Roblox is making it easier to build games with AI — and play them outside Roblox
TechCrunch
Roblox is adding AI tools so people can build games by typing prompts. It’s also letting those games run outside Roblox, which is the bigger shift.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch — read the original for the full story.
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Roblox used its annual Developer Conference to push hard on two fronts: making games easier to build, and making them easier to play away from Roblox itself. The company rolled out more generative AI tools, expanded what non-player characters can do, and started talking about a future where a Roblox game can live as a separate app on mobile, PC, consoles, or even in a browser through a link.
The star of the show is Build, Roblox’s natural-language game creation feature. It was first announced in July and began as a test in New Zealand. Now it’s moving to Serbia and Singapore, and it’s getting desktop access for big-screen creation, a new asset library, and more iterative control. Later this year, Roblox says Build will also gain prompt-based scene generation, and that feature will make its way into Roblox Studio too.
The company is also trying to widen what creators can do once they’ve built something. NPCs are getting new abilities, including the power to playtest a game later this year. Creators will be able to add offline mode for weak-network situations. Players are getting a Friends chat tab that follows them around the game, plus voice typing support. Roblox is also adjusting discovery so younger users see more shorter games, while older users get pushed toward longer ones.
And there’s more under the hood. Roblox is adding support for 2D games using an orthographic camera, animated image containers, and direct sprite-sheet import for animation. Inside Moments, its vertical video feed, players will soon be able to tap an avatar in a clip and buy items. That last one feels like the platform doing what platforms do best: turning every surface into a storefront.
The money piece matters too. Roblox says creators have earned more than $5 billion on the platform since 2013, with $1.7 billion in the last 12 months alone. To make that easier to access, it is launching a Roblox Wallet that pays creators in real money by the end of each business day and lets them transfer funds to other bank accounts. A Roblox Card is also on the way next year. Roblox is partnering with Airwallex for U.S. users 18 and older, with more countries planned later.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Roblox is doing the sensible platform thing here: make creation easier, then make sure the output can escape the platform when needed. That’s the opposite of the usual walled-garden reflex, and it’s a better look than pretending every user wants to live in one app forever. The real test is whether all this openness still leaves room for creators to actually earn, not just feed the machine.
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