Roblox’s Grow a Garden Towers Above Even the Biggest Steam Games — but You Probably Have No Idea What It Is

Roblox farming simulator Grow a Garden is attracting millions of players across PC, mobile, and console devices, eclipsing numbers achieved by some of the most popular games on any platform – so what exactly is it?

If you load up Roblox at any time on any day in the next week, there’s a good chance around 2 million people will be playing Grow a Garden in some capacity. That’s according to the official user tracker found on all Roblox experiences, which plants the colorful free-to-play game firmly atop trending charts in a variety of categories. These are numbers that see the free-to-play game leaving other Roblox projects in its dust, with the second-most-popular “Playing Now” experience, Brookhaven RP, showing 590,000 players at the time of this piece’s publication.

Pulling 1.5 million players is an impressive feat, and it’s also on the low end for Grow a Garden.

The farming simulator peaked at more than 8.8 million active users last weekend, annihilating only competing experiences but multiple active user records, starting when it crossed the 5 million active users mark earlier this month. The 16-year-old behind Grow a Garden released it March 25, 2025. It has since been visited 3.4 billion times.

For comparison, Counter-Strike 2, currently the most popular Steam game, reached its all-time peak just last month at just under 1.86 million players (via SteamDB). PUBG: Battlegrounds holds the trophy for the highest-ever active player count on Valve’s PC storefront, and even its peak topped out at 3.25 million players in 2018.

Grow a Garden is still trailing behind the free-to-play battle royale megaton that is Fortnite, which boasts a peak active player count of 15.3 million from an event held in 2020. Grow a Garden isn’t quite at the top of the mountain, but it is climbing – and fast. It’s at least another significant piece of evidence that the Roblox platform is one to be taken seriously, as millions continue to flock to the dense forest of content it offers.

What Do You Do in Grow a Garden?

In Grow a Garden, you – if you can believe it – grow a garden. There’s little complexity to the gameplay formula currently setting Roblox ablaze. It’s not yet another anime tie-in or tower-defense experience but instead a straightforward farming game with a tutorial that lays out everything you need to know in just a few seconds.

Each player is plopped into a server with a handful of other Roblox users, with everyone granted their own plot of land to begin their garden on. While new players are gifted 20 Sheckles, Grow a Garden’s in-game currency, to purchase simple seeds for vegetables like carrots, it’s also almost immediately clear how far you can take the premise, as other players’ fenced-in areas will often be brimming with towering trees, bamboo, lively fruits, and more. Growth takes time, but gardens will continuously flourish, even when a player is offline, until picked.

Grow a carrot and sell it, and you’ll profit a few Sheckles. Rinse, repeat, and earn enough for blueberries, then mangos, then orange tulips, then grapes, then peppers, and so on. The satisfaction comes from the tangible growth you can see in your garden – and money – in real time. It’s a far-from-unique cycle distilled into its purest form, though there is more to do for those looking to dig for it.

Customizing a garden can be as simple as organizing your yard by color, height, or type, or flavor can be added with optional cosmetic items, tools, and pets. Updates and events keep players coming back for more, as do weather modifiers that can potentially increase the value of your crops. Every gameplay wrinkle is part of the formula that has seen Grow a Garden’s player base balloon to levels unheard of in Roblox’s blocky world. Not everyone understands it, but the success is undeniable.

Who Made Grow a Garden?

The 16-year-old who first broke ground with Grow a Garden remains creatively involved in what it’s become but is no longer the only name attached. Sharing responsibilities are Roblox experience management company DoBig Studios and popular developer Janzen Madsen (a.k.a. Jandel) and his network of creators at Splitting Point. These are major players in the space, but Grow a Garden stuck out to Madsen before it exploded.

“The game was developed by a 16-year-old in a few days, and we saw the game when it was on about 1,000, 2,000 CCUs,” Madsen tells us, describing Grow a Garden’s active players, “and we just partnered with that developer, built in a live-ops plan, did some general updates to the game, and, pretty much, the rest is history.”

It was here the now-gargantuan farming experience began to plant its roots, as the 20-person team at Splitting Point began to help create a foundation for growth. That’s not to say the original, anonymous developer stopped being involved.

“I actually think they’re, creatively, pretty incredible,” Madsen said when describing how development responsibilities are shared. “I think they bring a pretty unique perspective to the game, and I think there’s maybe a generational gap between me and them. Everyone has… I would say it’s almost equal, honestly, in terms of, we get on a call, we plan an update – it’s probably not what you’d expect. Sometimes we’re planning the update week to week, you know?”

Madsen can’t nail down what triggered Grow a Garden’s meteoric rise, mostly because “it happened so quickly,” but points to tight update strategies and events as reliable draws for Roblox players. Recent examples include bringing in a DJ for entertainment and organizing a mass dance party in hopes of breaking a world record. Every update presents an opportunity to create a moment that sucks players in while making them feel involved in the journey.

The small free-to-play project with humble beginnings eventually exploded into the biggest game in Roblox history. There’s a full-on operation maintaining its success to ensure its millions of fans continue showing up, and the developers aren’t tending to it for free. Although Madsen declined to share the details regarding Grow a Garden’s earnings past an acknowledgement of Roblox’s previously established cut of in-game spending, the experience offers more than a few clear ways for players to spend real-world cash.

Nearly every item of interest can be purchased with the Roblox premium currency known as Robux, Grow a Garden’s primary source of income. On PC, $5 translates to 500 Robux, with seed prices ranging from seven to 715 Robux and decorations like crates and campfires asking for 119 and 149 Robux. There are also seed packs and eggs that can be purchased one at a time or in packs, essentially serving as loot boxes containing special crops and pets, respectively. Most these items can still be purchased with in-game Sheckles, even if the price tag can sometimes reach numbers higher than Grow a Garden’s player average player count. It’s unclear how much players are spending to kit out their farms, but with at least 1.5 million users playing at any moment, we can guess it’s probably a lot.

Climbing the Beanstalk

Grow a Garden is pulling attention the likes of which Roblox has never seen, but success is far from a foreign concept on this platform. New experiences flood in every day, and while many of them never reach the top of trending charts, plenty of others, such as Blue Lock: Rivals and Dress to Impress, still boast hundreds of thousands of engaged players months after release. Roblox isn’t a gaming fresh phenomenon – it’s been here for years, and it’s only attracting more attention.

Still, reaching around nearly 9 million active users is so unbelievable that many have questioned the legitimacy of Grow a Garden’s success. Some have suggested bots have played a role in inflated numbers and fabricated popularity, but Roblox says this isn’t the case.

“Grow a Garden’s global success is fueled by exceptional user retention, vibrant social interactions — with friends driving play — and strong Robux engagement,” a Roblox spokesperson told Game File. “Our preliminary analysis confirms genuine popularity, not artificial inflation, validating the game’s authentic community-driven growth.”

While those on the outside raise eyebrows at Roblox’s attraction to gamers, Madsen says he has worked to legitimize the platform he calls home for the majority of the time he’s been in this space. He sees Roblox as both a slice of gaming that’s gone ignored and a hub for creativity.

“Most people’s first impression of Roblox is, ‘This is a silly platform for kids, and there’s no depth to the gameplay or games,’ and I think legitimately some of the best game designers in the world are on Roblox making games,” Madsen explained. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, they look simple, but they’re actually like… they’re solving hard problems there in the platform. They’re pushing the boundaries.’

“Look at AAA. No one takes big risks, you know? Every day on Roblox, there’s a new concept or a new game out – I think it’s kind of cool. I think it’s easy to judge from the outside without really taking a few weeks to look at it.”

Even if Grow a Garden has already bloomed to its fullest extent, it’s no doubt planted the seeds for other Roblox experiences to reach or even exceed its high bar. While we wait for it to grow, you can read up on all active Grow a Garden codes here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).