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Roblox is hosting a game inside its virtual world platform to help raise awareness for Type 1 diabetes. JDRF One World is part of a campaign from the game-focused charity JDRF Game2Give, organized in 2019 by prominent game developers who have children with type 1 diabetes. We are inspired by how JDRF is reimagining its One Walk inside the Roblox metaverse, bringing people from around the world together to support such a worthy cause,” Roblox VP Tami Bhaumik said in an email to GamesBeat. With the automated connection between the glucose monitors and insulin pumps, parents of children with type 1 diabetes can sleep through the night, Connors said, which is a game-changer for families.

Roblox has a virtual launch party coming with pop star Ava Max, who will sing songs from her new album Heaven & Hell on Friday. The place brings the album’s supernatural space theme into the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. Fans will use jump pads to get to the sky-high dance floor where they can enjoy Ava’s new tunes, shop cool merch to dress their avatars up with Heaven or Hell wings and swords, complete fun quests, socialize, ask Ava questions, and get a private live performance of a couple of her hit songs, just for her fans on Roblox. To be part of Ava’s first-of-a-kind record release party, existing users simply need to enter the Ava Max Launch Party Place on Roblox.

We have 50 million more monthly active users than we did a year ago, which is a significant jump in users on the platform as a whole,” Craig Donato, the chief business officer of Roblox, said in an email to GamesBeat. Developers now earn money when Premium subscribers spend time in their game, encouraging them to create special areas in their games or provide special offers for subscribers.” Roblox said that one of its biggest games, Adopt Me!, now has over 10 billion plays and surpassed 1.6 million concurrent users in game earlier this year. As mentioned, Roblox’s developers are on pace to earn $250 million in 2020, up from the $110 million they earned in 2019. In June 2020, Roblox developers earned $2 million as part of the Premium Payouts program, which pays developers based on the engagement time of Premium subscribers in-game.

Roblox found that 52% of teens spend the same or more time with real-life friends in Roblox, other online games, or voice/chat programs during the pandemic. While the vast majority of teens surveyed (79%) continued playing their favorite games together with their real-life friends, when asked whether they were doing anything different on Roblox during stay-at-home orders, over half (62%) said they were trying new games, and 41% tried new game genres. In an earlier Roblox study (4,499 teens ages 13-19 conducted by Reach3 Insights in March 20-23), 68% of teens said they wanted their parents to be more involved in their online lives. As parents become more lenient about screen time during COVID-19, additional research is needed to understand how it’s affecting family life and teens’ emotional well-being, Higgins said.