Roblox value tanks 72% as viral hits dry up and execs try to ditch “clickbait-y, or kind of cash grabby-type games” for babies and pursue an older crowd
Roblox has been suffering in the days since the company issued its Q2 earnings report to shareholders and revealed its monetization efforts are stumbling. As of writing, the company’s stock has torpedoed down 72% from last year, but founder and CEO David Baszucki seems certain that this is only a short-term inconvenience.
Baszucki and CFO Naveen K. Chopra both reiterate to investors during a Q&A session that, while it’s true that fewer people are currently spending money on Roblox, this is only the result of the company’s wider push toward “evergreen” games instead of viral sensations (h/t Dexerto), and pursuing 18-and-up players rather than only the babies Roblox is notorious for inspiring.
Chopra says Roblox’s engagement hours were “in line with our expectations” this quarter, but monetization “was below our forecast.”
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“We attribute the unforeseen monetization shortfall to a greater-than-expected shift of engagement from high-monetizing, 2025 ‘vintage’ viral games to a combination of new and evergreen experiences with lower hourly monetization.”
He attributes this shift to a change in Roblox’s recommendation algorithm, “which optimizes for long-term retention, and is therefore providing more impressions for highly retentive games – at the expense of near-term monetization.” Chopra says “younger users,” in particular, were less motivated to spend money this quarter – which is great for their parents, but bad for Roblox, whose majority of 123 million daily active users are under 17.
Chopra declines to predict what the end of the 2026 financial year will be like for Roblox given “all of the moving pieces,” but he tells an investor, “We feel good about where things are trending in the longterm.”
Baszucki instead describes how Roblox will approach its shrinking pool of young benefactors, which is by moving, “more and more to evergreen-type games, games that keep players around for a long term. Essentially, the exact opposite of, you know, what might be called – not saying we have it, but – more clickbait-y, or kind of cash grabby-type games.”
It seems Roblox is interested in growing with its young playerbase rather than simply saying “hello” and draining parents’ wallets immediately with briefly popular minigames like Dress to Impress or Steal a Brainrot. Baszucki explains, “The 18 and over market is 80% of the $200 billion global gaming market, and we believe we’re uniquely poised to expand play in this 18 and over market in the same way we have for under 18.”
“I do think the youth of today are changing,” Baszucki muses. “Play is universal, and I believe we’re moving towards that original vision of really everyone on our platform is a creator and a builder.”
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