Roblox (RBLX.US), the “first stock in the metaverse”, is active to break 100 million! The world-famous “US version of QQ Farm” ignites the engine of growth

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Roblox (RBLX.US), which has the title of “the first stock in the metaverse”, unexpectedly raised its annual reservation volume forecast when it announced results on Thursday, and the number of daily active users of its exclusive video game platform surpassed the 100 million super mark, mainly due to the successful penetration of popular viral games such as “Grow a Garden” (Plantation). These viral Roblox hit games have sparked a consumer boom among users. Strong second-quarter results data and future performance prospects drove the company's stock price to soar more than 20% before the US stock market.

Net loss increased from $205.9 million in the same period last year to $278.4 million, and total spending soared nearly 24% to $1.4 billion. On a per-share basis, the loss was 41 cents, while Wall Street expected it to lose 36 cents. Revenue rose 21% to $10.8 billion, but fell short of expectations of $11.1 billion.

Due to its free-to-play and widespread accessibility, many interactive games with social attributes on the platform have become highly popular titles, attracting millions of users of all ages and groups. Grow a Garden, which has the title of “US QQ Farm”, has recently become popular across the US. Relying on the Roblox user creative ecosystem, it has achieved low-cost transmission fission and pushed the company's active users to break through the 100 million mark.

“Grow a Garden” is a phenomenal mini farm simulation game on the Roblox game ecosystem. Its core mechanism is highly similar to the classic Chinese internet game QQ Farm, but it also incorporates unique “metaverse-style” innovations. “Grow a Garden” mainly uses the triple innovation of “random crop variation, mechanized economy+fragmentation+social fission”, and became a popular platform video game worldwide in 2025.

In the second quarter, the key measure of Roblox user engagement — the average number of daily active users increased by 41% to reach 111.8 million; user engagement time jumped 58% to 27.4 billion hours.

A large part of the increase in engagement and bookings in the second quarter came from “Grow a Garden.” It's a popular “metaverse-style” farm planting game in the style of a tycoon, where players can expand their exclusive land by trading seeds and plants.

In June of this year, the game set a world record for the highest number of concurrent online players, highlighting the global influence of the Roblox “metaverse-style” gaming platform.

Roblox's new chief financial officer Naveen Chopra (Naveen Chopra) said at the results conference that the company has been investing in search and discovery features to give games that already have good engagement, such as “Grow a Garden,” stronger visibility and higher global popularity.

In an uncertain macroeconomic environment caused by Trump's tariff policy, Roblox, which has the title of “the first stock in the metaverse,” is turning the company's gaming platform into a social, commercial, and advertising hub to diversify revenue sources.

There is no doubt that investors are thrilled by such measures. Since this year, the company's stock price has doubled, far surpassing the stock price performance of competitive video game publishers.

Roblox currently expects bookings for fiscal year 2025 to be between US$5.87 billion and US$5.97 billion, higher than the company's management estimate of US$5.29 billion to US$5.36 billion, and higher than Wall Street's general expectations.

The company's management expects third-quarter bookings of $1.59 billion to $1.64 billion. According to data compiled by LSEG, this latest forecast is far higher than the general market estimate of $1.35 billion.

Roblox's second-quarter bookings were around $1.44 billion, which also surpassed the market's general estimate of around $13.2 billion.

Unlike traditional video game companies, Roblox relies on user-generated content and earns most of its revenue from selling “Robux,” the currency in circulation within its games. This is also the core source of what Roblox calls “pre-orders” — that is, the transaction amount of Roblox virtual currency purchased by users on its platform.

Developer sharing is also an important source of revenue for Roblox. Many games and virtual items on the Roblox metaverse platform are created by users (developers). Roblox provides a profit mechanism for these developers to generate revenue through in-game purchases and advertisements, and Roblox extracts a certain share from it. In addition, Roblox also generates revenue through advertising and brand partnerships. Some brands that focus on the needs of young people will advertise on the Roblox platform or collaborate to launch brand-specific metaverse virtual items and similar activities.

Roblox, which focuses on the “metaverse worldview”, is fully on the rise

Roblox, a video game platform that focuses on a unique “metaverse worldview,” is famous all over the world for being popular with young gamers around the age of 16. In recent years, Roblox has been encouraging developers to create more mature game content, such as horror games and adventure games, to attract adult users with greater spending power.

Roblox's so-called “metaverse gaming platform” allows users to create, share, and play games generated by other users. It is not only a gaming platform, but also a social platform where players can interact and participate in community activities. Currently, Roblox is beginning to attract more and more adult users, and the spending power of these users is far higher than that of young people.

The metaverse (metaverse) in the popular sense of the word is a virtual shared space that incorporates various cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), social media, and online games. The Roblox “metaverse gaming platform”, which is similar to the metaverse, provides users with an immersive virtual world experience where users can create and explore virtual environments and participate in various activities, which is very compatible with the concept of metaverse.

Roblox became a publicly traded public company through a direct listing in March 2021. When it went public, Roblox was seen as the absolute pioneer of the metaverse concept, which is the main reason why Roblox is called “the first metaverse stock.”

Overall, Roblox's second-quarter data yielded a “high growth, strong monetization” questionnaire that satisfied the market: daily active users broke through the 100 million mark for the first time, surged 41% year over year, user immersion time soared 58%, and Roblox extended from gaming to a “superspace” of social networking, virtual activities, and digital goods transactions, increasing user stickiness and life cycle value.

With the blowout of users sparked by Grow a Garden and the layout of platform-based and diversified revenue models, Roblox is experiencing a strong positive cycle of “traffic - content - monetization”, showing a trend of comprehensive revival.

Behind these impressive indicators, it is mainly due to Grow a Garden, a popular model known by players as the “US version of QQ Farm,” which completely ignited the user growth engine, while the platform's multi-line efforts in algorithm distribution, infrastructure, advertising, and IP licensing quickly turned traffic into real money. Overall, Roblox is indeed in a new full rise cycle, but its sustainability still depends on the subsequent deepening of “metaverse-style” content supply and diversified revenue growth models.