Many Roblox players remain unaware of the events that unfolded on October 31.
During that time, the popular online platform, known for its diverse games and avatars, suffered a 72-hour outage.
This incident, impacting countless users and developers, has become legendary in Roblox’s history, with the date becoming famous.
But what exactly occurred during those fateful days?
Roblox encountered a significant outage from October 28 to 31, 2021, resulting in a complete website shutdown. Users faced slow performance, game, and login issues, and frequent Error 404 redirects. Fortunately, by October 31, around 70 to 72 hours later, Roblox fully restored its website. As a goodwill gesture, the platform compensated affected players with in-game currency.
Explained: The Total Timeline of Roblox’s Surprise Outage
In late October 2021, Roblox, the popular online gaming platform, faced a significant disruption that left millions of players frustrated and curious about the causes and solutions behind the outage.
Over the course of three days, from October 28 to October 31, Roblox encountered an unprecedented issue that prompted a temporary shutdown of its website.
On October 28, 2021, it all began around 5 p.m., which was the fateful day Roblox players worldwide started experiencing various issues. Users reported that the website was slow, login attempts were failing, and games were behaving erratically.
Most notably, attempting to access different pages on the platform would often result in an unwelcome Error 400 Bad Request page.
The next day, on October 29, 2021, the situation escalated to the point where, at 11 a.m., Roblox decided to take a drastic step.
For the first time since 2019, the platform’s website was entirely closed to users except developers. This abrupt closure raised eyebrows and prompted many to speculate about the cause.
Some suggested it might be linked to a new game or partnership, but Roblox quickly dispelled such rumors, asserting that the issue was unrelated to any recent developments.
Finally, on October 31, 2021, after two days of intense troubleshooting, Roblox began to see a glimmer of hope.
At 8 a.m., the platform initiated the process of restoration.
Just a few hours before this, the company had officially announced that they had identified the root cause of the issue and had devised a solution.
By 5:45 p.m. on October 31, approximately 70 to 72 hours after the incident began, the Roblox website was fully functional again, allowing relieved players to return to their beloved virtual worlds.
According to the developers, the outage was caused by an internal system issue that occurred during routine maintenance.
To address concerns and provide transparency, Roblox shared a comprehensive technical post detailing the problem’s origin, called “Roblox Return to Service,” on January 2022. It read:
“The root cause was due to two issues. Enabling a relatively new streaming feature on Consul under unusually high read and write load led to excessive contention and poor performance. In addition, our particular load conditions triggered a pathological performance issue in BoltDB.”
The document also highlighted the steps taken to resolve the issue and the preventive measures they would implement to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The platform expressed particular concern about player data and pledged monetary compensation to those adversely affected by the outage.
Interestingly, the timing of this prolonged downtime coincided with Chipotle’s promotion of a game offering players the chance to acquire a code redeemable for an actual burrito.
Some speculated a link between this promotion and the outage, but Roblox swiftly clarified that the issue had no connection to their partnerships or games. This clarification aimed to address any lingering doubts or suspicions among the player community.
In a show of goodwill and to make amends for the inconvenience caused, Roblox provided in-game currency to all players affected by the outage. This gesture was well-received and helped mend relations between the platform and its faithful player base.
While this event is often referred to humorously as an “apocalyptic era,” it was, in reality, a three-day period of downtime. However, considering the immense number of players on Roblox, it’s no surprise that this 72-hour outage left a lasting mark on the platform’s history.
Where were you on October 31, 2021, when Roblox went down? Were you one of the ones affected? Did you get the in-game currency compensation?
Let us know your experience in the comments below.
Source: Roblox
