Roblox is an online gaming platform where players can join servers to play with others or even create their own worlds to interact in. It's been around since 2006 and has slowly grown in popularity ever since with a huge boom in the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also become incredibly popular among young audiences.
Rumours that Roblox will be 'shutting down' arise every few years and always prove to be fake. The most recent wave of rumours claimed that Roblox would shut down in March 2020. Since the game has accrued such a huge following, this rumour has once again been plastered across the internet like never before. Here are some of the best memes that arose from that trainwreck.
10 Say Sike Right Now
The "say sike right now" meme is a classic because of the visceral response it gets from people. It encapsulates all the disbelief that players experienced in the first moments that they heard of the shutdown rumours.
Even though the rumour was fake and was confirmed by the Roblox twitter to be a lie, many news platforms had clickbait-y headlines that were vague about the possibility of a shutdown. Usually, these same articles debunked the rumour - assuming the viewer read the article and not just the headline.
9 Minecraft > Roblox... ?
Minecraft fans have had a vicious rivalry with Roblox fans for years. As a popular game marketed towards children and tweens, the two games were competing for players.
Minecraft fans often regard Roblox as a childish, sub-par product compared to Minecraft, while Roblox fans have more fun with Roblox's diverse servers than they ever feel they could on another game. In this meme, a Minecraft fan takes a smug pride while observing Roblox's supposed collapse.
8 The Calm Before The Storm
Roblox servers may not have actually shut down for good but lots of gamers are familiar with the sensation depicted in this meme. There's a sense of emptiness when you realize that your favourite game will never be played again.
It's the same feeling of finishing a really spectacular book, movie, or game where you need to pause and reflect on what's just happened. In this case, it's simply premptive. The shot of Spongebob alone in an empty diner only helps to heighten this quiet emotion.
7 Worse Than Sophie's Choice
Another meme that probably arose in the Minecraft community, this one features a spaceman who cannot choose between shutting down Roblox or Fortnite.
Like Roblox, Fortnite has become Minecraft's competition as a game marketed towards young people who may be entering the gaming community for the first time. Minecraft players usually have nothing nice to say about Fortnite either, but they do not follow the old adage of saying "nothing at all."
6 React2424
React2424 is the website where the rumour about Roblox shutting down first arose (this time). The site allows its users to make fake news articles and send them to friends to cause them to panic.
It wasn't intended to create this level of widespread panic, but in this age of hasty internet users spreading content without fact-checking it first, it has undoubtedly devolved. Some players knew the rumours were fake immediately, just from the name of the news site alone, but their voices were drowned out by the panic caused in the general community.
5 The Holy Trinity Of Gaming
In 2019 and 2020, there were storms brewing in the Minecraft, Roblox, and Terraria communities that came together at just the right time to create this meme. All around the same time, rumours arose that Terraria, Roblox, and Minecraft were going to shut down.
The Minecraft and Roblox rumours were disproven, but the Terraria ones were actually true. Though players will still be able to enjoy Terraria, its developers announced that the most recent update was to be the game's last.... ever.
4 Even More Aggressive Than We Thought
Sometimes, emotional pain is worse than physical pain - and this meme proves it. Folks love to approach people and their dogs on the street, to the dismay of dog-owners whose pet is aggressive or excitable. Folks must be careful not to pet a dog before its owner has approved since each one will have a unique personality and reaction.
In this case, the approaching person received something even worse than a bite: horrible news. No doubt they ran home to corroborate the dog's story online, only to (thankfully) discover it wasn't true.
3 It Could Never Happen
This meme provides the comforting, parental support we need when struck by such a devastating rumour. Created by Roblox fans, for Roblox fans, it insists that Roblox is too good to ever be shut down.
We aren't sure that Roblox will never go away, but it sure ain't going away any time soon. The company has earned outstanding profits of late and it's estimated that more than half of children in the United States play Roblox.
2 ...Not Again
This magnificently simple meme's meaning is two-fold. First, it pokes fun at how often the Roblox Servers are shut down to perform maintenance. Second, it teases about how often rumours spring up that Roblox is doomed to shut down soon.
The recent wave is only the most recent in a long line of community panics. Even now, typing "is Roblox" into search engines will provide auto-fills like "is Roblox shutting down in 2021?" The anxiety just never stops.
1 Partners In Crime
This meme provides a slightly more friendly, if a little patronizing, view of the supposed shutdown from Minecraft's perspective. Rather than being the harbinger of Roblox's ultimate destruction, Minecraft is shown to be the caring and supportive partner.
They will take up Roblox's work of entertaining today's youth after they are gone so that they can rest in peace. It just goes to show that even if the loudest voices are cruel, humanity isn't all bad.