Developers of a gaming app that is used by millions of people worldwide and is a favourite among children have apologised after a four-day outage.
Roblox was first reported by users as being down on Thursday night.
It has now been restored as those behind the app, which allows users to play games they have created, have revealed more about why it was not accessible over the weekend.
What is Roblox?
Roblox launched in 2006, offering users the chance to build their own games and share them with others across the world.
According to the Roblox website, players can “build the ultimate theme park, compete as a professional race car driver, star in a fashion show, become a superhero, or simply design a dream home and hang out with friends”.
The app is free to download on various devices including smartphones and the Xbox, but users can then buy the virtual currency Robux to use on upgrades or accessories.
Roblox is thought to have more than 40 million active daily users worldwide and experts say its usage has increased nearly fivefold since 2017 – with the app now said to be worth billions of pounds.
When did Roblox stop working?
The app was first reported as being down via the website Downdetector at around 6pm on Thursday.
There were thousands of further reports of the app being inaccessible throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday with users unable to log in.
Those behind the app updated users on Saturday to confirm they had found the source of the outage and were working to get it back online.
We believe we have identified an underlying internal cause of the outage. We’re in the process of performing the necessary engineering and maintenance work to get Roblox back up and running ASAP. Thanks for your patience.
— Roblox (@Roblox) October 30, 2021
Why was Roblox down?
In an update issued to users early on Monday, confirming the app was working again, David Baszucki, founder and CEO of Roblox, apologised for the “length of time it too us to restore service”.
He wrote: “A key value at Roblox is ‘Respect the Community,’ and in this case, we apologize for the inconvenience to our community.
“On Thursday afternoon, October 28th, users began having trouble connecting with our platform.
“This immediately became our highest priority. Teams began working around the clock to identify the source of the problem and get things back to normal.
“This was an especially difficult outage in that it involved a combination of several factors.
“A core system in our infrastructure became overwhelmed, prompted by a subtle bug in our backend service communications while under heavy load.
“This was not due to any peak in external traffic or any particular experience.
“Rather the failure was caused by the growth in the number of servers in our datacenters.
Roblox is back online. Thanks again for your understanding and support. Our CEO, David Baszucki, shared an update on the outage and steps taken to address it. https://t.co/vUXzzzCNJZ
— Roblox (@Roblox) November 1, 2021
“The result was that most services at Roblox were unable to effectively communicate and deploy. ”
He says that due to difficulties diagnosing the actual bug, recovery took “longer than any of us would have liked”.
He has vowed to publish a “post-mortem” once a full analysis of the outage has been completed in an attempt to avoid similar issues arising in future.
Can players use Roblox as normal now?
According to Mr Baszucki, there has been “no loss of player persistence data” and the Roblox experience “should now be fully back to normal”.
He has encouraged players to contact the app’s support team if there are any “hiccups” using Roblox now or in the future.