In March 2025, Steam reached 41.2 million concurrent users. Record! At least until a few days ago. Last weekend, another platform was able to exceed this number.
Which platform is it? It’s Roblox, a game creation platform that has evolved into one of the most popular and successful gaming platforms over the past 20 years.
- In May 2025, there were more concurrent players in Roblox than in Fortnite and Steam combined, namely 16.3 million.
- In August 2025, Roblox was able to surpass 1 billion views on YouTube. This milestone is being celebrated with a special “game” in Roblox, the YouTube Roblox Museum.
Now another historic milestone has been reached: Last weekend, there were temporarily 47.3 million players active in Roblox, as reported by Roblox Strategy Consultant James Purell on linkedin.com.
The War of Viral Hits
Why is there a record? The viral Roblox hit “Grow a Garden” has been making headlines for some time because it can attract an incredible number of players to the servers every day who want to expand their own garden.
However, there is now internal competition from “Steel a Brainrot,” which is also very popular in the Roblox community. In this game, players buy (or steal from other players) so-called brainrots, generate money, and buy items to … troll other players. Well …
The developers spent the last week challenging and insulting each other on social media, calling it the “Admin War.” They managed to mobilize their respective communities, causing player numbers to explode: “Steel a Brainrot” occasionally reached over 20 million concurrent players, while “Grow a Garden” reached 21.1 million.
The two games together thus already matched the Steam record from March 2025, with 41.2 million concurrent users. No wonder that even the creators behind GTA 6 have great respect for the platform.
How does the community react to the record? Some players are calculating how many people on Earth were playing Roblox simultaneously during the record.
- nsfw_zak writes on Reddit: “So every 173rd person on Earth was playing Roblox simultaneously? That’s crazy (I based my calculation on a total population of 8.2 billion people).”
- Kyuubee adds on Reddit: “It’s even worse. According to Roblox’s demographic data, 40% of their users are under 13 years old, which accounts for about 19 million of the 47 million concurrent users. There are about 2 billion children worldwide. In other words: About every hundredth child on Earth was on Roblox at that time. Looking only at first-world countries with easy internet access, the numbers are even worse.”
What you need to know about Roblox: Although the platform has been on the market for so long and mainly attracts younger players, the developers are failing to moderate the vast number of players and games promptly and appropriately, and to establish measures that sustainably protect minors from abuse and toxic or questionable content.
Organizations like the German Children’s Fund and the Federal Center for Child and Youth Media Protection criticize the platform operators (Source: Deutschlandfunk). In the USA, hundreds of lawsuits against Roblox are currently being prepared, also focusing on the inadequate child protection (Source: wired.com).
If you enjoy gaming with your kids, you might also fill the agreed game times with really good co-op games. We introduced a few of those recently: 10 co-op games that you and your kids will have a lot of fun with
Over the past years, there have been repeated reports of child abuse and even lawsuits from parents against Roblox. MeinMMO reported on a particularly severe case in August 2024: A player in Roblox is exposed as a pedophile but remains free and abducts a 15-year-old girl.
