Roblox wants to be a dating app
By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
Roblox really wants to move beyond being an app for kids, and that includes making it a place where adults actually meet and date. As he closed out Friday’s Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) 2023 keynote, CEO David Baszucki predicted that “thousands” of adults will meet and form “real-life relationships” in dating experiences on the platform over the next five years.
It’s a wild idea, but Roblox is now in a place where this prediction could feasibly come true. The company recently added experiences that can only be played by users who have verified that they are 17 or older, meaning that people hanging out in those exclusive experiences can be relatively sure they’re spending time with people who are old enough to be there. Next year, Roblox is planning to release an AI-powered tool that would let you make an avatar with an image and a text prompt, which could help you make a more realistic version of yourself. And with the platform’s soon-to-launch Roblox Connect video chat feature, people who form a connection could move to a video call to talk more.
The forecast was one of 10 five-year predictions Baszucki made onstage to cap off a jam-packed show. Here are the rest of the predictions, one of which hints at a future update that will let creators sell physical merchandise on the platform:
10. A Fortune 500 company will use a Roblox experience as part of their recruiting process
9. A school will integrate a full K-12 curriculum with Roblox, including language classes with schools in other countries and virtual field trips
8. For 17+ verified people in 17+
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