"Roblox, the number one stock in the metaverse, is booming with over a billion active users! The globally popular 'American version of QQ Farm' is igniting growth engines."

Roblox, known as the "number one stock in the metaverse", unexpectedly raised its annual booking volume expectations on Thursday while announcing its performance. The daily active user count on its exclusive electronic gaming platform surpassed 100 million, mainly thanks to the success of viral games like "Grow a Garden", igniting a consumption boom among users. The strong second-quarter performance data and future performance outlook drove the company's stock price to surge over 20% in pre-market trading. Net loss widened from 2.059 billion US dollars in the same period last year to 2.784 billion US dollars, with total expenses soaring nearly 24% to 1.4 billion US dollars. On a per-share basis, the loss was 41 cents, while Wall Street expected a loss of 36 cents per share. Second-quarter overall revenue increased by 21% to 10.8 billion US dollars, but fell short of the expected 11.1 billion US dollars. Due to free play and wide accessibility, many interactive games with social attributes on the platform have become highly popular, attracting millions of users from different age groups and demographics. "Grow a Garden", known as the "American version of QQ Farm", has recently become a hit across the United States, leveraging the Roblox user-created ecosystem to achieve low-cost viral spread, driving the company's active users to surpass the billion mark. "Grow a Garden" is a phenomenon-level mini-farm simulation game on the Roblox gaming platform, with a core mechanism highly similar to the classic Chinese internet game QQ Farm, but also incorporating unique "metaverse-style" innovations. "Grow a Garden" primarily achieves 2025 global explosive success through a triple innovation of "crop random mutation mechanized economy + fragmentation + social fission". In the second quarter, a key metric measuring Roblox's user engagement saw a crazy 41% increase in average daily active users, reaching 111.8 million people; user engagement time soared 58% to 27.4 billion hours. A significant portion of the second-quarter user engagement and booking growth came from "Grow a Garden". This is a tycoon-style popular "metaverse-style" farm planting game, where players can expand their own exclusive land by trading seeds and plants. In June of this year, the game set a world record for the most simultaneous online players, highlighting the influence of Roblox's "metaverse-style" gaming platform on a global scale. Naveen Chopra, the new CFO of Roblox, stated at the performance meeting that the company has been investing in search and discovery features to give games with strong engagement like "Grow a Garden" greater visibility and a higher global appeal. In an economic environment filled with uncertainty due to Trump's tariff policies, Roblox, known as the "number one stock in the metaverse", is transforming its gaming platform into a hub for social, commercial, and advertising activities to diversify its revenue sources. Undoubtedly, these measures have excited investors, as the company's stock price has doubled since the beginning of the year, far outperforming competitive video game publishers. Roblox now expects its 2025 fiscal year bookings to be between 58.7 billion and 59.7 billion US dollars, higher than the previously estimated 52.9 billion to 53.6 billion US dollars by the company's management, as well as higher than the general Wall Street expectations. The company's management expects third-quarter bookings to be between 15.9 billion and 16.4 billion US dollars, which is significantly higher than the market's general expectation of 13.5 billion US dollars, according to data compiled by LSEG. Roblox's second-quarter bookings were about 14.4 billion US dollars, also exceeding the market's general expectation of about 13.2 billion US dollars. Unlike traditional video game companies, Roblox relies on user-generated content and earns most of its revenue from selling the in-game currency "Robux". This is also the core source of Roblox's so-called "bookings" - the transaction volume of Roblox virtual digital currency purchased by users on its platform. Developer revenue 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), and Roblox provides these developers with a profit mechanism to generate revenue through in-game purchases and advertisements, from which Roblox takes a certain percentage. In addition, Roblox generates revenue through advertising and brand partnerships, with some brands focusing on teenage needs advertising on the Roblox platform or launching brand-exclusive metaverse virtual items and similar activities. Focused on the "metaverse worldview," Roblox is seeing a comprehensive rise. The electronic gaming platform Roblox, focused on the unique "metaverse worldview," is globally renowned for being highly popular among young gamers around 16 years old. 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 stronger purchasing power. Roblox's so-called "metaverse gaming platform" allows users to create, share, and play games generated by other users. It is not just a gaming platform, but also a social platform where players can interact and participate in community activities. Currently, Roblox is attracting more and more adult users, whose purchasing power far exceeds that of teenagers. In layman's terms, the metaverse is a virtual shared space that integrates cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), social media, and online games. Analogous to the metaverse, Roblox's "metaverse gaming platform" provides users with an immersive virtual world experience, where users can create and explore virtual environments, participate in various activities, perfectly aligning with the concept of the metaverse. In March 2021, Roblox became a publicly traded company through a direct listing. At the time of listing, Roblox was seen as an absolute pioneer in the metaverse concept, which is also the main reason why Roblox is known as the "number one stock in the metaverse." Overall, Roblox's second-quarter data presents a highly satisfactory performance of "high growth, strong monetization": daily active users surpassing 100 million for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 41%, a staggering 58% increase in user immersion engagement time, and Roblox expanding from gaming to a "super domain" of social, virtual events, and digital goods trading, enhancing user stickiness and lifetime value. With the user explosion ignited by Grow a Garden and the platformized, diversified revenue model layout, Roblox is undergoing a strong positive cycle of "trafficcontentmonetization", showing a comprehensive revival momentum. Behind these impressive indicators, mainly driven by a hit game called the "American version of QQ Farm" - Grow a Garden, reigniting the user growth engine, and the platform's multi-pronged efforts in algorithm distribution, infrastructure, advertising, and IP licensing rapidly converting traffic into tangible returns. Overall, Roblox is indeed in a new era of comprehensive rise, but its sustainability still depends on the subsequent supply of "metaverse-style" content and the deepening of diversified revenue growth models.