Roblox

Roblox is an online game platform and game-creation system created by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. It is the primary product of Roblox Corporation. Founded by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in 2006, the platform hosts user-created games, designated as "experiences" since May 2021, of multiple genres coded in the programming language Lua. For most of Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and a company, due to both co-founder Baszucki's lack of interest in press coverage and it being "lost among the crowd" in a large number of platforms released around the same time. Roblox began to grow rapidly in the second half of the 2010s, and this growth was accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the 2020s.

Roblox is free-to-use, with in-experience purchases available through Roblox's virtual currency "Robux". As of July 2021, Roblox has over 215 million monthly active users, with it being used by over half of all children aged under 16 in the United States. Roblox has received generally positive reviews from critics.

History
From December 2003 to January 2004, Roblox went through multiple different names, such as GoBlocks and DynaBlocks, with their domain changing respectively multiple times in the short time frame. "Roblox" became the final name choice, and was finalized on January 30, 2004.

From 2004 to February 2005, Roblox underwent alpha testing. Roblox also was called names such as Dynablocks and even RoBlocks. Following that, Roblox went into beta testing until September 2006. Roblox was then fully released to everyone with multiuser experiences, and would gradually receive new updates and features over the years to shape it into what the platform is today.

Features
Roblox is available on Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Microsoft Store. People can create their own unique username; formerly they could also use Roblox as a Guest which did not require to register for Roblox, but the Guest feature was removed in October 2017.

Users can also create their own places. Users also have their own character, which can be customized via avatar shop purchases, and they can participate in social aspects of Roblox such as group walls, messages, and the party chat feature.

Places
Places are where users visit experiences on Roblox. Users can create an unlimited amount of places, but active places are limited to 200 places regardless of membership.

Before September 27, 2017, the number of active places a user could have was based on one's Builders Club membership:

Roblox has now changed this so that any user can have up to 200 active places at a time. Roblox provides templates for users who do not know how to start.

Premium Membership
Subscribing to Roblox Premium gets you a monthly Robux stipend and a 10% bonus when buying Robux. Not only that, but premium members can resell their in-game items and earn additional Robux from the sales, this is called a Premium Payout. They are also presented with the opportunity of trading their items with other premium members on the platform.

Avatar Shop
The Avatar Shop, formerly known as the Catalog, is a place where users can purchase accessories, animations, clothing and more to customize their avatar (hence the name).

Before Tickets was removed from Roblox, any user could accumulate tickets to buy items or even convert them into Robux. However, after its removal on April 14, 2016, there was no other form of daily benefits to users besides users that purchased Builders Club membership - before its removal - or Roblox Premium.

Clothing is the only feature on Roblox that is mainly community-driven, and clothing cannot be sold for free unless the person selling the clothes was none other than the owner himself, ROBLOX. However, clothing could have previously been sold for free, and all clothing that was priced free is still free.

On December 4, 2019, replied to a user on the Developer Forum regarding the user thinking the site still being labeled "Catalog" but the navigation bar labeling it "Avatar Shop". givenothingback stated that "Avatar Shop" is a test name and it will be reverted to "Catalog" once they are done testing; the name has not reverted to Catalog since this reply. It is unlikely that the name will be ever be reverted, as they have changed more mentions of "Catalog" to "Avatar Shop".

Creator Marketplace
Similar to the Avatar Shop, the Creator Marketplace is used by users and developers to publish models, scripts, audio, decals, meshes and plugins for other Roblox users to view or use.

All available items in it can be purchased for free with the exception of plugins, and any user may take such purchased items to place in their inventory for their own use.

Users can obtain an unlimited number of items from the Creator Marketplace. Furthermore, some groups placing their models in it to make it easier for assets for them to be used in multiple experience.

Sometime in late 2018, Roblox removed the ability for users to search for Creator Marketplace items that are off-sale, due to many assets by developers being stolen by others with no credit.

In December 2019, announced plans for paid plugins. The announcement also revealed plans for many other marketplace types to become paid access in the future. The paid plugins update was implemented later that same month.

Blog
Roblox runs a blog called DevHub, where they post about released updates and showcase creations by developers and staff.

Groups
There are many groups on Roblox. All users can join them, and all users are able to create a group if they have at least 100 Robux on their account (formerly, only Premium members can create one for 100 Robux). Users can join up to 100 groups regardless of membership. Before mid-December 2019, free users can join up to 5 groups at once while Premium members can join up to 100, regardless of tier.

Trivia

 * If "gooblox.com" or "goblocks.com" is typed into the address bar of a web browser, it will redirect you to the Roblox home page.
 * This also works with roadblocks.com and roblocks.com.
 * This also formerly used to work with "Dynablocks.com", "Dynablock.com" and "Dynablox.com", but this will now lead to a 404 error, since the Dynablocks name is no longer registered.
 * As an April Fools joke, John Shedletsky posted a blog post on April 1, 2007, on the Roblox Blog stating that Roblox had been sold to Google for $380 million.
 * On September 27, 2018, Roblox's favicon was changed from red to gray. Their logo was officially changed in February 2019.
 * In late 2019, a new modernized menu system covering only about a quarter of the screen was added for PC users. However, this was removed a few months later for unknown reasons. Recently, some users have received this update again.
 * In May 2020, the menu icon was changed from 3 horizontal lines to simply the Roblox logo.
 * If an <13 account is logged on Roblox, the website will be "web.roblox.com" instead of "www.roblox.com". The web.roblox.com page is a variant of Roblox which changes several features and only exclusive to <13 accounts.