Sponsored by RockWater
I have a five and six-year-old.
So I know Roblox.
The only time the kids look up from their computer is when they’re stuck on a Hello Kitty-themed obby with a weird jump or a bit of unclear physics.
And, of course, the constant request to purchase Robux, followed by the subsequent denial.
Last week was full of interesting launches and news for these new metaverses. I’ll break down the opportunity for creators and developers, and where the market has gotten it wrong in the past few years.
Also in this edition:
🙅🏽 X Get’s X’ed in Multiple Countries for Deepfake Porn
📆 TikTok Launches a Screentime Calendar for Parents
🤩 Hannah Stocking Gets Her Own Vertical Microdrama
🤖 A Virtual Creator Re-Takes the Twitch Subscriber Crown
💪🏼 Jobs from TikTok, Red Bull Media House, and Taco Bell
🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!
Let’s get into it.
NEWS:
Your Kids are in the Metaverse
TLDR:
Roblox game creators made over $1 billion in 2025, which accounts for 31% growth year over year, with users spending a combined 88.7 billion hours on the platform last year
Fortnite is allowing developers to sell loot boxes, which has been controversial for other platforms
Creators are a primary driver of success around metaverse events, but very few non-endemics have jumped in.
On August 23, 2025, the entire internet was abuzz over by far the biggest creator event in internet history.
No, MrBeast wasn’t involved.
And neither was Kai Cenat.
This was a collab between the Roblox games ‘Grow a Garden’ and ‘Steal a Brainrot’.
And it drove 47 million concurrent players. Not just viewers. Logged-in players.
For comparison, Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon topped out around 750,000 viewers, or about 1.6% of the size.
If Kai Cenat and MrBeast are big, Jandel and SpyderSammy are capital-G Gods.
Jandel’s ‘Grow a Garden’ is estimated to have driven just over $1 billion in revenue. Not bad for a 28-year-old independent developer.
Okay, but this newsletter is about content creators. What does this have to do with that?
Everything.
And most of it is a story about missed opportunities. Let me break down what’s happening in the metaverse right now:
The Metaverse Worked, Just Not Outside of Games: The market forces that made Zuck name his company Meta is broadly used as a punchline for Big Tech hubris, but they were right about one thing: Gen Z and Alpha identify, communicate, and play through digital worlds. Their error was thinking it would be sitting in virtual living rooms, chit-chatting. It’s happened on Roblox and Fortnite, and is growing fast. The average Roblox player spends 24 to 30 hours per week on the game. That absolutely wrecks TikTok’s average 6 hours per active user.
Content Creators are Promoting Games, but Not Necessarily Participating In Them: Keekcraft launched Pixel Playground. MeganPlays launched Overlook Bay. But most large Roblox content creators still choose to play the most popular games rather than create them. And, frankly, that’s not a bad move. Building games is expensive, and any single creator may not be powerful enough to keep the game relevant beyond a launch. Most top games are not creator-backed. And for special events, huge IPs like SpongeBob, Blippy, and Gabby’s Dollhouse have created very successful games to market their initiatives, so there has been precedent for IPs to elevate Roblox and Fortnite experiences. Large musicians like Travis Scott have had huge concerts within Fortnite and creators have had successful skins, but they haven’t been all-in as one would expect.
Creator Need to Think of Games Like Start Ups: Quick question: would you rather have 100% ownership in a highly speculative company or 10% ownership in a company that’s just started hitting rapid growth? Most smart business people would choose the latter. And I did a very informal survey where I reached out to a handful of game creators on Roblox who currently had thousands of people on their game, asking if any creator has reached out about partnerships, and every single one said ‘no’. This is crazy to me. It’s hard to make a great game, but once you have, it’s hard to keep it relevant. Creators are amazing at driving relevance, especially streamers who have diehard audiences watching daily. Creators are substantially more useful as promoters rather than builders.
New Launches are Right-Sizing Creator Participation: Fortnite is now allowing designers to create loot boxes within Fortnite UEFN experiences (their version of user-created games). This is huge! Not just because these llama piñatas are like gambling for kids, but because it allows a creator to participate in content without needing to make an entire game. Think of this like a capsule collection for a streetwear brand. You get an explosion of activity from your audience, the game gets new attention, and everyone wins. Meanwhile, over at Roblox, they’re now promoting publishers and games on the mainpage as ad units, which will allow developers to derisk their investment in their games through paid promotion. And what will they need to get people to click? A good pitch. And creators have always been uniquely talented on that front.
All Said, Every Creator with 13 - 18 Audiences Should Consider This a ‘Merch’ Play: Why are you selling T-shirts? That’s a brutal risk. Everyone has too many T-shirts. You may be able to make a little cash with your biggest fans, but it generally doesn’t scale beyond your most hardcore audience. But if you make the coolest fedora hat in Roblox? Or the coolest fishnet stockings pants in the Roblox store? These are ways to expand your brand and reach out to new audiences. I just went onto Google Trends to look at top fashion trends and matched it with searches on the Roblox items store, and no major players were the top sellers. If you know someone at Victoria’s Secret, tell them to get on this!
Net-Net: I’m recommending everyone with a young audience to think of the digital goods they can sell in the metaverse. All of the data says this market is profitable, growing, and not enough real businesses are looking at it.
SPONSORED BY ROCKWATER
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We recently advised on the sale of Feedfeed, a social media publisher and creator network, to People Inc., a publicly traded media co. We’ve also advised Click Management (sale to GameSquare), Lionize (an IM platform, sold to gen.video), Long Haul Mgmt (sold to Wasserman), Bottle Rocket Mgmt (sold to Night), Bounty (a UGC platform, sold to gen.video), and more deals are in the works.
If you want a POV on your company’s valuation and readiness for a sale, reach out to to [email protected] to setup an intro call.
FAME & FORTUNE
What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?
🙅🏽 xAI is still making headlines for all of the wrong reasons, where recent reports claimed there were 6,700 sexualized or nudifying AI images made per hour, including with very young children. Elon responded by making it a paid feature (truly an unhinged response). Australia, the U.K., and Canada are considering a joint ban of the platform.
📆 TikTok now has a downloadable calendar for parents to schedule the proper amount of family time and screen time. Thank God kids love it when their parents limit their screen time!
🤩 Hannah Stocking is going to be starring in a musical vertical microdrama called Playback from Second Rodeo (congrats to my former Studio71 colleague Scott Brown!) Over the past few years, I’ve talked to multiple people running vertical short-form platforms who claimed they don’t need expensive creators to stay relevant, so all eyes will be on this launch.
🤖 Neuro-sama, an AI virtual influencer, has broken the Twitch subscription record with nearly 1 million followers. So everyone who thought the greatest defense against AI is ‘more live content’ should take pause.
JOB BOARD
You read that right. TikTok is very much in the vertical shortform drama business. And I think it has a real chance. Many of these apps feel like TikTok with paywalls, so it would be a natural for TikTok to serve as a more user-generated-friendly version, kind of like Wattpad was to ebooks.
Red Bull is one of the greatest brands to ever grace social media. They were throwing athletes off of bridges and out of planes (and spaceships!) before it was cool. They have a strong creator roster of extreme sports athletes and gamers, and this role will let you plug and play into some of the coolest trendsetters in social media.
As Carlos Alazraqui so eloquently said in many commercials, “Yo quiero, Taco Bell. And so does the internet. It’s always been fun, self-referential, dare I say “authentic” in the way they brag about their breakfast and late-night ‘Fourth Meals’. They’ve sent burner phones and hoodies to creators. They’ve had crazy videos on YouTube. Although this is on the paid media side, this will surely give you access to work with daring creatives.
MEME ZONE
Mailbox money? Yes please!
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Until next time, protect yo rep.