Creators on Roblox earned $1.7 billion over the last 12 months, Dave Baszucki told the developer conference, and the company's answer to an industry arguing about slowing AI down is to hand more of it to those creators.
Every other guest in the hour was debating how much to restrain AI. Baszucki was announcing tools that let someone build a game by describing it, in a mobile app, and then sell it.
"So we're very optimistic."
Baszucki is Roblox's chief executive and had just finished the company's annual creator conference, where the tools and the standalone-app plan were announced.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Dave Baszucki, CEO of Roblox, who had just closed the company's annual developer and creator conference
🎙️ Host: Ed Ludlow, who anchors Bloomberg Tech from San Francisco
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on Bloomberg Tech
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ length not available
Key Takeaways
Creators on the platform earned $1.7 billion in the last 12 months, by Baszucki's account
He gave the figure to the developer conference before giving it on air
Roblox Build is meant to let anyone make a game from a phone, and it is already live in one country
It is in testing in New Zealand, and he says people have vibe-coded a game in the mobile app and are earning revenue from it
A gaming harness is harder than a coding harness because four kinds of generation have to work at once
3D, scene, avatar and code generation all running together
Creators will be able to publish their Roblox games as standalone apps on mobile, PC and consoles
The growth he points to is older players, not younger ones
He says the 18-and-up segment is growing very quickly, and creators are moving into puzzle games and immersive RPGs
1. What Roblox Announced
Ludlow opened on the AI creation tools, saying the platform is unusual in that respect, and asked what was announced and what Baszucki wants creators to do with it.
He led with the money going to creators rather than the tools. Baszucki said the company had all of its developers around the world together and shared that creators on Roblox earned $1.7 billion in the last 12 months
The product is called Roblox Build, and he framed it as the point of the last two decades: "We announced Roblox Build at the Creator Conference, and it's really the ultimate fulfillment of our destiny," he said, tying it back to the company's founding line that the user makes the game better
The claim is that the skill requirement goes away. He said that in the mobile app anyone is going to be able to make a 2D game, a 3D game, an obby, a puzzle game, whatever they are interested in
"We're testing this in New Zealand right now," he said
It is not hypothetical revenue. He said people have vibe coded a game in the mobile app and are earning revenue from it in the marketplace, and that a wide range of other creation tools was introduced alongside it
2. Harnesses Made for Games
Ludlow put the week's context to him — that the frontier labs spent the weekend saying they should pace development, which is very different from what Roblox is doing — and asked about his confidence in pushing AI into game creation while Americans are worried about AI safety.
Baszucki's answer was a supply argument rather than a safety one. He said Roblox expects to see more creators and more people making games, not fewer
His analogy for why is the last platform shift: "And just as we've gone from analog to digital, and that opened up a wide range of creation, going from digital to AI accelerated is going to add even more creation to our platform. So we're very optimistic," he said
What he is copying is the coding workflow. He said what the industry has seen in the coding space with harnesses, iterative loops and building apps, services and websites with AI acceleration is what Roblox is doing for gaming
The technical claim is that games are a harder case: "It's much more complicated. These harnesses for gaming involve 3D generation, scene generation, avatar generation, code generation, all working together," he said
He said the company also announced Build in Studio, which accelerates AI creation for creators working in the desktop tool
3. Leaving the Roblox App
The second announcement is that games made on Roblox no longer have to be played inside Roblox. Ludlow called it a very interesting decision given the context of the platform, and asked why do it.
Baszucki's stated reason is a vision that predates the app stores. He said the company has had the vision since it started that whatever a creator builds runs on any device — phone, tablet, console, laptop — and auto-translates into any language
He raised the app stores himself, saying a lot of people continue to think about the Apple Store and the Google Store
The mechanic is the same build running in two places. He said that when a creator makes a game or an experience on Roblox, the company can see it running in the Roblox app and the exact same experience being available in, for example, the iOS App Store or a console store
The purpose he gave is removing constraints on where creators can reach players, which he described as a significant announcement in the company's ambition to take a larger share of the global gaming market
The growth markets he named at the conference were India and Japan, both of which he said are growing enormously quickly
4. The GTA 6 Question
Ludlow's last question was how Roblox rides the Grand Theft Auto 6 wave when it arrives in November.
Baszucki did not answer with a competitive response; he answered with an audience shift. "We're seeing amazing content coming out on Roblox. And as I shared, our 18 and up segment around the world is growing more quickly, like it's growing very, very quickly," he said
What the creators are building follows that audience. He said the conference showed a lot of creators now starting to focus on 2D puzzle games, 3D immersive RPGs and that class of game
His conclusion is that the platform's content mix is widening rather than defending: "So we're going to see more and more content, not just for younger players, but older players on the platform too."
Bonus Insights
The interview is the only one in the hour where AI acceleration is being sold as a product rather than debated as a risk, and Ludlow put that contrast to Baszucki directly rather than letting it pass
Baszucki tied Roblox Build back to the company's founding proposition — that the people playing make the thing better — rather than presenting it as a response to competitors' AI tools
The conference itself was global: he opened by saying the company had all of its developers around the world together
Baszucki's bottom line is that AI acceleration widens the pool of people who can make a game rather than shrinking the number of people employed making them, and that Roblox is now willing to let those games run outside its own app to reach players it does not currently have.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Roblox (The platform; creators earned $1.7 billion on it in the last 12 months by Baszucki's account)
Roblox Studio (The desktop creation tool, which is getting Build in Studio to accelerate AI-assisted creation)
Apple's App Store and Google Play (The stores Baszucki says people keep thinking about, and where Roblox games could appear as standalone apps)
Grand Theft Auto 6 (The November release Ludlow asked about; Baszucki answered with the growth of the 18-and-up audience instead)
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