Adopt Me! Developers Discuss the Update That Broke 400k Concurrent Players
Adopt Me! is a game on Roblox that allows players to adopt, or be adopted by, other players. They can customize their avatars and their houses and explore Adoption Island, on which the game takes place. The game is a cute, fun, family-friendly roleplaying game with plenty of customization options and home improvement possibilities. It’s been very popular on Roblox for a few months and has been gaining steady traction.
All of that attention came to a head on June 15th, when the developers of the game added another form of adoption: pets. The update added all sorts of pets to the game, ranging from sweet little puppies to mythical griffins, all available for adoption — and WOW, they are cute! But the Pets update also did something that few could have predicted: it amassed so many concurrent players that Adopt Me! was within the 20 most popular games in the world — not just on Roblox, but across the internet at large. The game would have peaked at #4 for concurrent players on Steam’s charts if it were a Steam game.
The hype for the update was tangible; the developers had been getting players excited for it for weeks and players were anticipating something big. But when it came down to the time of the update’s launch, nobody could have predicted that the game would beat the previous record for concurrent players set by a Roblox game… by more than double. Previously, another roleplaying game called MeepCity had the astonishing record of 196,000+ concurrent players. Adopt Me! peaked at 439,537 people playing the game at the same time.
So just who are the developers behind the game? On Roblox, they go by NewFissy and Bethink and they run the development studio known as DreamCraft. In fact, we wrote a Developer Spotlight on the duo back in May. We interviewed them about their tenure on Roblox, how they got interested in development, and they even gave some advice for aspiring developers. In light of their record-breaking update, we decided to reach out again to get some insight into how they produced such a hit. Here’s what they had to say:
1. The Pets update made to Adopt Me! had been hyped up for a few weeks — how did you establish and maintain the hype? Did you have concerns about making fans wait for the update?
We established hype in a couple of ways. Prior to the pets update, we added a cloth banner to the live game that two adorable flying pets would hold up in the air. And on this banner was the countdown timer. We found that players were camping outside this banner waiting for the update to arrive. Additionally, we posted cute GIFs of Adopt Me pets to twitter to give people a sample of what was to come. Lastly, we reached out to YouTubers to see if they’d be interested in covering the update.
We didn’t have concerns about fans waiting for the update — actually the exact opposite! The countdown was a way for us to engage our community and look forward to something together.
2. What was your inspiration for the Pets update?
We wanted Adopt Me to involve all types of adoption, so what would be better than having the ability to adopt pets? Who doesn’t love having a pet?!
3. Adopt Me! is not the first game on Roblox to feature pets — what do you think sets your Pets update apart from the others?
Our pets are more than just a means of progression as you’d traditionally find in a simulator. They’re lifelike loveable creatures that players invest their hearts into. In order to double down on this idea of loving your pet, we assembled a world class team of animators, modelers, and scripters to build the best pets on Roblox. We intentionally avoided floating block pets, which most people within the roblox community would agree is the quickest way to implement pets. Instead, our pets creatively implement pathfinding, raycasting, and distributed physics to better emulate the loyalty of a real life pet walking by your side.
4. The previous record for concurrent players was MeepCity with 196k players. Were you expecting this update to more than double that record?
We knew we had something special, but we weren’t at all confident in our predictions. At first we thought maybe 250,000 players was a reasonable number to hit. But once the day had arrived, we started to doubt whether we’d even break the record or get close. But out of nowhere, hundreds of thousands of people started to join by the hour! It was an incredible sight, and we weren’t expecting it at all. We didn’t think doubling the record was even possible! It just shows what a strong community Roblox has. We’re so thankful that everyone banded together that day to break some massive records!
5. Did you encounter any challenges while building and designing this update?
A lot of the assets for the Pet Update were commissioned, so it wasn’t really a challenge of building, it was more of a challenge of hiring people. We’ve been working on pets since Adopt Me was first created so we had already set up an awesome team of people to help support us during the bulk of the process.
6. Do you have any tips for achieving high player counts in Roblox games?
Every player counts! Optimize your game for mobile. Localize it so everyone can play. Build features that appeal to a broad audience — young, old, veteran, newbie!
7. What strategies did you use for establishing your game in international markets? How did you find translators to localize your game?
Roblox provides easy-to-use comprehensive cloud based localization tools for developers to commission or crowdsource translations. Finding the right translators was the hardest part, but once our translation team was assembled, it was simply a matter of filling in the English strings to be translated and linking the Cloud Localization tool to our translators.
8. Other Roblox developers were quick to point out that Adopt Me! was the fourth most-played game in the world at its peak player count. What were your reactions to this?
It’s incredible to see how far you can go on Roblox! We remember the days when there were only 200 people on the most popular game on Roblox — everything has changed so much and to be the first team to achieve such a high number just makes us speechless. We are truly grateful for everything the community and Roblox has given us.
9. What are your thoughts on Roblox as a development platform considering your new peak record had such a global presence?
We feel like almost anything is possible, you just need to work hard and have a lot of dedication towards what you believe in and you’ll get there eventually! Roblox has been amazing to work with throughout this entire process.
We thank NewFissy and Bethink very much for answering our questions, and we look forward to seeing where Adopt Me! goes from here.
Want to keep up with the game and its developers? You can follow them on Twitter — @newfissy and @Bethink_RBX post frequently about Adopt Me! news and updates.
