Roblox publishes David Baszucki interview on creator payouts and stand-alone games

Roblox has published the transcript of an October interview between founder and CEO David Baszucki and Bloxy News host Bloxz after a recording issue kept the full conversation from being released as video. Roblox says it is also sharing screenshots from the discussion. In the interview, Baszucki revisits the company’s origins and gives new detail on Roblox Card and Roblox Wallet, which he says will replace the current DevEx program next year.

The conversation also covers Roblox’s longer-term technical plans. Baszucki talks about cloud-based multiplayer, instant join and stand-alone games that could run outside the main Roblox app while still using Roblox technology. He frames those changes as part of the same system for creating, distributing and monetizing games on the platform.

Baszucki’s path from Canada to Stanford to Knowledge Revolution

Baszucki said he was born in Canada, started growing up there, moved to Minnesota in about sixth grade, and then attended middle school and high school outside Minneapolis. He also confirmed that he studied electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford. Those details came up early in the interview as Bloxz asked him to walk through his background before Roblox.

He then returned to Knowledge Revolution, the company he founded with his brother Greg Baszucki and Erik Cassel in the late 1980s. Their software, Interactive Physics, was built on the Mac and won several awards, including a MacUser Editors’ Choice Award. Baszucki said the team expected students to use it for physics homework and experiments, but users kept turning it into a building tool instead.

That behavior fed directly into what came next. Baszucki said people were not just recreating physics lessons; they were building cars that crashed into bricks and objects that fell in different ways. He said that pattern helped shape ideas that later became Roblox.

He also said the team wanted 3D, cloud-based and multiplayer features that matched ideas from science fiction such as the holodeck and Snow Crash. Baszucki said the company had an early business-plan slide that tied together social networking, user-generated video, online gaming and communication platforms, with a new category in the middle of them.

Baszucki said the team first tried an early puzzle game that was not multiplayer and was supposed to go viral, but it did not catch on. After that, he said the company moved to the full Roblox vision, including multiplayer, avatars and cloud-based user-generated content. He said Roblox Studio became a major turning point and that the team expected virality when it launched.

Roblox Studio, Robux and the creator economy

Looking back on the last 20 years, Baszucki said the first day with Roblox Studio stood out because the team quickly saw more creative work from players. He also pointed to the moment Roblox introduced Robux and the broader economy as another major decision, saying it led to board-level debate because the company worried money could change the hobbyist feel of the platform.

That debate produced a deeper creator economy that included Robux, in-game items sold for Robux and Developer Exchange cash-outs. Baszucki said Roblox built the system itself and that the addition of spending and earning helped create a viral loop as creators started adding Robux-based systems to their games. He also said some early homepage charts focused on where Robux was being spent.

He described several community events as emotional high points, including Roblox, RDC and the first BLOXcon. Baszucki said he likes the Q&A sessions because people in the room ask edgy questions, and he said the creator community has grown so strong that the developers at the conference are “absolutely mind-boggling.”

On monetization, Baszucki said Roblox is now moving “north of $1.5 billion to creators every year.” He said Roblox Card and Roblox Wallet are intended as a first step toward more financial liquidity and transparency for creators, with more changes potentially to come. He also said the company wants earnings to flow more easily through the platform.

Baszucki connected that effort to financial education, saying many young users may first learn to manage money through Robux. In his view, that could become an early form of financial literacy, even when the amounts are small. He told viewers, “Stay tuned on the Roblox economy. Stay tuned on the Roblox Card.”

He also linked the new payment setup to Builders Club, which he described as a primitive starting point. According to Baszucki, Roblox has already moved well beyond that early model by building Robux, marketplace sales, DevEx and related creator systems. The new card-and-wallet framework sits on top of that work rather than replacing the idea of creator earnings altogether.

Stand-alone games and storefront support

Baszucki also answered questions about stand-alone games and storefront distribution after Roblox gave a first look at the idea during RDC. Bloxz asked whether a Roblox game could be published to places like Steam or Epic Games and launched directly from those storefronts. Baszucki did not confirm that exact setup, but he said the company thinks the idea is increasingly viable.

He said creators have spent 10 to 12 years asking about that direction and described the technical base as cloud-based, constantly updatable, multidevice and built around a single build. He also said Roblox wants to support games both in its own app and in other forms. “We more and more think yes,” he said when asked about the stand-alone approach.

Baszucki said the first release of that technology is coming, but he did not give a date. He also outlined what creators have asked for: an iOS app version of a game that also exists inside Roblox, co-play between the two, and a PC executable that uses the same Roblox tech and Roblox Cloud. The interview ends before he finishes the thought, but he makes clear that Roblox sees that direction as part of its future infrastructure.

He described that infrastructure as a shift away from traditional fat-binary software toward cloud-based 3D streaming and instant join across mobile, PC and tablet. Baszucki said he thinks Roblox’s architecture points to how games will be created and delivered over time. He also said he expects the company to keep building toward infinite scale and multiplayer with photorealism.

Roblox’s long-range target is not presented as a finished destination. Baszucki said the company still wants to reach 10% and beyond of the global gaming market, and he estimated Roblox’s current share at roughly 3.5% to 4% of a $200 billion market. He compared the next 20 years with the shift film and television made from black-and-white, no-audio formats to 4K 60Hz video.

The transcript leaves Roblox with two near-term changes in focus: a new creator payment system and the first release of stand-alone support. Baszucki does not give launch dates for either, but he says both are already in motion and tied to the same technical base that has shaped Roblox since the beginning.