverse as Facebook did when it changed its name to Meta, but the company has been successful at creating a virtual world for games and experiences that its customers enjoy in good times and bad.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

Photo by Oberon Copeland @veryinformed.com on Unsplash

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".