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Join nowand also get a VIP ticket to GamesBeat Next (Nov 2-3, SF). Roblox announced several major technological and economic updates for the Roblox ecosystem at RDC 2026.
The announcements at the keynote talk at the event in San Jose, California, focused on AI-powered creation, enhanced engine realism, and new creator monetization tools.
The announcements at RDC 2026 are important. Roblox stock is down about 66% in the past year to about $44.88 a share yesterday. The company is still valued at a market capitalization of $32 billion, but it’s well below Roblox’s IPO first-day of trading valuation at $45 billion.
Engine Enhancements #
Nick Tornow, senior vice president of engine and creator engineering at Roblox, talked about improving visual quality and performance across all supported devices.
Tornow said the work being done by the team will make creators’ lives easier and expand the types of content that they can make.
“It’s been really hard to keep all this secret for the last few weeks, so it’s great to be able to finally talk about it. And I hope you get as excited as we are about what’s ahead,” Tornow said.
He said the Roblox audience is not the same audience that Roblox had five years ago.
“It’s larger, an average of 123 million daily active users. Those are people playing on Roblox every single day — about the population of the country of Japan. It’s up about 10% from a year ago. It’s growing. Playtime across the platform is up about 2x over the last two years,” Tornow said. “It’s dynamic. About 33% of the top 1,000 games on Roblox by Playtime are were launched within the preceding 90 days, and it’s engaging. Our users spend, on average, 2.6 hours per day on Roblox.”
He also said it’s also broad. The June rollout of the Kids game program means Roblox now has 30,000 games for its younger users.
“As our audience evolves, so does our platform. And as we look towards the future, we see creators pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, tapping into the evolving audience and their interests, and developing true triple-A quality games,” he said.
Tornow showed a video that showed how cool games are coming across the incubator, jumpstart program, and strategic partnerships. Those games are just a small fraction of the games coming to Roblox this fall, and these creators are tapping into high-demand genres, crafting memorable experiences with distinctive gameplay, he said.
Terrain Systems: New terrain technology offers faster and higher resolution, supplemented by custom terrain materials (up to 64 unique types).
Natural Features: Introduction of native support for interactive paths with smooth physics and projected decals for realistic textures like tire tracks.
Avatar Realism: A new default animation system using motion matching and root motion, plus the ability for avatars to interact physically with objects (e.g., picking up/drinking from items).
Expanded Playability: Support for 2.5D games via orthographic cameras, offline play capabilities (Game on Roblox), browser-based play, and the launch of standalone apps for specific games.
“(Creators are) pushing the limits of what exists on Roblox, and everything we’re announcing at RDC this year plays a major role in powering this sort of innovation. We’re giving players new ways to play, and giving developers new tools to build, and changing how fans discover their next favorite game,” Tornow said. For 20 years, Roblox has provided powerful tools to make it easy to develop, iterate, and scale games safely, with no upfront costs.
“And we’re expanding what’s possible on Roblox every day, driving towards triple-A content and helping our creators deliver innovative new games,” he said.
AI strategy #
Anupam Singh, vice president of foundation AI and infrastructure at Roblox talked about the four pillars of Roblox’s AI strategy: coding, 3D objects, multiplayer NPCs, and video/realism.
Cube Foundation Model: Enables users to build entire functional 3D environments via text prompts on mobile devices using the Roblox Player app.
3D Foundation Model: A self-trained model used for high-fidelity mesh generation and texturing objects.
Roblox Reality: A video world model that layers over the Roblox Engine to provide photorealistic environmental changes (e.g., weather, lighting) without altering underlying code.
Autonomous NPCs: New technology to add hundreds of intelligent, non-playing characters to worlds for testing and engagement.
“Whenever we think about AI, there’s a lot of buzz. There’s a lot of Twitter traffic. You see, our strategy for AI drives from four pillars in the creation workflow,” Singh said. “When a creator has an idea, they first open some version of a coding tool. In our case, it’s Roblox Studio. Then they add some 3D objects.”
Roblox provides a game engine and developers create 3D objects that function on top of that game engine. And players bring that game to life via multiplayer.
He showed how you can describe a carousel in a park as a prompt. You can describe a water fountain, some food shops, etc.
“And this year, we are announcing the ability to do this entire workflow on your phone,” Singh said. “You can open the Roblax Player app, and you will get the experience of building an entire theme park or whatever your idea is right there on the phone.”
He showed how the Build product works on the challenge from the prompt for about 13 minutes and 53 seconds. In that time, it created an entire park using Roblox’s Cube model, which allows you to lay out objects and generate functional 3D objects. The carousel and the ferrish wheel in the park are working, and all of the scene was generated by the AI thanks to this one prompt on the phone.
“This is exceptional. There are literally no other technologies that can do this level of creation, and this is our investment in the Cube Foundation model,” Singh said.
You can also modify the scene, changing the textures of objects. You can take a blocky horse and change it to look much more realistic and medieval. Singh said the team created a medieval version of the entire world in the theme park. That was thanks to the foundation model, which Roblox trained itself.
Then he tested the game using hundreds of characters. He had an artist create hundreds of characters in a food fight. That amounts to a test of how characters would work autonomously in a multiplayer game.
In the past, this model might have held together for 60 seconds before collapsing. But the AI is more sophisticated now and it can hold the “state” of the world.
Without changing the code, Singh enables Roblox Reality and adds the Northern Lights to the game. And boom, in an instant, the Northern Lights show up in the background sky of the game. Nothing else changes.
“We didn’t change the code. We didn’t change objects. I can literally take a reference image here, and I can make it sunny, and I can continue playing the game. By the way, I can continue going up and down inside the game and turn around. You can see the mountains, the cloud, everything changes,” Singh said.
Singh noted that creating water is technically difficult, and even harder is to capture the transition from water droplets to fog and changing the weather. When someone walks in the water, you can see the water parting in the water puddles.
“It’s taken us years in technology to be able to send those water droplets into the ferris wheel, and you see how the water drops from the ferris wheel cabins,” he said.
Then he changed it back to sunny weather.
Singh said, “We believe that Roblox reality will give players and creators the ability to change environments.”
Better realism #
Tornow said, “Roblox Reality is the best of both worlds of a central structured engine, and then an AI up-sampling reality on top of it. So everything you just saw is powered by the Roblox engine, and realistic environments are really essential to creating those sorts of immersive experiences.”
Tornow showed a new terrain system where the engine can render a full world.
“You can see it’s a it’s a large world. It’s super fast, and this is the type of technology we’re rolling out to the platform. And again, it benefits all of our creators and all of our users immediately. But the future of terrain is going even much further. We’re working to let creators fully express their vision and their intent, removing all the technical barriers in the way that means the resolution of terrain, the fidelity of the final rendering, and the creator’s ability to control this environment.”
The team has rolled out early access for custom terrain materials to create natural or even unnatural-looking environments with variation. The engine has support for crafting paths and making them look realistic, or building roads with smooth surfaces. Roblox is also bringing NPCs to life by layering a new default animation system to make avatar movement more realistic than ever. Those avatars can interact with objects in the world.
“So pick up an apple, and you’ll gain the ability to throw it. Pick up a coffee cup, and you’ll gain the ability to drink it. Creators will be able to craft objects, which any avatar can then pick up, and then the avatar will gain those new abilities and new animations,” Tornow said.
Creator Economy #
Enrico D’Angelo, chief business officer at Roblox, outlined new ways for creators to increase revenue and manage business finances.
Monetization Updates: The DevEx rate for 18+ U.S. users has increased by 42%. The Roblox Plus subscription provides creators with bounty rewards for subscriber conversions and private server compensation.
Roblox Wallet: A professional payment tool rolling out in December 2026 (starting with eligible U.S. creators) to allow daily automatic payouts in local currency via partner Airwallex.
Robux Card: Planned for 2027, this will link a Roblox Wallet to a physical card for real-world spending.
Regarding the financial nature of these tools, D’Angelo clarified that Roblox is not becoming a bank but is utilizing a licensed money transmitter to back the wallet services.
D’Angelo said, “Every day we we focus on helping creators deliver more value to our players, and that means helping them earn more, earn faster, and reinvest in the growth of their business and games.”
He said the growth opportunity for creators boils down to a creator flywheel, and this is what the team focuses on day in and day out.
“Player value is at the center of it. Earn more means expanding monetization opportunities to maximize creator earnings while earn faster relates to getting access to earnings more rapidly, so that creators can reinvest in driving user acquisition, retention, and the size of their teams,” D’Angelo said. “Faster monetization means creators can reinvest in making bigger and better games, which deliver more value to our players.”
Roblox is creating more opportunities to earn. Early this year, it announced the largest DevEx increase in Roblox history. So DevEx rate for 18+ U.S. users is now 42% higher than before.
And for context, roughly a third of U.S. daily players are 18 and over and eligible for this today, he said.
“Those players monetize over 50% higher than under 18 players, and this is not a surprise because if you look at the industry, 80% of gaming spend is driven by 18 plus players, and that’s the opportunity that this increased DevEx opens up for our creators, and it’s already working,” D’Angelo said. “More than 2,000 games have seen a 10% or better lift in revenue for this incentive in this incentive alone.”
In April, the company launched a new subscription, Roblox Plus, and the growth has been tremendous. In a few months, Roblox Plus has grown to millions of active subscribers.
“Our vision for Plus is that it should be a no-brainer for any engaged Roblox player to become a subscriber. So Plus gives players savings, but also co-play benefits like free private servers, and we’re continuing to expand it with self-expression benefits, identity benefits, and exclusive access features,” D’Angelo said
Roblox Plus is not just for players, though; it’s also for creators. Roblox Plus players spend more time in experiences than non-Plus players, and spend up to seven times more Robux, the platform’s virtual currency that you can buy with real money.
Roblox Plus is driving more engagement and more spend in games, and Roblox also introduced Plus-specific creator incentives such as origination rewards. That means if you’re a creator and you can you convert a non-subscriber into a subscriber, you will get a bounty essentially, and also private server compensation.
Thanks to these incentives alone, creators have earned more than 300 million Robux in just the first 12 weeks from the Roblox Plus launch.
As for earning faster, D’Angelo moved back in time to 2013, when Roblox launched the developer exchange DevEx and gave creators a way to exchange Robux for cash.
“That changed what was possible for creators of every size of Roblox. Since then, we’ve paid out more than $5 billion … to our creator community, and approximately $1.7 billion in the last 12 months alone,” D’Angelo said.
D’Angelo said that what started with individual publishing experiences has grown into real businesses with large teams, expenses, and global tax and payroll needs.
“Creators have grown. Their financial needs have grown with them, and so we’re now transforming how creators earn again,”
He described the Roblox Wallet, which is the future of earning on Roblox.
“It will let creators earn faster and directly in local currency, get paid automatically every day, and move funds to other Roblox account or to external bank accounts,” he said. “It will also bring richer analytics and transaction details into Creator Hub, so creators will know exactly where their money comes from, where it goes, and how to grow their business further.”
He said the wallet is a more professional payments experience built to scale with other creators’ businesses. Wallet starts rolling out this year, beginning in December 2026. Eligible creators in the U.S. will begin receiving invitations to open a wallet in Creator Hub.
“Over the following year, we plan to expand support to groups, LLCs, creators under 18, and additional countries,” he said. “However, our vision is bigger than just faster payments. Wallet is the foundation to help creators grow from small businesses run by individuals into thriving big companies, and over time we will add more and more business tools, from incorporation to tax and payroll.”
D’Angelo added, “And when creators are more and more faster, if you remember Flywheel, they can reinvest more in their games, in user acquisition, retention, and richer experiences.
In closing, D’Angelo mentioned the Robux Card coming in 2027. It will give creators another way to put their earnings to work. So the Robux Card is a card connected to a Roblox wallet, and with the card, the creators can spend their available balance directly in the real world, anywhere a major card network is accepted.
In response to a question from GamesBeat’s Alex Lee, D’Angelo said, “Roblox will not become a bank. The wallet is a financial account. It’s not a bank account and is backed by a financial provider who is a licensed money transmitter. So this is really meant to enable our creators to run their businesses more effectively. But this is this does not mean that Roblox will become a financial institution or run as a bank. We are using a a financial provider partner to back these services.”
Offline games #
Lastly, Tornow noted that Roblox is taking steps to make its games available everywhere. The company is creating support for 2.5D games with native camera modes. It’s expanding its user interface framework with new capabilities like blur, shadows, and 2D particle effects.
“So it’s easy to make games like the one you’re seeing on the screen here that really pop on on on your device. We’re also working on, and this is a big one: support for playing Roblox games offline,” Tornow said. “This could mean you’re playing a game and you lose your network connection, or it could mean you’re on the airplane or you’re in some remote place where there is no internet, you can still launch a game directly and play. It opens up new possibilities for single-player games, campaigns, more flexible play sessions.”
This will be called Game On Roblox. You can have a game that both works online and offline. And historically, to play Roblox games, you’ve had to launch the Roblox app.
“At RDC, we’re announcing the ability to play Roblox games on the web in your browser. This dramatically expands the types of devices and platforms we support. No app, no install, no friction. Friends can share a text or a social post anywhere on the web, and someone can click it and drop right into the game,” Tornow said.
“As I was suggesting, we’re expanding the way games can be distributed and launched. Historically, games have been inside of the Roblox app. You launch the Roblox app, and then you find the game inside of it,” he said.
Now, the company is announcing native standalone apps, which allow creators to go directly to their customers, to their players, with standalone versions of their games.
“These games will include all of the Roblox technology under the hood. It’s still one platform. Essentially, there’s multiple doors to get into this platform between the Roblox app and the games themselves,” he said.
And he added, “All of this is one platform supported by one engine, multiplayer worlds, a system for identity, accounts, social connection, communication, safety, and economy. Under the hood, they’re not separate pieces that creators have to assemble, and because they’re integrated, we can extend the reach of games without asking creators to rebuild anything from scratch.”
Creators can build the game once it runs in the Roblox app and in standalone apps, co-play will be there by default, and because it’s one platform, there is also one community.
“Users will be able to play across devices and platforms together on the Roblox app and the standalone game apps. And to be clear, the game will be exactly the same, either in standalone or as part of the Roblox style,” Tornow said.