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A one-premise Roblox survival game that its creator says grosses about $45K a month six months after launch, built quickly after two expensive failures.
~1M daily players · ~12,000 concurrent on camera · ~$17,000/month left for Cole after a 50/50 partner split and ~$5,000/month of costs
After three years and roughly $500K sunk into two failed projects, Cole decided he "just wanted to make a game quick" — and the quick one became the $45K-a-month hit.
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
Hide or Die is a Roblox game run by Cole, one of several developers sharing a house in Austin, Texas. It launched about six months before filming. On camera, Cole pulls up the live count, around 12,000 people playing at that moment, and says the game draws roughly a million players a day and makes about $45,000 a month on its own. That is the game's number, not his. Cole splits it 50/50 with his programmer and business partner, and about $5,000 a month goes to modelers, artists, an accountant and a lawyer, which leaves him roughly $17,000 a month. The hit came after a bad run. Cole says he spent around half a million dollars and three years on two projects, one of them a Roblox game, and both failed. Burnt out, he decided to make something quick, and that quick build became Hide or Die. His roommate Ian runs a similar setup: Bathe Da Baby, which Ian says makes about $25,000 a month on a 50/50 split with around 150,000 daily players, almost none of whom pay. The money runs on Roblox's rails. Players buy Robux (800 for $10), Roblox keeps 30% of what they spend in a game, and developers cash out through DevEx at $0.38 per 100 Robux, so roughly $2 of every $10 a player spends reaches the developer.
A game like Hide or Die gets its first players from Roblox's own discovery feeds, and those feeds reward one thing: players who stay and come back the next day. That makes the premise the first acquisition asset.
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Data credibility: Cole states the ~$45K/month, ~1M daily players and the cost split himself on camera, in a clip inside a creator-edited YouTube compilation; the ~12,000 live player count is shown on his screen. No DevEx statement or Roblox analytics export is shown, and the monthly figure is not broken down by item type or by gross Robux versus cash-out. Ian's Bathe Da Baby figures are likewise his own on-camera statement.
In a Roblox game the first dollar is a Robux purchase, and it only becomes cash after Roblox's 30% cut and a DevEx payout at $0.38 per 100 Robux, so a $45,000 month represents a very large number of small purchases.
Roblox's recommendation engine is the flywheel: when players stay and return the next day, the platform shows the game to more players, which brings more Robux. Hide or Die reached about a million daily players within six months, which only happens when that loop is turning.
Cole's version of the quiet stretch lasted three years and cost about $500,000 across two failed projects, one of them a Roblox game. The lesson he drew is speed: the game that worked was the one he built quickly while burnt out.
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