RDC '26 Arrives at Pivotal Moment for Roblox
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- 7 min read
Every year I genuinely look forward to the Roblox Developers Conference (RDC), Roblox's annual invite-only gathering bringing together developers, Roblox staff, brands, investors and ecosystem players. During keynote sessions, Roblox leaders announce and preview major platform updates and forthcoming releases.
Reviewing Roblox's Past RDC Announcements
To understand what's happening with Roblox in 2026, it's helpful to examine what the company announced at RDC '24 and RDC '25.
Roblox Moments, the short-form video feed borrowed straight from TikTok, launched as a beta at RDC '25. Roblox recently announced that Moments are expanding to be featured prominently in the app. Roblox wants to promote and own game discovery on its own platform rather than leave that engagement to YouTube and TikTok.
Advertising has followed a similar steady climb. Rewarded video ads were featured across both past conferences, and they've kept evolving. Roblox now lets advertisers run ads with calls to action, like visiting a website or downloading an app, and advertisers such as Google and Reddit are taking advantage of them.
Developer monetization was the big topic in 2025. Last year's 8.5% DevEx increase was widely praised by developers I spoke to. Since then Roblox has stacked another payout raise on top: a 42% DevEx increase for spend from age-checked US players 18 and older.
But not everything announced at past RDC's has landed. I don't see the Shopify e-commerce integration as having had much impact at all. Just because you can sell physical products inside Roblox games doesn't mean people want them.
Last but certainly not least is safety. The age estimation Roblox previewed at RDC '25 has since become the backbone of the entire platform. AI-powered age estimation, which rolled out in early 2026, is now a requirement to access chat, and it's the foundation of Roblox Kids and Roblox Select.
All of these past announcements show that professionalization and Roblox "growing up" have been in the works for years. But what makes 2026 feel different is that many major updates have been released rapidly in succession, stacked on top of each other. Roblox has been walking in this direction for several years, but now it is running.
2026: The Year Roblox Started Sprinting
Consider everything Roblox rolled out in 2026.
It made AI-powered age estimation a requirement to access chat, a change meant to protect younger users that ended up disrupting gameplay in experiences that depend on communication.
It overhauled its publishing system in the spring, introducing new requirements tied to its subscription products that shifted more than once within a matter of weeks, leaving developers scrambling to keep up.
It launched Roblox Kids and Roblox Select, restructuring who can access what based on age.
It adjusted its discovery algorithm, sending traffic swinging for games that did nothing differently.
It wove AI deeper into feature after feature across the platform.
Any one of these would be a significant platform change. Stacked on top of each other and shipped in quick succession, they made 2026 feel chaotic and destabilizing. Why did Roblox get so aggressive with so many updates so frequently? I believe their speed is explained by what Roblox saw coming: a wave of regulatory pressure that has now fully arrived. More on that below.
This is a Pivotal Period for Roblox
This will be my fourth year in a row attending, and the third time I'm organizing Max Power Gaming events alongside the conference. This year I'm paying extra attention to Roblox's moves because RDC 2026 lands at a genuinely pivotal moment for the platform.
This year there hasn't been a breakout on the scale of Grow a Garden or Steal a Brainrot, which peaked above 25 million concurrent users and pushed Roblox as a platform to a record 47.4 million. Currently, the Roblox stock is trading near its 52-week low after a Q2 report that scared investors, with bookings up just 8% and Q3 guidance looking grim. And the regulatory pressure I mentioned earlier is no longer on the horizon: on August 13, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Dick Durbin opened a bipartisan investigation into child safety on the platform.
So the backdrop this year is heavier, and I wanted to know what people actually attending were thinking about heading in. I reached out to several attendees and asked them directly. Here's what they said.
What Topics Do Developers Want Roblox To Address At RDC?
The clearest signal from the responses is that AI, discovery, and the algorithm are top of mind. Evan Zirschky, CEO of Turning Tables Games, named MCP updates and discovery and algorithm changes as the topics he's watching. MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is the tooling that lets AI assistants like Claude work directly inside Roblox Studio to write code and build games. When Evan points to this, he's really pointing at how much of the actual development work AI might soon take off a studio's plate. He wasn't alone on discovery, though. That concern showed up again and again, and it makes sense given how much a single discovery tweak can swing a game's traffic overnight.
Nick Walters, CSO at SuperAwesome, focused on one feature in particular. He's watching Moments. He was excited about its potential when it launched, thought it opened up some really cool use cases, and felt it hasn't quite worked out yet. So with a revamp hinted at on the last earnings call, he's eager to learn more.
I really enjoyed hearing the perspective of Junozy, a UGC creator and game developer I've featured before who has sold more than 35 million items on the platform. Junozy put words to something a lot of developers seem to be feeling. As he wrote, many of Roblox's recent updates have been innovative and positive on the technical side, "yet have let Roblox's charm fall to the wayside." The blocky characters, the studded landscapes, the Limited items, the platform events that made Roblox feel like Roblox seem, to many, to be quietly disappearing, even if that was never Roblox's intent. Junozy's point isn't that Roblox shouldn't grow. It's that Roblox can grow to larger audiences while still being a place where novel games and OG Roblox can coexist.
Zach Letter, CEO of Wonder Works Studio and a five-time RDC attendee, told me he's most looking forward to Roblox CEO David Baszucki's annual predictions during the keynote. He loves any insight into the way Baszucki thinks and sees the platform evolving.
My Read: 2026 Chaos Has Been Difficult But Necessary
Here's where I land. Roblox has shipped an enormous amount this year, and it has been chaotic and at times destabilizing for the people building on top of it. Junozy's frustration is fair, and I know many developers share his frustration. But I think a lot of this frantic pace has a rationale behind it.
This is where all of Roblox's sprinting (and resulting chaos) has paid off. Pressure had been building around the world, including in the European Union and the US, for months, and Roblox moved before it hit. My belief is that Roblox is in a far stronger position to handle these challenges than it was a year ago, precisely because it moved fast and made hard changes when it did. None of it was comfortable for developers, but all of it fortified the platform for exactly this moment.
While I understand the frustration with slowed growth and lost momentum, I think it is not as bad as Roblox being banned in market after market around the world. That's what's on my mind heading into RDC.
The Best Part Of RDC Is Still The People
Despite all of the platform anxiety, those who I connected with are looking forward to RDC. When I asked developers their favorite part of RDC, they all said the people. Junozy called it the chance to be surrounded by inspirational creatives from around the world, a place to network, learn, and make friends that wouldn't be possible anywhere else. Zach Letter described RDC as a creative recharge, the kind of gathering you leave feeling inspired to get back to work.
Even the advice for first-timers converged on the same idea: go to everything, talk to strangers, and don't overthink it.
The B2B Corner Of RDC: An Invite-Only Industry Mixer
RDC brings roughly 2,000 people to San Jose. For the professionals I work with, it can be hard finding the people who actually want to talk about business: deals, partnerships, and investment. So that's the room I create with my own events.
Last year I brought 150+ leaders together at RDC, and this year I want to do it again. If you're attending RDC and you want to be part of the business conversation, here's where to request an invite: SIGNUP LINK
Like last year, this year's event is a private, curated, invite-only mixer for networking between Roblox studios, brands, agencies, and investors. It's the B2B corner of RDC, and I'm thrilled about the partners making it happen.
Wonder Works Studio is the award-winning Roblox studio behind SpongeBob Tower Defense, the top-earning licensed Roblox game of all time, a top-three licensed experience by visits, and winner of Roblox’s Innovation Award for Best Use of IP. The studio is now applying that proven formula across major entertainment licenses and original IP to build the next generation of breakout Roblox experiences.
ESG Law, represented by Krista Hiner, is a leading law firm serving the businesses and creators shaping the Roblox ecosystem. ESG represents many of the platform’s leading studios and entrepreneurs, providing sophisticated legal counsel grounded in a deep understanding of how Roblox businesses are built, monetized, and scaled.
Markowitz Herbold is a litigation firm that handles high-stakes business disputes. Its video game practice, led by Joseph Levy, represents Roblox studios and developers in the fights that follow success: who owns an experience, who owns the assets inside it, how revenue gets divided, what a departing founder is owed. Markowitz Herbold has decades of experience on both sides of disputes — representing both plaintiffs and defendants — from pre-suit negotiations to trial.
Whether or not I see you at the mixer, I'd love to hear what's on your mind heading into RDC. What are you hoping Roblox addresses? Come find me on LinkedIn and let's talk.
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Stephen Dypiangco is one the world’s leading experts on the topic of Roblox and brands. He has advised global companies on their Roblox strategies, including BBC Studios, Paramount, and Takara Tomy.
With 120+ articles published about Roblox and a following of over 14,000 across LinkedIn and his industry leading Max Power Gaming newsletter, he is widely regarded by gaming industry executives and investors as a trusted resource.
Stephen is building the premiere network of Roblox professionals to help this emerging sector connect and scale through his unique blend of relevant content and community events.
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