Roblox is a free online website and app containing millions of videogame and other entertainment experiences, all created by its own users rather than the company itself.
According to internal metrics, in August, Roblox had over 48 million users who spent 4 billion hours on it. The platform is especially popular with preteens.
As of Sunday afternoon, some users said they were able to get back on the platform.
On Sunday evening the company tweeted: “Roblox is back online everywhere! Thank you for your continued patience as we get back to normal.”
Late Sunday, a Roblox spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the platform had been backed up and involved an “increased number of servers” in the company’s data centers.
“We’re sorry for the time it took to restore service, and we’re very grateful for the patience and support from Roblox’s player, developer, and fellow community,” the statement said.
The outage began when the company launched a Halloween-themed event in partnership with Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., with the restaurant chain promising Roblox users more than $1 million in free burritos. Roblox tweeted on Friday that the outage was “not related to any specific experience or partnership on the platform.”
Eight-year-old Julia Ocasio of Brooklyn, NY, said the outage put a damper on her weekend.
“I was a little hurt by it because I usually play Roblox when I’m bored and it’s fun,” said the third-grader.
Her father, Ray Ocasio, a 50-year-old substance abuse counselor, said the outage has been frustrating for him as a parent, too. “You don’t want your kid to move around,” he said. But he said he also saw an opportunity to teach Julia about staying on the level. “It’s just a game. It’s not something to get into a frenzy about,” he said.
Several content creators were also impressed, including aspiring YouTuber Hannah Rizk, who recently played the Roblox role-playing game “Adopt Me!” Started making weekly videos about and posting on YouTube. The 14-year-old joined Microsoft Corp. “Minecraft” and other games while waiting for things.
Hannah’s mom, 44-year-old Sabrina Rizk, said she also missed playing games on Roblox with her daughter, which she described as a bonding experience.
“I’m finding that I have withdrawal symptoms,” said Ms. Rizk, a homemaker and an amateur investor in a suburb of Austin, Texas, “about $1,000 worth of Roblox shares” when the company went public in March. were purchased. listing. “It was a good way to decompress from the stresses of life, especially now, with the pandemic.”
Outages affecting a large number of users are relatively common. Earlier this month, Facebook Inc’s services went offline for six hours. The company apologized for the incident, which affected its core platforms and apps, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
A recently completed global survey by Uptime Institute LLC, a provider of consulting services on data-center reliability, found that 69% of data-center operators had some form of disruption in the past three years. Human error played a role in 78% of those incidents, and 44% had major financial, reputational and other consequences.
Roblox’s business model does not feature advertising and is focused on users’ purchase of virtual currency that allows them to receive in-game perks or items for their avatars.
Like Facebook, now renamed Meta Platforms Inc., Roblox has recently been looking to increase interest in the Metaverse, defined as the broader futuristic online world where people exist and live through digital avatars. interact in a shared virtual space.
Roblox users interact as avatars and are transported from one experience to another, including concerts by popular real-world artists. In September, for example, millions of fans logged onto the stage over the weekend to watch Twenty One Pilots perform.
Roblox was one of the companies that benefited the most as Covid-19 persuaded people to stay at home.
The San Mateo, California-based company was privately valued at approximately $4 billion after fundraising in February 2020. Its valuation reached close to $30 billion through fundraising this January. Roblox debuted in the stock market in March with a direct listing of over $40 billion.
Since its first trade on the New York Stock Exchange, its stock price has climbed more than 30%. Despite the outage, its shares climbed about 1.5% and were trading at around $84 on Friday.
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed
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