Roblox Hits 100 Million Active Monthly Players, Overtaking Minecraft

As of this month, Roblox has reached 100 million monthly active users, putting it ahead of Minecraft, its much more discussed competitor.

One of the world’s most online popular games, a multiplayer platform with a massive community of players building with digital blocks, recently announced a significant milestone, having surpassed 100 million active monthly users. No, it’s not Minecraft — it’s Roblox, which now has more users than its more headline-grabbing competitor.

Roblox launched three years before Minecraft, in 2006, and its dedicated community has stuck with it all this time. Last October, Microsoft announced that Minecraft had 90 million monthly players, and its population was the same the last time figures were released in March.

While comparisons between the two games are only natural, Roblox is a much different — and in some ways more full-featured — than Minecraft. Rather than focusing on shaping the world and building out landscapes with in-game tools, Roblox allows users to create their mini-games within the game. There’s a vast amount of versatility to Roblox‘s creation tools. Users have crafted everything from shooters to racing games and much stranger things outside of typical game genres. Roblox avatars are also highly customizable, and the game also features a robust role-playing community as well.

The game’s community is also highly diverse. According to the press release announcing the milestone, Roblox has active players in over 200 countries, and women make up 40 percent of the player base. Roblox’s developers also released a special gold bar shoulder accessory that players can equip to celebrate the game hitting the 100 million user mark.

Despite its larger population and greater versatility, Roblox has never been as well known outside its community as Minecraft. Part of that may be for the better, as the game has avoided the controversies brought on by Minecraft’s creator, but it also lacks the backing of a major technology company enjoyed by its biggest competitor. With a Minecraft alternate-reality game somewhat in the vein of Pokemon GO launching soon, Minecraft may yet again pull ahead in terms of players if Roblox doesn’t make any big moves of its own soon.