We’ve wrapped another exciting Hack Week! We strip away the daily to-dos, so our builders can focus solely on the novel ideas they’re most passionate about with peers from across the organization. It’s the time when we collectively hit pause on our standard roadmaps to focus purely on innovation. It’s a chance to reimagine what the future of Roblox could look like, when "what if?" becomes "let’s do it!"

It’s a powerful reflection of life at Roblox: audacious technical challenges, boundless cross-functional collaboration, novel innovations, and a celebration of curiosity. Compounding this with our unique scale and scope–with over 3,000 builders shipping experiences for over 144M daily active users¹–means our teams have broader product and community insight than you’d find at most companies, which profoundly influences the visionary projects they select and drive during the week.

In our latest event, we set new records for participation and output. In total, our builders launched over a thousand projects. By the final submission deadline, 807 teams shared video updates documenting their progress and learnings. These numbers mark our largest Hack Week yet. For now, at least.

Solving Hard Problems Together

We prioritize collaboration and, during Hack Week, we take that spirit to the next level. We encourage teams to join forces with builders across the business, enabling builders to share expertise, develop new working relationships, and explore ideas that benefit from diverse perspectives.

Imagine a backend engineer brainstorming with a brand marketer, or a machine learning specialist pairing up with a compliance leader to test a new AI capability. Teams formed based on passion, not hierarchy. This dynamic proved that at Roblox, you don’t need a specific title to lead an initiative or drive a massive project. Real leadership is about the connections you forge and the impact you create.

Culture of Innovation

People are what make Hack Week magical. At our core, we’re a company of makers, inventors, creators, and builders. To channel this surge of creativity, we organized the event into distinct project categories that reflect our commitment to both visionary growth and platform excellence:

• The Hack: This category is designed for forward-thinking projects that break new ground and redefine how we solve challenges. It’s about expanding the horizon of what Roblox can be and driving future innovation.
• The Unhack: Innovation isn't always about adding; sometimes it’s about refining or redefining. This category focuses on optimizing our existing systems by closing quality gaps or polishing the tools and processes that power our success.
• The Security Award: We believe that safety is the foundation of civility. This special award encourages exploration of ideas that enhance security measures, protecting our community of players, creators, and builders, as well as our IP.

One team, working to develop an interactive application to coordinate the response required for handling a 0-day vulnerability, shared a bit about their experience:

"It's really empowering to get a week dedicated to trying out ideas that have been in the back of your head for a while. You really get a chance to explore things out of your immediate comfort zone, grow, and take some learnings back you wouldn't have had otherwise."

Celebrating Results (even when they aren’t what we expected)

You may be wondering, “How did you choose your winners?” We started by turning to the experts: each other.

Our judging process is as community-minded as our platform. We start with our builders. Every employee at Roblox is allowed to help judge the first round. This peer-review system ensures that the most innovative, best executed, and highest impact projects rise to the top.

The top 72 projects are evaluated by group leaders to determine the top twelve finalists, the top six hacks and unhacks, as well as the finalists for our security award. Those finalists then present live on stage to our CEO, Dave Baszucki, and a panel of executive judges, who ask questions like:

Do you think that the approach could be used for other types of data on instances besides attributes? Can you talk to me about some of the research that you did up front? Do you potentially see that integrating with search?

And our builders answer live, on-stage, leaning into their deep expertise to represent the ideas, development, and creations of their teams.

“It's fascinating to see what people build, and it feels extremely connecting to see all our other builders building alongside each other during Hack Week,” shared one of our Security Engineers.

Winners walked the stage to shake hands with leadership, holding trophies that symbolize not just a few days of work, but a tangible contribution to the future of connection.

Invent the Future

When we ask our team what initially attracted them to Roblox that remains true today, the answers are consistent: the technical challenges posed by our incredible scale, consistent cross-functional collaboration, and the joy that our platform brings to the world.

Hack Week encapsulates all of that. It’s a direct reflection of our commitment to giving our builders the time and freedom to chase those ambitious 'what ifs.' This dedicated time is where we see our culture of invention, driven by trust and creative autonomy, come to life.

Are you ready to build what's next?

Every day, millions of people connect on Roblox. It’s made possible by a few thousand builders solving the hardest technical challenges around the world. If you’re ready to power a platform for joy and connection, let’s build together.

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