Jan 7, 20245 min read

Top 10 Roblox Brand Games (Jan '24)

Barbie and Alo Yoga surpass 100 million lifetime visits milestone.

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Every week we publish exclusive research about how brands are activating on the Roblox platform. At the start of each month, we gather data on how many visits branded experiences have accumulated during the previous month to see what's currently popular on the platform.

-1.5% Monthly Decrease Across Top 20 Branded Games

When looking at the top 20 branded games combined, overall visits decreased -1.5% month-over-month. In December, the top 20 games collectively had 111.2 million visits, versus having 112.9 million visits in November.

Although just a slight drop, the decrease comes as a surprise, given that December kicks off the start of winter break for many young people around the world. I would have thought that there would be more people playing on the platform, which would lead to increased traffic for branded experiences.

[Side note: The top 20 branded experiences on Roblox last year, December 2022, collectively had 110 million visits. So there was a small 1% growth in visits year over year.]

Were there less players active on Roblox in December '23 overall, or just less players active in top branded experiences on Roblox during this time period?

In order to answer this question, let's look at how native / non-branded games performed during the same period.

25% Monthly Increase Across 20 Top Native Roblox Games

In addition to tracking branded Roblox experiences each month, I also collect data on the top-performing user-created titles on the platform such as Blox Fruits (2B visits in Dec), Brookhaven RP (1.4B visits in Dec), Adopt Me! (355M visits in Dec), and more.

In the month of December '23, 20 of the top titles I'm tracking had 5.9 billion visits, versus having 4.7 billion the month prior in November.

That resulted in top games having a 25% increase in visits from November to December.

This significant boost seems to validate my original hypothesis that there were more people active on the Roblox platform due to winter breaks.

So if there were more players playing top Roblox games in December, why were there slightly less playing branded games over the same period of time?

Here are a couple of ideas why.

Strong gameplay leads to higher retention and player acquisition. By and large most branded experiences on Roblox don't have very sophisticated or highly engaging game mechanics, which are key factors that top games typically rely on to drive long session times and algorithmic discovery.
Roblox as a company is leaning more into increasing advertising revenue, and brands that want to reach players are having to pay for traffic via portal ads and sponsored placements.

My advice to brands who are building or operating Roblox experiences: to maximize reach, either invest in robust gameplay that rivals top experiences on the platform that will attract players organically, or come equipped with hefty paid marketing budgets to guarantee successful player acquisition.

Alo Yoga and Barbie Surpass 100 Million Lifetime Visits

Two branded experiences crossed the impressive 100 million lifetime visits threshold in December.

Alo Yoga's Alo Sanctuary (made by Sawhorse) was one of the very first branded experiences on the platform and has consistently put up strong numbers each month, averaging 3.4 million monthly visits in 2023. Offering meditation and yoga content to players, the branded experience eschews heavy gameplay elements for lightweight mindfulness exercises.

The other experience to surpass the 100 million visits marker was relative newcomer Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon (made by Gamefam). Since taking off three months ago, the experience has consistently topped our monthly rankings and looks well-positioned to keep its top stop for the foreseeable future.

Sesame Street Mecha Builders Enters The Top 10

Sesame Street Mecha Builders has been on the platform for quite some time, hovering just outside our top 10 rankings each month. Through the first 11 months of 2023, the experience averaged just under 2 million monthly visits with a peak of 2.9 million visits in July.

Rather than leaning on free UGC giveaways or paid traffic, Sesame Street seems to be getting the majority of its traffic organically. While I do recall seeing sponsored ads in the past, I don't believe I've seen any recently.

Here's the game's description:

Sesame Street Mecha Builders: The Game - is a single player experience for ages 4+ on Roblox. With help from Mecha Abby, Mecha Cookie and Mecha Elmo, players will work through a series of challenging and fun STEM focused puzzles using different Mecha tools to help solve the problem and complete the level!

I was expecting to see information about past updates that the game has released, but that wasn't mentioned at all.

In fact, it appears that the description and game imagery (icon and thumbnails) have not been updated at all since the game launched over a year ago.

This lack of updates defies best practices, which recommend updating both description and copy to notify users of new updates. This can signal to both users and the powerful Roblox algorithm that there's fresh content worth exploring.

It's also worth noting that Roblox is just one part of the longstanding educational IP's gaming footprint, which extends across wide variety of mobile apps:

Will you be attending the Kidscreen Summit in February?

I'll be attending Kidscreen Summit in San Diego next month. If you work in the kids entertainment space, will be attending the conference and would like to discuss how Roblox can fit into your content and marketing strategies, please get in touch.

Brands Ranked 11-20

Here are the remaining top-performing brands from this past month:

11. Amazon's Holiday Dash - 2,319,313

12. Nicki Minaj's Gag City - 2,080,678

13. Cartoon Network Game On - 1,929,488

14. Olivia Rodrigo - 1,780,398

15. Build a Rocket VS Mark Rober - 1,705,156

16. Twice Square - 1,639,458

17. Spotify Island - 1,638,619

18. TMNT Battle Tycoon - 1,560,188

19. NERF Strike - 1,542,913

20. e.l.f UP! - 1,441,080

Olivia Rodrigo and Nicki Minaj Debut Roblox Shops

Early December saw the release of new Roblox shops from pop music artists Olivia Rodrigo (made by Sawhorse) and Nicki Minaj (made by Karta).

Both have surpassed 1 million visits, which is currently a marker of strong performance.

Both Nicki and Olivia's experiences have been have been featured in the newly released "Avatar Shops" section of the Roblox Discover page. This extra visibility has likely contributed at least partly to both experiences having successful launches on the platform.