Starting today, Walmart can now sell physical goods directly to users within Roblox.
The introduction of real-world e-commerce could mark a key turning point for the company's ambitions to become a comprehensive destination for virtual living.
Walmart's Roblox e-commerce experience will launch later today, allowing existing users within Walmart Discovered to have physical products delivered directly to their doorstep. Users who take part in the experience will be greeted by a new storefront showcasing virtual twins of certain physical products sold in real Walmart stores.
After trying on virtual items with their avatars, players can load an e-commerce experience within Roblox that takes the form of a browser window that mimics the shopping experience on Walmart's website. It is essentially a virtual laptop set up within Roblox to access Walmart.com. The commerce functionality within Walmart Discovered is limited to users in the United States who are 13 years of age or older.
“You have a traditional checkout flow where you enter your name, address, credit card information, and it's all run by Walmart's API, which handles all of that information very securely. It's very secure,” said Justin Breton, Walmart's director of brand experience and strategic partnerships. “Once you click checkout, you get a confirmation email from Walmart. All of that is handled on the backend, and the user then receives their item in an email, but their virtual twin is immediately brought back to Roblox.”
To power the e-commerce experience, Walmart collaborated with three Roblox creators – Sarabxlla, MD17_RBLX and Junozy – to design Robloxified versions of three Walmart physical products, including the No Boundaries festival hobo bag, TAL stainless steel tumbler and Onn wireless headphones.
Roblox first teased its e-commerce launch at Roblox Investor Day in November, and the Walmart experience is a pilot test that will run until May. During the pilot test, Roblox will not receive a cut of item sales, and all revenue will be paid directly to Walmart. Rather than serving as a new revenue stream for Roblox in the short term, the test is meant to gauge users' willingness to purchase physical goods on the platform.
Today's pilot is the first of several e-commerce tests Roblox plans to conduct with different products, brands and shopping methods. Once all are ironed out, future e-commerce experiences on the platform may end up looking very different than the Walmart pilot.
“We're excited to start testing real-world commerce as an important step in making this a reality for our community of creators and brands in the future,” said Enrico D'Angelo, Roblox's vice president of economy. “Shopping for virtual items is already a key part of how people engage and express themselves on Roblox every day, so our goal is to gather feedback, test the technology, and learn what resonates most with Gen Z customers when it comes to shopping for physical items.”
Platform Status
Just as Roblox's efforts to evolve into an ad network got underway last year, its foray into e-commerce underscores its ambitions to move beyond its origins as a gaming company and become a full-fledged digital platform. If all goes well, the platform's leaders hope to take it to a much greater level, much like Facebook evolved from a social platform into a shopping and dating destination, or Amazon expanded from selling books to games and streaming video.
“Our vision for shopping as part of the Roblox economy is to ultimately model it on the physical world, overcoming physical limitations and going above and beyond by providing added value to shopping on the platform,” D'Angelo said.
Roblox's e-commerce opportunities aren't limited to specialty retailers like Walmart: the ability to sell physical goods through Roblox creates a tangible revenue stream that's attractive to almost any brand with its own Roblox world — the equivalent of a merchandise booth at a music festival or sports game.
“Even if you don't think of them directly as e-commerce type clients, especially sports brands and leagues, they all have e-commerce connected to them,” said Marcus Holmstrom, CEO of Roblox development studio The Gang, which has developed numerous Roblox experiences for sports brands like FIFA and Wimbledon. “FIFA, for example, has an official store for every World Cup. So if they move their official store over to Roblox, it opens up a global market.”
Walmart has ambitions beyond its own e-commerce experience. If a pilot test in May goes well, Walmart has no plans to shut down its e-commerce storefront within Walmart Discovered. Instead, Walmart is looking to expand its e-commerce presence within Roblox, dreaming of becoming the default commerce provider for the gaming platform's entire experience.
“We're going to learn together and optimize together,” Breton said, “and we hope to see a future where Walmart is driving commerce not just in Walmart Discover but in other experiences as well. I think the future is bright and I think there's a lot of opportunity to use what we've learned to inform a different roadmap for the future.”
