Great, as if teenagers weren’t snotty enough.

Roblox is a very popular online gaming platform boasting 64 million players, and amongst that staggering number are some teens making it rain.

Last year three teens became millionaires, but before we get to that let’s find out what the bloody hell Roblox is.

Via the Parent’s Guide section on Roblox’s site:

Roblox is the world’s largest interactive platform for play that allows kids to imagine, create, and play together in immersive 3D worlds. All the games and experiences on Roblox have been created by the players themselves. Once a player has signed up and created an avatar, they are given their own piece of real estate along with a virtual toolbox (known as “Roblox Studio”) for building.

They can monetize [sic] their creations to earn “Robux” (our virtual currency on Roblox), which can then be used to purchase more avatar accessories or additional abilities in one of the millions of experiences available on the platform. Roblox gives players a safe, moderated place to play, chat, and collaborate on creative projects. If so inclined, they can go on to learn how to build and code immersive experiences for others, all at their own pace.

Here’s their Anthem Video for effect:

Decent production value.

Let’s get onto how those teenagers made their millions with the help of Business Insider:

The games are free to play, but you can use real money to buy premium Roblox currency. That currency is, in turn, used to purchase in-game items, like weaponry or new hairstyles. When a player makes one of those in-game purchases, the developer gets the lion’s share of the revenue, and Roblox takes a cut.

All told, Roblox paid out $30 million to its two million creators in 2017. Three of those creators even cleared the $1 million mark.

One of those teens is Alex Balfanz, and his story is explained in great length here.

Now, with Roblox’s popularity booming, the company is looking forward. Here’s Business Insider:

On Wednesday, Roblox revealed that this popularity has translated into a booming business, as the company says that it’s free cash flow positive for the first time. Roblox also says that it had “hundreds of millions” of dollars in bookings in 2017, up 158% from 2016.

And so, to manage that fast-growing business, Roblox has hired Mike Guthrie as its new Chief Financial Officer. Previously, Guthrie served in the same role for TrueCar, a website for car buyers and dealers, which he helped take public in 2014.

So far, Roblox has raised $99 million in venture capital, most recently in a $92 million funding round announced in March 2017. So will Guthrie help take Roblox public, too?

“He’s the right person to help us figure that out,” Craig Donato, Roblox’s chief business officer, tells Business Insider.

Donato says that the growth of Roblox is reflective of the fact that it might be more than a video game platform. Roblox believes that entertainment is getting less passive and more interactive, and that it’s riding the wave. Indeed, while many compare Roblox to Microsoft’s “Minecraft” phenomenon, Donato looks at it differently.

“We really believe we’re ushering in a new form of entertainment,” says Donato. “We see ourselves not as a gaming platform, but as an entertainment platform.”

If you thought teens spent a great deal of time ingesting every form of technology already, then get ready for another ‘entertainment platform’.

How’s this for a breakdown of how much time kids are spending on Roblox:

Yeah, Facebook is dying.

You can read more about Roblox here.

[sources:roblox&businsider]