Block by Block to the Top

Roblox Corporation, the company behind the online gaming platform of the same name, is the most valuable publicly-traded gaming company worldwide with a market cap of $63 billion according to data by Yahoo Finance. Its competitors, including household names like Nintendo and Electronic Arts, have a lot of catching up to do as our chart indicates.

Activision Blizzard, which released its third-quarter earnings last week, comes in second with a valuation of roughly $52 billion. The company has been embroiled in controversy for months now, with news of the delay of Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, the newest entries in two of its most successful gaming franchises, and the ongoing legal battles surrounding the company's treatment of its female employees and an alleged toxic "bro culture" at its offices possibly influencing its market value. The U.S.-based corporation is followed by Japanese powerhouse Nintendo, the company responsible for franchises like Mario and The Legend of Zelda, with a $51 billion market cap. Completing the top 5 are Electronic Arts, whose Q3 sales were boosted by the ongoing interest in FIFA 22, the current iteration of its best-selling soccer simulation, and Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games. Surprisingly, mobile game publisher Zynga also managed to crack the top list, even though the glory days of its break-out hits like Farmville are arguably over.

While most entries on the list are expected, Roblox Corporation, which went public in March of this year, is an unlikely winner. The platform provides a toolkit to create your own gaming world out of pre-made building blocks and share it inside the Roblox ecosystem, similar to the best-selling game of all time Minecraft, and is mostly used by children and teenagers. In the second quarter of 2021, the platform had 43 million daily active users according to company statements. The accessibility and audience size have made Roblox a hotspot for cross-promotion, with artists like Lil Nas X and Twenty One Pilots hosting virtual shows inside specifically designed game worlds.