Roblox outage: did Chipotle's $1 million burrito offer crash the gaming platform?

The popular gaming app has been down for more than two days, shutting out millions of users worldwide

The gaming platform Roblox crashed on Friday and the company is still trying to restore service. AP

More than 48 hours after it crashed, there's still no sign of life on the popular gaming platform Roblox, much to the dismay of its millions of young users worldwide.

On Saturday, the company tweeted it had identified the source of the problem, which it said was an internal issue.

"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," it posted.

The game-creating platform, hugely popular with children, first started having issues on Friday, shutting out millions of users worldwide.

"We know you’re having issues using Roblox right now. We’re sorry and working hard to get things back to normal," the company tweeted on Friday as panicked users, and their parents, took to Twitter to share their woes.

"The scariest part of Halloween this year is Roblox being down," lamented Twitter user @NikilisRBX.

Some users speculated that the outage was caused by a free burrito giveaway at a digital Chipotle on the Roblox platform.

Just before the platform crashed, the fast-food chain was giving away $1 million worth of free burritos as part of a Halloween event in the game. But Roblox on Saturday quashed those rumours, saying the "outage was not related to any specific experiences or partnerships on the platform".

Roblox has more than 43 million active users a day, according to numbers compiled by social media consulting firm Backlinko. Although it was launched in 2006, Covid-19-imposed lockdowns in 2020 accelerated its popularity, with usage surging as much as 40 per cent between February and March.

Through the platform, users can create their own games and play with others. They can build digital houses, adopt pets and run around theme parks together with their friends.

The games are free to play but gamers can purchase digital currency called Robux to buy premium features. Some parents even host virtual birthday parties, with friends and relatives joining in with their avatars.

More than 50 per cent of the platform's users are under the age of 14, according to The Verge.

Last week, the Electric Daisy Carnival, one of the biggest electronic music festivals in the US, became the first music festival to be held on Roblox.

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