The beta version of Roblox was created by co-founders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 under the name DynaBlocks.[46] Baszucki started testing the first demos that year.[47] In 2005, the company changed its name to Roblox,[47] and it officially launched on September 1, 2006.[1] In March 2007, Roblox became compliant with COPPA, with the addition of safe chat, a change that limited the communication ability of users under the age of 13 by restricting them to selecting predefined messages from a menu.[48] In August, Roblox applied server improvements and released a premium membership service named “Builders Club”.[49] This paid membership feature was rebranded as Roblox Premium in September 2019.[50]

In December 2011, Roblox held their first Hack Week, an annual event where Roblox developers work on outside-the-box ideas for new developments to present to the company.[51][52] On December 11, 2012, an iOS version of Roblox was released,[3] and on July 16, 2014, an Android version was released.[4] On October 1, 2013, Roblox released its Developer Exchange program, allowing developers to exchange Robux earned from their games into real-world currencies.[53]

On May 31, 2015, a feature called ‘Smooth Terrain’ was added, increasing the graphical fidelity of the terrain and changing the physics engine from a block-oriented style to a smoother and more realistic one.[54] On November 20, Roblox was launched on Xbox One, with an initial selection of 15 games chosen by Roblox staff.[5] New Roblox games for the Xbox One have to go through an approval process, and are subject to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board standards.[55]

In April 2016, Roblox launched Roblox VR for Oculus Rift. At the time of release, more than ten million games were available in 3D.[56] Around the same time period, the safe chat feature was removed and replaced by a system based on a whitelist with a set of acceptable words for users under 13 years old and a set of blacklisted words for other users.[57][failed verification] In June, the company launched a version compatible with Windows 10. While the game platform has had a presence on the PC since 2004, when its web version was created, this was the first time it was upgraded with a standalone launcher built for Windows.[58]

Throughout 2017, Roblox engaged in a number of updates to its server technology, as the technology they were operating on until that point was out of date and led to frequent outages.[59] Also in 2017, Roblox closed its official forums.[60] In November 2018, the ability for a player to play as a “guest”, without an account, which had been progressively restricted over the previous two years, was removed entirely.[61] In July 2020, Roblox announced the creation of “Party Place”, which functions as an online hangout. The feature was created using new technology that had been used during the 2020 Bloxy Awards, and was designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[62] Roblox was granted permission to release in China on December 3, 2020.[63] In October 2021, Roblox experienced its longest downtime to date, with services being unavailable for three days.[64][65][66]

In July 2022, a 4 GB archive of internal documents related to the platform’s creators, including personal data, were leaked by an unidentified hacker. Roblox stated “[t]hese stolen documents were illegally obtained as part of an extortion scheme that we refused to cooperate with”.[67]

In September 2022, Roblox Corporation announced that it planned to add an age rating system, which would allow for moderate portrayals of violence in worlds flagged as suitable for users 13 and over. The company stated that it was wanting to increase the platform’s appeal to a young adult audience of users 17–24, which it stated was its fastest-growing cohort.[68]