New World Notes

SLua: Why Roblox Creators Should Also Look Into Second Life's New Scripting Language

Originally published on my Patreon

Last week's Second Life platform updates were mainly focused on the new Firestorm streaming option, but a long-awaited update to its scripting language might be even more important:

SLua stands for Second Life Lua, a language based on Luau (originally developed by Roblox), extended to harness the full power of Second Life’s existing functions. Think of it as LSL’s more powerful, versatile new cousin—offering you more flexibility, cleaner syntax, and features that make coding dramatically simpler.

Emphasis mine, because it's not only relevant to the thousands of SL creators who use LSL, but the hundreds of thousands of Roblox creators versed in Luau.

Signal Linden (Bennett Goble), head Software Engineer at the company, tells me Roblox's Luau and Second Life's SLua are pretty close: 

"It is the Luau virtual machine extended to work with Second Life," he tells me. "We've had to make changes to support the requirements of mobile agents (AKA moving between regions) which means changes to support serializing/deserializing the runtime state. To users, it is the same language, just with LSL functionality. So: the same events residents know from LSL, same functions, with subtle interoperability changes to the language."

This also opens up a new opportunity for scripters working in Roblox:

14 Second Life Creators Became Real Life Millionaires Last Year -- And Other Surprising Economic Stats Linden Lab Just Revealed

Originally published on my Patreon

Linden Lab just publicized a trove of impressive Second Life economic data through a new VentureBeat article which headlines the most impressive stat: Linden Lab has spent $1.3B building Second Life and paid $1.1B to creators.

Yes: The company has taken very little profit from Second Life over the course of the virtual world's 21 years, instead re-investing it into the platform, while giving the lion's share of in-world earnings to its grassroots creators.

This is great, though not completely surprising: As I reported in 2017, SL's grassroots creators were likely earning more money from Second Life than Linden Lab itself. Now we know the company is earning slightly more.

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi frames these revenue splits in comparison to Roblox, which has vastly more users than SL, yet still shares far less earnings with its creators. (See chart above.)

Further, Linden Lab gives 90% of in-game transactions to user creators, while Roblox only shares roughly 30% of transactions with theirs. Philip Rosedale told me something similar in 2022, but it's good to see the company publicizing this story to a major tech business outlet.

Anyway, the economic meat that's likely to interest SLers most is much further down in the article:

Roblox to Offer Steam-Like Revenue Share to Game Developers for Their PC-Based Roblox Experiences

Roblox the company's seriously one-side monetization split for creators on the platform (75/25, in favor of the publicly traded corporation) has been a canker on its truly massive user base for quite some time. So lopsided is it, that more users creators in Second Life still make more revenue from that virtual world's vastly smaller consumer pool.

The latest update announcement from Roblox's CEO, however, promises some fairer revenue splits (with strings):

We are announcing new economics, where developers will be able to price their paid access experiences for purchase in real currency value¹ on desktop and earn a higher revenue share. Experiences selling at $9.99¹, $29.99¹, $49.99¹ will receive 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. We’ll roll this out for people to purchase on desktop this year, with plans to later expand to other supported devices.

The footnotes in that excerpt, by the way, warn that only direct revenue purchases in cash from the PC edition of the platform get that share.

Emphasis theirs, which seems intentional. This will make Roblox PC experience rev shares (on the high end) on par with Valve's Steam, which also pays out 70% to game devs on that platform. (Which also happens to mostly be a PC-based platform.) This makes me wonder if Roblox is also hoping this revenue offer is appealing to PC game devs who want an alternative to Steam.

Overall, the big catch is this:

How Roblox is Incredibly Popular Yet Still Unprofitable: Matthew Ball Untangles the Metaverse Platform Paradox

Matt Ball has a must-read post on the paradoxical phenomena of Roblox: In terms of active users, it's both the most popular metaverse platform by far and most popular online game in the world, but somehow continues to be unprofitable. (Second Life, despite a tiny user base compared to Roblox, makes an estimated $20-30 million in annual profit.)

Roblox began this year with 354 million monthly active users, counted 400 million MAU in July, currently has 380 million MAU, and averages 350 million MAU through 2024. (Data via Matt, citing RTrack.) In other words, the platform already started 2024 with more users than the entire United States has people, but Roblox is still likely to reach half a billion MAU in the very near future.

As to why it's currently unprofitable, Matt's post delves deep into all the details. Key factors include heavy research and development spending, deep app store fees charged by Apple and Google for payments through Roblox's mobile app, and low monetizing users (since most of them are kids).

But as Matt writes, Roblox the company is working to address that last challenge:

Universal Music, Which Just Pulled Its Music from TikTok, Officially Announces Partnership With Roblox

The timing is probably coincidental but it's hard to miss: Universal Music Group, one of the music industry's major labels, just signed a partnership to put its music in Roblox through a virtual boombox item cleverly called Boombox:

“By integrating Boombox, UMG solidifies its position as a vanguard of music innovation within the gaming sector,” said Alvaro G Velilla, senior vice president, New Business at UMG. “This integration not only enhances superfan experiences on the platform but does so with an extensive array of fully licensed music from UMG's global roster of artists and labels, setting a new standard for how music can be integrated into the platform for the entire sector.”

This comes just a few weeks after TikTok was hit by bad news from UMG:

Metaverse Platform Roblox Now Has More Monthly Active Users Than the United States Has People (According to RTrack)

This 2024 prediction of mine came true sooner than I expected, as first reported by Matthew Ball this morning:

According to leading Roblox analytics service RTrack, Roblox had an estimated 354 million monthly active users in December 2023. That's an addition of 54 million from last June, when RTrack estimated Roblox to have 300 million MAU.  A knowledgeable insider I trust tells me RTrack is a reliable service, by the way, so I'm inclined to believe these figures as roughly accurate -- especially as they're in line with the company's publicly reported daily active users of 70 million. 

In other words, yes: Roblox now has more monthly active users worldwide than the USA has people. (I.E. 336 million, give or take.)

Roblox the company has moved away from calling itself the Metaverse in the last year or two -- likely to avoid the negative connotations created by failed usages of the term by Meta and various web3 startups -- but did indeed describe itself as the metaverse in its very IPO filing:

Some refer to our category as the metaverse, a term often used to describe the concept of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces in a virtual universe. The idea of a metaverse has been written about by futurists and science fiction authors for over 30 years. With the advent of increasingly powerful consumer computing devices, cloud computing, and high bandwidth internet connections, the concept of the metaverse is materializing.

Given its record user growth, however, the term may soon be synonymous with Roblox itself.

Unsurprisingly, several developers and content creators who got their start with Second Life are now working full-time for Roblox (either for the company or on the UGC side). Richard Nelson, who was an engineer at Linden Lab for nearly 20 years, is now a senior dev at Roblox.

In my book, he described some of the secrets to the platform's success:

Roblox Staff Can't Work Remotely -- But VRChat & Linden Lab Personnel Mostly Do

Above: The home office of full-time VRChat employee (and former community member) "Merlin"

Interesting new work policy from leading metaverse platform company Roblox, as reported by Vox's Jay Peters:

Roblox — a company that builds a hugely popular virtual experiences platform, recently introduced its own spin on video chat, and even created an in-Roblox career center — is “transitioning away” from remote work and will be asking “a number of our remote employees to begin working from our headquarters in San Mateo by next summer,” CEO David Baszucki wrote in an email to staff shared publicly on Tuesday...

Baszucki also says that virtual working environments just aren’t as good as in-person ones: “While I’m confident we will get to a point where virtual workspaces are as engaging, collaborative, and productive as physical spaces, we aren’t there yet.” Seems like the company has some work to do to meet its own goal of having Roblox employees “spend more time using Roblox for remote meetings than with video” within the next five years.

Bad news for Roblox employees who hate the work commute to San Mateo. (Even though it's near a bomb ass ramen joint.)

At the same time, I wouldn't interpret this as suggesting metaverse platform companies in general aren't ready to work within the virtual world platforms they create, at least on a part-time basis:

Roblox's Odd Blocky Avatars Are A Key to the Platform's Success: Excerpt, Making a Metaverse That Matters

Pictured: Intrance and LAGurlz, creators of the hit Roblox experience Starving Artist

As Roblox reaches upwards of 300 million monthly active users and continues expanding its feature set, one common reaction is basically: Wait, isn't that just a game platform for kids with blocky, LEGO-like avatars?

Yes... and very much no. As I explain in Making a Metaverse That Matters, Roblox has succeeded not in spite, but in good part because, of those avatars:

Roblox Leaping the Metaverse Age Cliff With VOIP Calling, PlayStation Expansion, Dating Experiences and (Sigh) Generative AI

If you missed the recent whirlwind of Roblox announcements, they read like the company's concerted attempt to the cross (in a single leap!) the Metaverse Age Cliff, that point in the lifecycle of a platform where usage tends to drop sharply as the user base reaches adulthood:

• Coming later this year in early release, Roblox Connect is an avatar-to-avatar voice chat system. Most metaverse platforms already have some variation of this, but seeing as Roblox has 300 million monthly active users -- i.e. nearly the size of the entire US population --  this feature will create a calling network large enough to compete with traditional phone carriers.
• Roblox is coming to PlayStation 4/5 next month, connecting it to an install base of over 150 million households, primarily comprised of core gamers in their 20s and 30s.
• The company also unveiled a generative AI assistant (video below) to create 3D content.
• Roblox CEO David Baszucki is again promising "dating experiences" coming to adult-age users in the next 5 years, where "thousands"  of people will start real life relationships. This is basically re-branding an existing phenomena for a mass market/Wall Street audience -- thousands of people already do that in virtual worlds every day.  Indeed, the 20-something developer couple I profiled in the book first met in Roblox. (More on them later.)

Pictured: Frontlines, recent user-created Roblox experience ideal for PlayStation crowd

This is on top of the recent Meta Quest integration and the little covered news (from a reputable data gathering source) that Roblox has amassed 300 million monthly active users. If the PlayStation launch is successful, the company will have a near-unbeatable lead among metaverse platforms.

As for the generative AI, I'm still a bit skeptical that it will be more than a brief novelty -- but it will take a platform of Roblox's size to determine that. Watch below:

Roblox Stock Performance Misses Metaverse Platform's Population Has Grown to 300 MILLION MAU

You probably saw today's downbeat reports of Roblox's stock after the company announced its last quarter earnings:

Shares of Roblox closed down more than 21% Wednesday after the company reported second-quarter results that missed analysts’ expectations on top and bottom lines.

The revenue figure is what Roblox calls bookings, a category that includes sales recognized during the quarter and deferred revenue. Bookings rose by 22% year over year. Roblox reported $639.9 million in bookings in the year-ago quarter. The company generates revenue from sales of its virtual currency called Robux, which players use to dress up their avatars and buy other premium in-game features.

This despite the fact that Roblox also reported [.pdf link] strong user growth:  "Average Daily Active Users (“DAUs”) were 65.5 million, up 25% year-over-year.  Average monthly unique payers were 13.5 million, up 19% year-over-year."

Roblox the company doesn't report monthly active users -- probably because its MAU can fluctuate wildly from month to month, based on the free time of its core user base of kids and teens.

That's unfortunate from a market perception point of view, because last December, Roblox was estimated to have 250 million MAU. And recently (this June), a leading Roblox analyst service RTrack reported that Roblox MAU had since grown to over 300 million: