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Roblox suffers $70 billion loss in value, but the company’s excuse might surprise you
That's a lot of Robux.
Photo by Jean-Christophe VERHAEGEN / AFP via Getty Images
- Alex Raisbeck
Published: Thursday, 6 August 2026 at 12:22 pm
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It hasn’t been a great year for Roblox, with the company’s shares plummeting more than 70 per cent in value, though I’m not entirely sure if their excuse adds up.
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A drop in value of this magnitude could be, and probably is down to any number of things, but in the opinion of Roblox, the reason behind this is that there haven’t been enough viral games.
According to a recent shareholder letter, released alongside Roblox’s Q2 earnings report, "We believe the decline reflects a greater than expected shift of engagement from high monetising, 2025-vintage viral games, to both new and evergreen games with lower hourly monetisation."
The letter continues to say that, following changes in Roblox’s Recommended for You (RFY) algorithm, players have been pushed more towards longer-tail, retentive experiences, rather than short-term viral hits.
This lack of viral games has been compounded with an enormous fall in players, going from a peak of 152m in Q3 2025 to 123m in Q2 2026.
Furthermore, the company also declared that 'bookings,' a measure of player spending, grew by only 8 per cent year on year, suggesting a plateau following years of rapid growth.
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Despite the setback, Roblox remains rather bullish in its assessment, repeating its intention to one day "capturing 10 per cent of the global gaming market," financial services company Morningstar was rather more critical of the situation.
Their report describes Roblox's Q2 as "atrocious" and "terrible across virtually every engagement and payment metric," before warning that Q3 is expected to be "weak."
Now, while I don't doubt that Roblox's fall in players and less-than-expected revenue growth is in part due to a lack of games – though perhaps Roblox's bar for what counts as viral is a touch higher than mine – I would argue that the catastrophic fall in share value may have been influenced somewhat by the company's dealings outside the game.
Roblox has been bombarded with various controversies over the past 12 months, including a car crash of an interview with The New York Times in which CEO David Baszucki described the problem of predators on Roblox as "an opportunity as well," among other ill-thought-out comments.
Indeed, the company's attempts to improve child safety on the platform have been lacklustre enough thus far that the UK Government currently has Roblox down as one of several games to have chat functionality for children banned altogether.
Roblox remains one of the biggest games in the world, largely thanks to its ease of access and therefore enormous player base, but if it plans on continuing its quest for world domination apace, a change of tact may be in order.
Incidentally, for anyone interested, $70bn is roughly 5.6 trillion Robux – the more you know!
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Authors
Alex RaisbeckGaming writer
Alex Raisbeck is a Gaming Writer at Radio Times, covering everything from AAA giants to indie gems. Alex has written for VideoGamer, GamesRadar+, PC Gamer, PCGamesN and more.
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