The most infamous incident occurred in June 2018, when a seven-year-old player’s avatar was attacked by two male avatars, whose controllers had hacked the game’s code to show explicit imagery. However, Roblox’s overwhelmingly young user base means it has also been a targeted by elements seeking to exploit them. “Content is king, even in the virtual world,” said Brand Ross, a tech, media and telecoms analyst at LightShed Partners. The virtuous circle for Roblox – more creators means more players spending more money on Robux – fuelled an 82% surge in revenues to $923m last year. Last year, the company paid out a total of $328.7m to developers, an almost 200% increase on 2019. Stories abound of the creators of super-successful games such as Alex Balfanz, who as a teenager co-developed the cops-and-robbers game Jailbreak after school in his spare time, that has been played three billion times and made him a millionaire.

There are 300 developers making more than $100,000 annually on the platform, and more than 1,250 developers made at least $10,000 from virtual sales last year. However, huge demand saw the share price surge 60% on opening to $72 a share, valuing the business at $47bn and Baszucki’s stake at nearly $5bn. The company was given a reference launch price debut of $45 a share by the NYSE based on that funding round. The 58-year-old, better known to Roblox users as his avatar, Builderman, saw his net worth hit $2.8bn after its last funding round in January. When David Baszucki, the co-founder and chief executive, rang the opening bell at the New York stock exchange on Wednesday, the company started its first day trading with a valuation of $29.5bn. The coronavirus has made a mockery of the $4bn the company was valued at after a funding round early last year.

Over the last year, daily user numbers have rocketed by 85%, monthly users are up 75%, and the number of hours spent playing have more than doubled to more than 30bn. A year ago, when parents found themselves stuck on Zoom calls working remotely, children stuck at home turned to games, and Roblox saw usage surge by 40% in a matter of weeks. Roblox, like the gaming industry as a whole, has been a huge pandemic winner. The combination has proved particularly addictive among children 56% of its 200 million monthly users and 33 million daily users are aged under 13.

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