Branded Roblox games got 1.8 billion visits in 2023, report finds

Metaverse hype may have died down since the first half of 2022, but brands still got solid engagement in both Roblox and Fortnite in 2023, according to a new report from branded Roblox game developer Gamefam.

According to the report, Roblox players visited branded games more than 1.8 billion times and spent more than 11 billion minutes in those virtual worlds, putting the average visit time at just over six minutes.

While Gamefam doesn’t put too much stock in player visits alone, as the metric doesn't reveal much about the ways that players interact with branded content, combining visits with playtime reveals that some of these worlds are well-trafficked and that players aren’t immediately bouncing off. 

Brands also tend to come up with bespoke metrics for their activations, such as Bomb Pop tracking how many in-game items it sold for virtual currency.

However, not all brand activations are created equally. Mattel’s Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon was unsurprisingly one of the most popular branded experiences released this year. It peaked at more than 1.1 million visitors with an average session time of just over 15 minutes over the past two weeks, according to tracking platform RoMonitor.

Other games, however, have struggled to keep momentum. Replica, a game created by Verizon and the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the summer, peaked at 523 visitors with an average session time of 4.4 minutes over the past two weeks.

Roblox reported having 70.2 million daily active users in Q3 this year. It also had 240 brand activations in 2023, double what it had the year prior.

Gamefam’s report revealed that Gen Z and Gen Alpha spend an average of 150 minutes on Roblox daily, compared to 107 minutes on TikTok and 67 minutes on YouTube.

The Gamefam report also noted that Fortnite has 231 million monthly active users and that Gen Z and Alpha players spend about 98 minutes per day in the game.

“Just think about the value generated for brands from the active engagement on Roblox and Fortnite vs. the passive engagement of watching TV commercials or TikTok videos,” said Joe Ferencz, CEO and founder of Gamefam.

Fortnite has typically received less brand attention than Roblox. It usually hosts between five and 20 branded games per season of the game, which changes about every three months. 

Marketers have also noted struggles getting engagement within branded Fortnite games comparable to Roblox.

However, Fortnite stands to challenge Roblox next year with the launch of Lego Fortnite and two other Fortnite games that position the Epic Games shooter as more of an all-purpose platform.

“Roblox remains the largest metaverse gaming platform,” said Ferencz. “However, we saw drastic increases across the board in 2023 when it comes to Fortnite’s metaverse, and as we head into the new year, Fortnite is exploding and matching the demand of Roblox. We’re already seeing it in Q4 with user numbers almost matching Roblox.”

Several brands entered Roblox and Fortnite for the first time this year, including 7-Eleven, The Home Depot, the U.S. Open, E.l.f. Cosmetics, Frank’s RedHot, Vita Coco, LensCrafters and Scholastic. Many opted to integrate into pre-existing games within Roblox and Fortnite instead of creating their own from scratch, including Paramount and Intuit.

“Given there are millions of games on Roblox and Fortnite and it’s so difficult to cut through, building a standalone game is usually not the right move for a brand,” said Ferencz, adding that brands with giant IPs such as Mattel are the exception.