Roblox refutes allegations of inflating metrics for investors and failing to protect minors
Roblox has rejected claims in a new report that accuses the company of misleading investors by inflating key metrics, as well as failing to protect young users from sexual predators and inappropriate content.
The report was published by Hindenburg Research, a US-based investment research firm known for activist short-selling. It asserted that, because Roblox is not a profitable business, its stock price is "reliant on the growth metrics it presents to Wall Street" – metrics that Hindenburg believes the company is lying about.
In a statement posted online, Roblox insisted Hindenburg's claims – particularly financial ones made in the report – were "misleading," adding: "The authors are short sellers and have an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox’s business model and results."
Two key figures were analysed in the report, the first being the size of Roblox's audience. Hindenburg Research claimed that Roblox's measure of the number of 'people' on its platform does not reflect the true number of daily active users because they can be multiple accounts run by a single individual, including alternate accounts and bot accounts.
Hindenburg alleges that Roblox inflates the number of people on its platform by 25% to 42% when speaking to investors, regulators and advertisers. It also said that interviews with former Roblox employees revealed the company tracks both accurate metrics for internal business decisions and inflated ones for investors.
Roblox refuted these claims, clarifying that it defines daily active users as anyone who has logged in and visited Roblox through its website or game application "on a unique registered account on a given calendar day."
"If a registered, logged in user visits Roblox more than once within a 24-hour period that spans two calendar days, that user is counted as a DAU only for the first calendar day," the company added. "We believe this method better reflects global engagement on the platform compared to a method based purely on a
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