Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: selling premium access to your game using Game Passes, ROBLOX named one of TIME’s 50 best websites of 2012, the richest ROBLOX users, running a successful Personal Build Server and more.

Follow in the footsteps of MMO giants with Game Passes

The MMO industry is shifting from a traditional subscription model, where you pay upfront to have access to a game, to a “freemium” model, where the basic features of a game are free to play and you pay to access premium content. While ROBLOX users had already found a way to replicate this trend using “VIP T-shirts,” we introduced Game Passes to make it easier to set up and sell special access in your ROBLOX games. You can check out our blog post for an introduction to setting up a Game Pass, and this ROBLOX Wiki entry for help with giving your Game Pass an in-game effect.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: talking mechs, motors and invention with user TakeoverTom, we respond your ideas for things like a leveling-up/reputation system and investing in ROBLOX games, the user-generated content landscape, advanced FPS creation and more.

Mechs, motors and invention with TakeoverTom

TakeoverTom has created some of the most complex models you’ll see on ROBLOX. We had the chance to talk to him in person about his creations, all of which operate on real-world physical principles and revolve around suspension and steering. From mechs to motorcycles, TakeoverTom is taking advantage of some of ROBLOX’s deepest intricacies, and I think you’ll find his point of view fascinating. You can read the full story here. Recommended reading.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: our encounter with a 1-in-4-billion .NET bug, the very different ways several ROBLOX employees broke into the gaming industry, great video trailer submissions, a deep look at ROBLOX’s user-advertising infrastructure and more.

An unlikely occurrence

In July, one ROBLOX user unknowingly caused a bug, with roughly one-in-four-billion chances of occurring, that broke every Roblox.com page on which his character thumbnail appeared. All this, because he put a t-shirt on his character. If you want to know how a t-shirt cascaded into a site-wide bug (or if you have a penchant for numbers, odds, gambling and the like), you should read our blog post – it’s a fascinating view of our basic data structure and the volume of information we store.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: the revamped ROBLOX Catalog, what happens behind the scenes when you publish a game, our spotlight feature on Fort Borealis and much more.

Our new Catalog helps you find the gear you want, faster

A long time in the making, the new ROBLOX Catalog was launched for all users at the beginning of the week. It adds a wealth of new sorting, filtering and searching functions to help you navigate the millions of user creations and find just the right gear for your ROBLOX character. Our blog post offers some background on the new interface and functions, so check it out and learn how you can shop more efficiently than ever.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: the ROBLOX’s new mobile site, our primer for the beginning ROBLOX game developer, our summer interns’ projects and experiences, part two of the seven-day trading system challenge, and some interesting thoughts on what you’d do with a million Robux.

ROBLOX. Anywhere. Everywhere.

This week, our capable and nimble Web Team launched version one of ROBLOX’s mobile website. You can test it now at m.roblox.com, and let us know what you think on our Mobile forum. We’re happy to see that users are enjoying the mobile site, wherever they may be, on a lot of devices, from iPhone and iPod Touch to Android and Blackberry to Nintendo 3DS. Check out the full story to see what you can do on the mobile site today, and what we plan to add in the future.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: the RoWars revival, LEGO Hero Factory: Breakout, what happens when you press the “Play” button on ROBLOX and more.

Continue reading

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: ROBLOX users as indie game developers, the new Build page, an inside look at popular Catalog items and our thoughts on your feedback.

ROBLOX users as indie game developers

Independent game development hit its stride in the mid 2000s, when technology and distribution got good enough that small teams — even individuals — could develop full-featured games and get them in front of consumers without the help of publishers. In many ways, ROBLOX users function like indie game developers: creating unique, outside-the-box gameplay and distributing content via the web, all with the minimal resources of a small team (or less).

Continue reading