WSJ News Exclusive | Roblox Poaches Seasoned Meta Executive as It Chases Growth in Asia

Mr. Park has been at Meta for more than eight years and in a previous position worked on the company’s Oculus virtual-reality business, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Mr. Park declined to comment on his appointment, referring queries to the Roblox spokeswoman.

Roblox is among the highest-profile companies operating a metaverse-like realm, or a virtual place where people play and make transactions. Its online platform—which works on mobile devices, desktop computers and consoles such as

Microsoft Corp.’s

Xbox—is populated primarily with games set in immersive virtual worlds created by its users.

Facebook last year changed its name to Meta to reflect the opportunities for growth in online worlds, such as boosting the company’s role as a marketplace for digital goods, beyond its namesake social-media service.

Roblox went public via a direct listing in March 2021, a time when Covid-19 controls were restricting people to their homes and driving up global demand for videogames. The company’s shares jumped on their first day of trading, giving it a market capitalization of about $45 billion, up from the $29.5 billion valuation it secured in a private fundraising just two months earlier.

Increasing usage in Asian countries would help Roblox drive growth beyond its core U.S. and European markets. The company’s business has slowed as economies reopened and people headed back to the office, hurting its shares, which have fallen more than 50% this year.

Year-over-year revenue growth slowed to 30% in the quarter ended June 30, from 39% in the previous quarter and 83% the quarter before that, Roblox said when announcing earnings last week.

Roblox Chief Executive

David Baszucki

said that the company is “very bullish” on markets in Asia, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and China. He declined to comment on Mr. Park’s hiring.

“We do continue to be optimistic about building a platform that’s a worldwide platform,” Mr. Baszucki said.

Roblox is free and doesn’t show advertisements. The company generates revenue from sales of virtual currency called Robux that users buy with real money to acquire outfits, weapons and other virtual assets. It said it had 58.5 million daily active users as of July.

To break into China—the world’s biggest videogame market, according to industry tracker Newzoo BV—Roblox in 2019 announced a joint venture with China’s

Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The following year it launched a test version of its platform there on mobile devices under a different name, LuoBuLeSi, promoting it as a resource for children to learn how to code and develop entrepreneurial skills. There was no mention of the China business at Roblox’s most recent Analyst Day event in November, and the company removed the platform the following month without giving any reason.

In recent years, Chinese regulators have added restrictions around the amount of time children can spend playing games online, moves aimed at curbing what authorities have described as a youth videogame addiction. In April, regulators lifted a monthslong freeze on granting publishing licenses that had delayed the release of dozens of games.

Roblox is available in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines, and has been seeking workers who are knowledgeable about Roblox communities there to join a growing team trying to boost relationships with game developers in those markets, according to a review of its job advertisements. The company recently hired two public-relations firms in Asia to support its brand in those markets, the spokeswoman said, adding that Roblox maintains an office in Shenzhen, China, dedicated to the LuoBuLeSi version of its platform.

Mr. Baszucki said Roblox is “optimistic long term” about its prospects in China, but declined to provide a time frame for when it expects to return to the market.

A successful push into China could offer significant upside for Roblox, according to Benchmark analyst Mike Hickey. “China is completely open in terms of driving incremental users to their platform,” he said. “If you can sell that story, you can grow your stock price.”

Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com