Roblox, a 3D online-gaming and game-creation platform, announced on January 15 that its revenue had grown 84% in the past year and that it had 54.7 million daily active users as of January. The numbers fell short of analyst expectations after the company's standout year.
Still, the platform remains wildly popular with users, who skew younger, often teens and preteens. Data shows Roblox was one of the most-downloaded game apps and highest-grossing apps of 2021 in the US. Roblox isn't a single game, but it describes itself as a platform for "experiences" — where users can both play games and create them. Game developers can earn money by converting virtual currency generated by premium in-game items and other benefits.
The company, founded in 2004, went public in March and was among those talking about the concept of the "metaverse" before Facebook went all-in on the topic in October.
"We believe in a platform that's going to bring billions of users together to share 3D experiences, and we've been doing this for over 15 years at this point," Daniel Sturman, Roblox's chief technology officer, told Insider in January. Roblox has more than 200 open job listings, all of which mention "metaverse."
As the company continues to grow, data released by the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification has revealed that the gaming company is bringing on dozens of visa-holding overseas Robloxians to help.
All American companies must disclose how much they intend to pay foreign workers when applying for visas, so Insider combed through more than 100 Roblox work visas from 2021 to shed light on what the company will pay for certain roles.
The data has limitations, such as lacking stock grants that can significantly increase total compensation. The data doesn't cover what Roblox pays every employee but rather what it offers to particular overseas workers. Still, it provides a valuable guide to salaries at Roblox for key positions such as software engineers and designers.
The disclosed salaries are all workers based in California — its headquarters are in San Mateo — and the highest-paid person in the data set is an engineering director who was offered $430,500, while the lowest-paid of the visa applicants is a software engineer making $128,000.
Here's a breakdown of what Roblox pays. The broad categories are taken from filings by the Office of Foreign Labor Certification, and we've selected a sample of roles.
