Infrastructure at Roblox
61 comments
·June 25, 2025nick_m
jokab
> NAND gates, flip-flops and I/O schedulers, and networks? No problem.
That's kind of a weird flex.
mrbluecoat
> This infrastructure must support thundering herd situations where more than 21 million users join a single experience simultaneously
> we now predict capacity needs up to two years in advance
Those two statements taken together are mind boggling
kgwxd
I really love the core idea of Roblox, if only it weren't a scam targeting kid's birthday money.
pkulak
If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries… is that the worst thing in the world? I’d rather my kids play Roblox than scroll Instagram. One of those is “free”.
op00to
I recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers.
Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it.
They play with their friends on XBox Live, with voice chat limited to friends we personally add.
Manuel_D
The #1 by raw numbers, or normalized for userbase?
UnlockedSecrets
As someone with no experience of roblox but has heard this a few times, what exactly about it makes it 'such' a bad thing??
landl0rd
This is because roblox is the #1 place for kids to interact and play and such. The creeps and weirdos and predators are going to follow wherever they go.
lokar
AIUI, they let stranger adults give kids in game currency.
What do you think that leads to?
jjani
I'm sure it's the #1 platform involved in "defending children accused of crimes involving online platforms" in whatever US state that attorney operates in. But even that sounds better than the lifelong dopamine system disabilities that the likes of TikTok causes. Every other adult I talk to about social media admits having had to very deliberately uninstall/disable TikTok, else they just couldn't detach themselves from the screen. Now imagine what it does to kids. And how big of a % of users ends up like this compared to the % of all Roblox users traumatized by it.
Before anyone comes in accusing me of unfairly pointing fingers when Meta (Instagram reels) and Google (Youtube shorts) are just as bad, truth is the latter two just haven't managed to make their algorithms half as addictive. I'm sure they'd love to, there's nothing inherently better about them, but so far they haven't cracked it.
Aurornis
> If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries
If this was a game that had a subscription fee or where you had to buy the new version every year, that might be true.
These games don’t work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual player. They’re designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you’re enticed to pay 5-10 bucks there, then you’re scrounging or begging for another 5-10 bucks for the next thing.
moregrist
The amount a child can spend on Roblox is entirely up to the parents.
Children, especially pre-teens, don’t have access to credit or money without their parents consent, and a pretty easy way to limit the amount of money your child can spent on Roblox is to just make them have to ask you to buy the in-game currency.
There are problems with the game but the amount of money going into it is something a parent can and should 100% control.
landl0rd
If toy stores had a subscription fee or where you had to buy a new access pass every year, that would be fine.
They don't work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual child. They're designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you're enticed to pay 5-10 bucks for another toy, then you're scrounging or begging for another 5-10 bucks for the next toy.
Spooky23
Roblox is awful with lots of weird crap and opportunity for abuse.
Fortnite is way better and safer.
bowsamic
There are better alternatives to both of those that we should guide our children towards rather than just throwing up our hands and giving them their screens
jmyeet
Roblox engages the exact same psychological manipulation that gambling does.
Would you let your children go nuts at a casino? Or online with sports betting or crypto slots?
The problem isn't the $5-10. It's the psychological manipulation.
ryandrake
As a parent, if you sit down with your kid and curate (or at least actively check/approve) what they are playing on Roblox, it’s fine. Mine just uses it to socialize with her real life friends, who are also all there. She sticks to the wholesome stuff, it might as well be Minecraft.
Dilettante_
I actually don't know very much about Roblox. I was under the impression that it was more like a storefront sort of thing, with 3rd party games being hosted there? Kind of like one of those 'old' flash game portals, except you buy the games and ingame items.
Where do the gambling tricks come in?
gehwartzen
It sounds more like the same psychological manipulation that underpins the IRL world (at least the US) in the form of capitalism. Engineered towards adults to buy as much useless crap as possible.
Teach kids that it’s the same kind of manipulation as in their games (and how to spot it) and perhaps they will be better equipped to not get fucked by adult life.
loloquwowndueo
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MOARDONGZPLZ
imo it’s so bad that employees might as well be working at Meta. It’s an ethical decision. Maybe their ethical framework supports it, but mine doesn’t.
klooney
One reason to not work at Roblox is all their user peaks are when you want to be with your family- after school, after dinner, the weekend, Christmas morning. Seems like it could be frustrating after a while.
derwiki
AIUI, they try to offset this with lots of money
tills13
And their CEO is a tech oligarch wannabe iirc.
gnabgib
Title: The Infrastructure Supporting Record-Breaking Experiences
purpleidea
If they didn't use Kubernetes, they'd probably only need 10% of the capacity! /s but also not exactly /s
markasoftware
Roblox is famously on the "hashistack" and uses Nomad instead of Kubernetes. What is the purpose of your comment?
notnmeyer
kids should _not_ be playing roblox unsupervised (or at all?). it’s full of inappropriate and seemingly unmoderated content, while simultaneously being built to extract microtransactions.
amazing infra challenges, just a shame is a cesspool.
Brajeshwar
My two daughters play Roblox.[1] Their parental control has improved a lot. However, I find that it is more about training and helping your kid understand how to be careful online than interacting with a 'better' Online Entity. Today, it is Roblox; there will be a lot of others. I know it will never be a solved problem, but help them understand very early on what to do and what not to do.
We usually do routines - while in the car, at home - "What are our online protocols?", "What if someone, even if they seem like a tiny kid, asks you for anything personal?" "If someone told you that it is one of our family or relatives, what are the challenge words and codes?" etc.
Manuel_D
While true this statement generalizes to any internet connected service. 2000s internet had loads of wild content, anyone remember LiveLeaks?
And Roblox has decent parental controls. You can disable any chat outside a curated group of friends, and not sign up for micro transactions.
jameson
> You can disable any chat outside a curated group of friends
IMO public chat should be disabled by default for U13 accounts, not the other way.
jameson
> being built to extract microtransactions.
Right. Company's finance is based off on 1) letting game devs sell loot boxes freely to children. It's a legal slot machine for kids 2) paying developers with their own currency which then can be converted to tangible currency
These should be illegal
hartator
Idk, I play with them, and it seems the usual online game activities, not anything crazy.
The games are pretty additive though, and the fake money becomes real money pretty fast.
djdjhdhhshh
[flagged]
Hey Roblox Engineers on here - a brilliant article, by the way - and I want to chip in here, I'm a senior engineer and understand how tech works all the way down. NAND gates, flip-flops and I/O schedulers, and networks? No problem.
I have two young children, a boy and a girl. They both love playing Roblox, and I play along with them too, and their friends join in as well. Yes, they both always want more Robux, but let's look at this from a different perspective:
They create their own worlds - often amazing, it's not like they can run out of LEGO pieces, their creativity is their only barrier. In COVID lockdown, they could carry on playing with their friends, despite not being physically together. Humans still monitor and care for the "game", yes, some bad actors might get through occasionally, but on the whole, it's a safe and well-controlled, fun place to be. I used the concept of a Roblox Avatar to gently explain to my children, that people online might not be all they pretend to be - after all, in some games, I'm a super weight-lifter with a six-pack, and I have wings too :-O We all laughed. It's already taught both my children some genuine life-lessons - working in a pizza shop and doing deliveries, earning money, deciding how to lay out their dream houses (and Theme Parks!), and so on - plus, the importance of locking the door to keep the "bad guys" out.
All this, whilst having fun. Roblox is a force for good - if you pay the odd time for some credits, then so what, developers and us creatives also have to keep the roof over our heads.