Teen developers are earning millions on Roblox, reshaping the economics of gaming as simple user-made titles outperform blockbuster studio releases.
The line separating work and play has always been blurred for Nate Colley. Growing up with an iPad in a Nova Scotia trailer park, he could take on almost any job inside Roblox‘s sprawling online game world — food server in Work at a Pizza Place, logger in Lumber Tycoon. The one thing he couldn’t be was a fisherman.
So, in between homework and shifts at a local Chinese restaurant, Colley built Fisch — a fishing game on the 144-million-member Roblox platform. Today, at 19, he earns $400,000 a month from it, including royalties from Lego and Walmart, which advertise on the game’s virtual fishing rods.
His ten-year goal: earn enough to return to making Roblox games purely for fun.
“I’d just make money from money and work for fun,” he says.
Colley is not an outlier. Roblox is minting a quiet generation of teenage millionaires — and it’s doing so on the back of games that can be built in weeks. The platform functions like a digital mall: users browse, play, and socialize across millions of user-created games, accessible from phones, consoles, and computers. The most popular titles earn their creators hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, largely from fans purchasing digital items — a hat, an anime sword, a limited-edition skin. A truly successful game can earn a teenage developer enough to never need a conventional job.
Also Read: Your Homepage Isn’t the Front Door Anymore
Six of these young, wealthy developers spoke with Bloomberg, describing financial and life decisions that most people don’t face until their thirties. Unlike their peers, they aren’t anxious about the future. They’re buying property, booking adventures, and — above all — trying to make the leisure last.
“It’s a great source of passive income,” says Muneeb Parwaz, 22, who created Catalog Avatar Creator, a game in which players try on virtual outfits. His life now includes jet skiing and skydiving. The whole thing still feels, he says, “unbelievable and unreal.”
“It’s crazy. Just a few games can set you up for life,” he adds. “I don’t know what to do sometimes.”
Founded in 2004, Roblox paid out $1.5 billion to game creators last year. The top 1,000 developers — individuals or small studios — earned an average of $1.3 million, according to the company. The top 10 averaged $39 million each. More than half of the platform’s creators never went beyond high school. Some bypass the grind entirely, selling their games to specialized Roblox studios for seven or eight figures.
The scale of this is still relatively new, says Ben Sarraille, co-founder of Makeshift, a consultancy that advises businesses exploring the Roblox ecosystem. Platform revenue has grown more than fivefold since 2020, reaching nearly $5 billion last year. Roblox’s market value now exceeds $45 billion.
The contrast with the rest of the gaming industry is jarring. Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have cut thousands of high-paid developer jobs and shelved major titles, spooked by the economics of blockbuster game development — where $100 million in motion-capture, voice acting, and 4K production can still result in a flop. Gaming executives watch Roblox with a mix of admiration and disbelief. Games with rudimentary graphics and mechanics as simple as “plant seed, grow plant” are outperforming AAA releases from studios with decades of experience.
Roblox accounted for 40% of the video game industry’s growth in consumer spending last year, outside of China, according to industry analyst Matthew Ball. And because its players are also its creators, no one has a sharper instinct for what might catch on next — whether that’s Bee Swarm Simulator, the viral oddity Steal a Brainrot, or a revival of playground logic like The Floor Is Lava. Grow a Garden, built by a 17-year-old in a single week, generated more than $150 million last year, according to data from Creator Games.
The platform has drawn criticism for its revenue split: roughly 70% of sales go to Roblox, leaving creators with less than a third. But the platform’s top earners say they have few complaints.
Colley isn’t the only Roblox millionaire who grew up in a trailer park. Jonathan Courtney, 26, first logged on at age 9 — drawn to a virtual pizza place as an escape from a crowded Cleveland home with five siblings. “If you love what you’re doing, you don’t feel like you’re working,” he says.
Also Read: Marketing That Predicts, Not Reacts
From his home computer, Courtney designed digital skirts, tails, mustaches, and hats for players’ avatars, sold using Roblox’s virtual currency, Robux. His first payout — $2,000, received in tenth grade — was the beginning. Now he earns $100,000 a month, with additional income from sponsors including Adidas. In 2024, Vogue featured him after one of his Adidas-branded necklaces sold for the equivalent of $20,000 in Robux — a currency in which he holds much of his wealth.
The Roblox millionaires Bloomberg interviewed spend their riches in ways that are, at first glance, predictable: a house, a car. Colley parks a McLaren and a Porsche beneath his penthouse. But their relationship with work tells a different story.
Many of the platform’s top creators have taken a deliberately unhurried approach to their craft — a sharp contrast to earlier generations who built fortunes through competitive esports or Twitch streaming. Those gamers tended to stay home and grind, haunted by the fear that stepping away from the keyboard would mean losing everything. By comparison, Roblox’s most successful developers organize their lives around leisure. Several have built home art studios; others have taken up acting or photography.
“The Roblox world is so much more healthy, from a mental perspective,” says Evan Zirschky, 22, whose New Jersey family once relied on SNAP benefits. While Zirschky leans toward financial security over splurging, others are less restrained. Some developers have thrown carnivals for their neighborhoods; others have quietly paid off their parents’ mortgages.
The 20-year-old developer behind Blue Lock Rivals — who goes by Chrollo and claims to earn eight figures a year — bought a McLaren alongside three Dodge Chargers. Retirement, he says, isn’t the point. “I could retire. But if I did, I’d be bored,” he says. “Most of my days are spent chilling, but I still work probably, like, six hours. I find that pretty relaxing, to be honest.”
Also Read: Retail’s AI Reckoning Is About Revenue — Not Robots
Some say the fortunes came at a cost. Zirschky believes he traded chunks of his childhood for his early success, and has since visited 20 countries with fellow Roblox developers — a deliberate attempt to reclaim lost time. They travel together, staying in Airbnbs, hitting Mount Fuji, Super Nintendo World, and whatever else catches their interest.
“In Amsterdam, we did get a VIP table at a club overlooking everyone,” Zirschky says. “But we always make sure to try McDonald’s in every country.”
The travel, he says, puts things in perspective. It reminds him that his work “isn’t that big a deal. It’s not the end of the world — because ultimately, there are people walking down the streets of Sydney right now who don’t care about my Roblox game performing 50% worse.”
Colley has indulged, just a little. After last year’s Roblox developer conference, he chartered a private jet to Las Vegas with a group of friends. Did he place any bets?
“I’m not old enough,” he says. “But I had people gambling next to me.”
