Roblox has been reintroducing the term “games” on its platform after shifting from “games” to “experiences” during the Epic Games v. Apple trial.
Roblox is making a subtle but notable change. After swapping the word “game” for “experience” all over its website and mobile apps in 2021 while the Epic Games v. Apple trial was taking place, Roblox is getting more comfortable with using the term “games” once again. “Over time, we’ve learned that ‘experiences’ isn’t an intuitive term for many parents, older players, and game developers,” Roblox spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt tells The Verge. “‘Games’ is clearer and better reflects what Roblox is and where we’re going.”
One of the Epic v. Apple trial’s major points was trying to define what a game is. Roblox sits in a bit of a middle ground: while the app itself is not a game, it allows users to create gamelike experiences that other users can interact with. During the trial, an Apple executive testified that Roblox shouldn’t be viewed as a game, which was actually kind of a big deal; if Roblox was seen as a game by Apple, it may have had to adhere to rules that would have made maintaining its iOS app prohibitively difficult.
As the trial went on, though, Roblox shifted from using the term “games” to “experiences.” The distinction between the two was kind of a big deal at the time; companies like Roblox and Epic were trying to characterize their platforms as metaverses, and Roblox told The Verge that the term “experiences” better represents “the wide range of 3D immersive places” on the platform. It may also have been a move to try and make sure that the app wouldn’t be viewed as a game by Apple.
Catch up to today, though, and metaverse rhetoric across the industry has cooled as the concept hasn’t really taken off. Meta, for example — the company formerly known as Facebook that changed its name as it pursued its own metaverse vision — has made big cuts to its metaverse division and is now changing the focus of its Horizon Worlds social platform from VR to mobile.
Roblox hasn’t completely moved on from the term “experiences.” Its App Store description still primarily features the term. But Roblox’s homepage is showing me a section for “standout games,” and a Roblox website for developers I found features a bunch of instances of the word “games.” It’s not the only notable language shift from Roblox as of late; the company renamed “friends” to “connections” in 2025, but now it’s switched back to friends, too.
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