Who is roblox creator

Arthur Trusov is one of Roblox's most prolific creators and has sold millions of digital items.

The Middle Tennessee State University graduate joined Roblox in April 2012, and since then, has designed thousands of user-generated content (UGC) items, from digital sunglasses and hats to weapons and pins. In the process, Trusov, who currently splits his time between Seattle and Tennessee, has become a multi-millionaire.

Trusov joined Roblox when he was 11 years old, after viewing a YouTube video of a Roblox game showing people in a house who must survive a huge flood destroying the home. 

"I would look up Roblox on Google and discover that 'it's free,' which was the marketing quip of Roblox at the time," Trusov said. "That coaxed me into playing Roblox as a guest and eventually making a registered account." 

Roblox, which cofounders David Baszucki and Erik Cassel launched in September 2006, enables players to create their own games and play games made by other users, from pet and theme park simulators to tower defense games.  By the time of its IPO in March 2021, the company said more than half of Americans under the age of 16 were users. 

Roblox's increase in popularity as a metaverse-type platform — the company saw users spending more time on the platform during the pandemic — coincides with the rise of interest in the metaverse generally. Companies like Meta (until recently called Facebook) are banking on designing entire interactive, virtual worlds. Creators like Trusov fall into a growing group of entrepreneurs who are designing clothes, accessories, and other digital goods players can use.

But Trusov didn't start with digital goods. He first began building experiences on Roblox, including "Project Minigames," a collaboration with his friend Andrew Wang that included a set of cooperative puzzles and go-kart racing. His work caught the eye of employees at Roblox, who hired him on as a game designer and associate program manager from 2018 to 2019.

It wasn't until July 2019 when Trusov struck out on his own and designed his first item of user-generated content — a noir-themed 1940s-style bowler hat priced at 400 Robux, or $5 — that he realized he could make a viable business out of designing digital items. 

When Trusov lowered the price of the bowler hat to $1 per item, sales skyrocketed. He sold roughly 2,780 items in all.

"I realized the perfect prices of my future UGC items," Trusov said.

Trusov has now made thousands of digital Roblox items based on his interests and user feedback. He said he spends between 10 to 12 hours a month collaborating with a team of three digital artists who design between 20 to 30 digital Roblox outfits and accessories a month, which are released during the first week of each month. 

The team uses programs like Procreate to make sketches or drawings of digital items, creates a virtual model in Blender, and designs textures for the model in Substance Painter and Adobe Photoshop. Roblox's own creation application, Roblox Studio, allows Trusov's team to perform tasks like importing and exporting the item onto the platform, publishing the item, and testing out the item on the platform.  

Although items designed by Trusov and his team are usually priced under $1.50 each, Trusov sells hundreds of thousands of items each month. In 2020, he made nearly $848,000 in sales and almost $1.4 million in 2021 from Roblox digital goods. Insider verified his earnings with documentation provided by Trusov. According to Trusov, last year 10% of those earnings went to staff wages, 1% to office space, and the rest to his own salary, taxes, and other business expenses.

Trusov's bestselling UGC item? A pair of vintage-looking sunglasses that has sold over 2 million to date.

Producing Roblox UGC items has made Trusov a multi-millionaire, affording him wealth which he shares with his parents. In October 2020, he purchased a $250,000 home for them and paid down several thousand dollars' worth of their credit card debt, he said.

"I just essentially gave them freedom, the same freedom they sought to seek when they came over to America," Trusov said of his parents, who immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe.

If Trusov has any advice for other aspiring Roblox creators, it's that persistence is key. 

"When I started Roblox at 14, I didn't make my first buck until 2018," Trusov said. "Just four years, and I didn't stop. All my friends and family thought what I was doing was stupid, that it was never going to take off, but look where I am today." 

BY MURDOCK

Murdock

PUBLISHED 1 YEAR AGO

Roblox has one of the most interesting concepts of games we have seen in quite a while. Roblox is not a game, it is a platform.

This platform allows all sorts of creators to merge together and create stunning and creative games. That is the main reason why Roblox has emerged as such a successful game. There is one person that we should thank for this, and that is David Baszucki.

David Baszucki is the co-founder and CEO of Roblox, and together with Erik Cassel have made something spectacular.

Is David Baszucki Still Alive?

For some reason, there is so much curiosity around the creator of Roblox, and no wonder. The short answer to the question whether David Baszucki is still alive, is yes.

David is still alive and is still active and has a lot of projects. He was born in Canada, and most of the players in Roblox recognize him by his unique username, builderman. He is an entrepreneur, engineer, and ultimately an inventor.

Education

He was a part of the Eden Prairie Highschool in Minnesota. He’s great academic ability and dedication led him to Stanford University where he studied engineering and computer science. David graduated in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering.

Roblox

Roblox was founded back in early 2006. However, not many heard of it until 2012. In 2012, the game shot up to 7 million monthly users and it seemed as though it was steadily growing.

Despite not being active for such a long period of time, because of its concept, many were hearing about this revolutionary platform and game. More and more players, developers, and content creators became aware of it.

Because of this, in 2017, there were roughly 48 active monthly users. Its popularity grew, and in 2020, it reached its peak of 150 million active monthly users.

The company grew, and now there are more than 2,500 employees that work in Roblox. Roblox’s current market valuation is roughly $29.5 billion, even though it only got $855.7 million in funding.

David Baszucki is still the CEO of Roblox, and he continues to make the platform better each day!

READ NEXT : Roblox: How to Make a Game Teleporter

• Roblox's business plan from nearly two decades ago foresaw the rise of the metaverse, founder and CEO David Baszucki told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Tuesday.
• The increasingly buzzy term has garnered more attention in recent weeks after Facebook-parent Meta renamed itself.
• "Our whole company is really focused on the innovation to drive and shepherd this vision of what some people call the metaverse — or human co-experience — forward," Baszucki added.

Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki told CNBC on Tuesday that the online-gaming platform's business plan from nearly two decades ago foresaw the rise of the metaverse, an increasingly buzzy term on Wall Street used to describe interactive, immersive virtual worlds.

The idea has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks after the company formerly known as Facebook renamed itself Meta, a decision management has said reflects its growing ambitions beyond social media and into the so-called metaverse.

Roblox has been striving to create a version of it since its formation in 2004, Baszucki said in an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer on "Mad Money."

"Our business plan for 17 years ago predicted this new category where people can come together. For the last 16 years, we've been innovating on this category, building an amazing community not just of players, but an amazing developer community — 2 million strong that makes everything on our platform a rich economy," said Baszucki, who also founded Roblox alongside Erik Cassel. It went public via direct listing in March.

"Our whole company is really focused on the innovation to drive and shepherd this vision of what some people call the metaverse — or human co-experience — forward," Baszucki added.

Baszucki's appearance followed Roblox shares surging 42.23% Tuesday to close at $109.52 apiece, as Wall Street digested the video-game company's third-quarter results from the prior evening.

Roblox recorded bookings of $637.8 million in the quarter, beating analysts' expectations of $636.5 million, according to Refinitiv. That represented a 28% jump compared with the same quarter in 2020. Average daily active users checked in at 47.3 million in Q3, a 31% year-over-year increase.

The company, known for its popularity among children, benefited from the coronavirus pandemic as people spent more time at home and turned to entertainment options such as Roblox's app. But for that reason, there were questions about the sustainability of Roblox's growth as Covid vaccinations rolled out, prompting individuals to more freely resume pre-Covid activities including the widespread return of in-person schooling.

Some bearish investors bet against Roblox's stock using a strategy known as short-selling because they expected booking and engagement growth to moderate, especially given the company faced challenging year-over-year comparisons.

The fact Roblox turned in a surprisingly short quarter likely caused some short-sellers to cover their position, hoping to minimize losses, according to Cramer. He said those actions likely added upward pressure to Roblox's stock, contributing to the sizable gain in share price Tuesday.

In addition to its third-quarter results, Roblox on Monday also reported seeing a strong start to its fourth quarter beginning in October before its platform was hit with a multi-day outage. Baszucki told Cramer he believes the Q3 numbers, combined with early October metrics, "validates our vision of the platform we're building."