So What Is Grow a Garden?
It’s a farming game. A chill, cozy, plant-some-seeds-and-watch-them-grow kind of game. You start with a tiny patch of land, water your crops, and sell them for “Sheckles” (yes, really) so you can buy weirder and better plants. There are events, there are pets, there are shiny things. You can grow actual mutated vegetables. It’s basically Stardew Valley if it had a marketing department made entirely of chaotic 11-year-olds.
It was made by a 16-year-old developer in something like three days. No, I’m not exaggerating. Just a long weekend, some Roblox coding skills, and apparently zero sleep. Since then, the game has exploded in popularity - thanks to the perfect mix of dopamine, competition, and social virality. It now averages 2.3 million concurrent users. That’s more than double Fortnite’s average. DOUBLE. FORTNITE. I need you to let that sink in for a second.
And it gets better (or worse, depending on how you’re feeling about the state of reality): this past weekend, during a live event in the game, Grow a Garden hit a peak of 16.4 million concurrent players. That’s more than the Game of Thrones finale. That’s more than Fortnite’s record-breaking ‘Remix: The Finale’ concert event. And unlike Game of Thrones, it didn’t even end in disappointment.
I Wouldn’t Know About It Either, Except My Kids Almost Cried
True story: I would’ve missed this entire thing if it weren’t for the full-scale meltdown my kids had in the kitchen. “We HAVE to log in to Roblox RIGHT NOW or we’ll miss the event!” I asked what the event was. They explained. I looked at them like a puppy looks at a squeaky toy, they explained more and I just got more confused about why they’re crying over vegetables they don't even have to eat.
So we let them log in. And what I witnessed was the digital equivalent of a Coachella crowd swarming a giant broccoli. It was chaos. It was brilliant. It was kind of beautiful. It ended up being 16 million people doing the exact same thing at the exact same time inside a game that most of us haven’t even acknowledged exists.
Why You’ve Never Heard of It (And Why That’s a Problem)
This didn’t make the front page of gaming sites. It didn’t trend on Twitter. It didn’t get a breathless New York Times article about “The New Face of Gaming.” And I think I know why.
Because it’s Roblox. And Roblox is “kids stuff.” Gamers treat it the same way they treat mobile games: with mild disdain and total dismissal. Never mind that it’s the third most downloaded app in the world. Never mind that it has over 85 million daily active users. It’s just not “real gaming,” right?
Wrong.
Roblox is a platform. It’s the platform. It's “YouTube for games” if you want me to explain it in Boomer terms. It’s where the future of user-generated gaming is happening right now - quietly, explosively, and without waiting for anyone’s approval. Remember when Zuckerberg couldn't shut up about the Metaverse? Well, this is it. It's the Metaverse!
This Isn’t Just a One-Off. This Is the Future.
Let me break it down:
Fortnite hit 14.4 million during a live, heavily promoted, star-studded, brand-backed event.
Grow a Garden? A casual, kinda ugly plant simulator hit 16.4 million users with 0 budget.
The developer? Probably grounded for skipping homework.
And all of this happened inside a larger ecosystem - Roblox - that we still refuse to take seriously.
There’s a whole generation growing up in this world. They’re not asking for Steam Decks or obsessing over ray tracing. They’re building virtual carrot empires and crying about digital pumpkins. And if that sounds ridiculous to you, I have news: You're getting old.
Final Thought: Don’t Blink or You’ll Miss It
This is a call to gamers, journalists, parents - everyone. Start paying attention. There are revolutions happening in plain sight, and they don’t always look like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Sometimes, they look like a garden full of mutant cucumbers.
And that’s not “just for kids.” That’s the kind of mass cultural moment most developers would kill for. And you're letting it fly under the radar.
So yeah. Grow a Garden. On Roblox. Peak concurrent users: 16 million. You probably didn’t hear about it - but I promise your kids did. And in 20 years, they’ll be the ones running the industry.
You’ve been warned.
