Roblox is sorry for its ongoing outage and "working hard to get things back to normal"

No, it's not just you – Roblox is still down.

The hugely popular game went offline yesterday, and – at the time of writing – it remains offline almost 24-hours later.

"We know you’re having issues using Roblox right now. We’re sorry and working hard to get things back to normal," explained the game's official social media channels yesterday, giving no explanation as to why the game-creation platform was unavailable, nor an estimated time as to when Roblox might go back online.

Fast-forward to today, and the company posted a further update earlier.

"Still making progress on today's outage. We'll continue to keep you updated. Once again, we apologize for the delay.

"We know that this outage was not related to any specific experiences or partnerships on the platform."

Intrigued by that final sentence? Us, too. According to Eurogamer, some have been speculating that an in-game promotion by Chipotle – which was promising free real-life burritos to the first 30,000 people to stop by its in-game store and complete the Boorito Maze – had caused the outage. However, Roblox's statement firmly disputes that claim but stops short of confirming what, exactly, has happened.

The outage seems to be affecting parents more than their Roblox-playing children, with the game's social media channels full of anxious parents hoping for a speedy resolution. This is not least because Roblox's educational initiatives have been critical in keeping children occupied over the last few months, helping teachers around the world engage their students via remote lessons in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. After being forced to adapt quickly to online and interactive ways of learning, teachers are looking to games to make use of their educational benefits, encouraging developers to work more closely with schools. 

"We work with over 200 education partners and coding camps, as well as teachers, to supply free ISTE-certified curricula they can use in their work with kids and teens both while teaching remotely and when back in the classroom," Roblox Corp's director of community safety and digital civility, Laura Higgins told us earlier this year. "Last year we also created and launched our free Digital Civility Curriculum to enable ongoing conversations to help develop long-term safety and civility skills."

While we wait for Roblox to come back online, here are all the new games of 2021 (and beyond).