Roblox revenue surges, but safety reforms cut bookings outlook

Roblox is still growing at a scale most game platforms can only envy, but its first-quarter numbers came with a warning for anyone watching the business of youth-driven online play. The company posted $1.4 billion in revenue, $1.7 billion in bookings, 132 million daily active users, 31 billion hours engaged, and $629 million in operating cash flow for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Even so, Roblox said the cost of its safety push is now big enough to hit growth.

The company cut its full-year 2026 bookings forecast to $7.33 billion to $7.60 billion, down sharply from prior guidance of $8.28 billion to $8.55 billion. It also projected second-quarter bookings of $1.55 billion to $1.61 billion, a range that landed below Wall Street expectations. Roblox said the newer rules restricted communication for users who had not completed an age check, reduced communication for age-checked users, and slowed new user acquisition.

That trade-off is central to the story. Roblox said 51% of global daily active users and 65% of U.S. daily active users had completed age verification by the end of the quarter. The company began requiring U.S. users to complete an age check to chat on January 7, 2026, and rolled that requirement out globally over the following week wherever chat is available. On April 13, Roblox went further with two new age-based account tiers, Roblox Kids for ages 5 to 8 and Roblox Select for ages 9 to 15, with rollout planned for early June.

Roblox said users under 16 who are age-checked will still have access to the vast majority of their favorite games at launch, while users 16 and older will see no change. That is the tightrope the platform is trying to walk: keep the social layer and the creator economy humming, while locking down the parts of the experience most exposed to scrutiny from parents and regulators.

Investors did not wait long to react. Shares fell 18% after the earnings update, and premarket trading at one point showed a drop of almost 22%. The pressure is not just financial. Roblox is facing more than 140 lawsuits in U.S. federal court alleging failures to prevent child exploitation, and it reached settlements with Alabama and West Virginia in April, including a reported $12 million Alabama settlement and a combined $23.2 million total for the two states.

For Roblox, the quarter made the stakes plain: the platform can still scale like a juggernaut, but the market now wants proof that safer systems can coexist with the kind of engagement that built the company in the first place.