2021 Roblox Outage

On October 28, 2021, at 4:05 PM EST, Roblox servers began to experience major, platform-wide system disruptions across the website and APIs, leading to website services like the Avatar Editor being unable to load, huge chat issues, and performance in experiences being very slow. Roblox Studio also began to function improperly due to these issues. After 18 hours of said issues, Roblox placed the site under maintenance for the first time since 2019. TDS 2 was also affected by the outage and started experiencing issues on the date 10-28-2021, 3pm EST.

Roblox did experience data loss. The reason everyone lost all progress during the outage is due to the server unable to connect to the DataStoreService class. The exact cause of the outage is unknown, but was stated by Roblox to be an internal cause and not an external one. It was widely believed to be caused by the Chipotle Boorito Maze event or other traffic congestions, but Roblox debunked it on their Twitter account saying that it was not caused by any experiences or partnerships. David Baszucki has since confirmed that the outage was caused due to a bug somewhere deep in the code of Roblox's servers. The shutdown led to major internet coverage on YouTube, Twitter, Discord and other social media and news platforms.

Timeline
Hour one is 3pm EST.

October 28, 2021
Hour 1 - TDS 2 begins experiencing issues, primarily in Matchmaking and Server Connecting.

Hour 2 - Roblox begins experiencing issues, such as data store issues, chat filter issues, and Connecting to Servers.

Hour 2.5 - During this period of time, huge lag is experienced across all components and locations, TDS 2 also experiences it's first shutdown since 2019. Avatar issues become more severe, and the long "Robux" is bugged, and every user now has 0 Robux. By 4:45 pm EST, most components are down and Roblox Studio is dysfunctional. Most experiences are now laggy and crash, avatars don't show on the home screen, and Adopt Me and Brookhaven are shut down.

Hour 3 - The chat filter begins experiencing issues, and cuss/curse words are now allowed through. TDS 2 now only has some people in it, which are devs maintenancing the game. The avatar settings completely shutdown, and by the end of the hour, some accounts are forcefully logged out.

Hour 4 - The website remains accessible, but the pages are completely dysfunctional. Assets on pages, such as avatars, thumbnails, and like-percentages do not load. Ads no longer show, and, for the first time since 2019, a message appears, stating maintenance. Account settings no longer function, and a lot of games experience data loss, and game pages no longer load. The chat filter is completely dysfunctional, and friends no longer show. Most games rapidly lose players, and data is corrupted in all games but TDS 2.

Hour 5 - Most games are no longer playable and the website is mostly inaccessible and unusable. The playable games experience heavy lag, graphics, issues, and frequent crashes. Joining most games results in an instant kick. The chat filter is completely gone and disabled, and as such, the chat no longer functions. By the end of this hour 75% of all Robloxians have logged off.

Hour 6 - status.roblox.com and sgajstudios.com/tds2status report a lot of issues, and the website is closed for maintenance.

October 29, 2021
Hour 8 - At 12 am EST, the website is reopened and the issue is fixed. However TDS 2 is still down.

During the several hours after - The avatar starts malfunctioning, games lag a lot, and crashes are frequent. 5% of all users are forcefully logged out.

Hour 15 - Seven hours later, a lot of games lag again, and this time TDS 2 goes into "COMPLETE SHUTDOWN" mode. Joining games also becomes extremely difficult, the long "Robux" glitches again, and a lot of games are freezing and lagging. Ping is very high and the fps is almost 0.

Hour 17 - Two hours later, TDS 2 displays a [Content Deleted] message instead of COMPLETE SHUTDOWN, and TDS 2 is permanently shutdown completely until further notice. By the end of the hour, data store is bugged, >50% of all servers are bugged and laggy, and Roblox Studio is beginning to dysfunction. The Avatar is also dysfunctional and often messes up what you're wearing and what rig you are in.

Hour 18 - It is now impossible to join <75% of games and the Login Screen no longer works. The website begins to crash and like percentages, ads, avatars, usernames, game icons, thumbnails, and icons themselves, including (on the website) the Roblox favicon. Roblox is unable to shutdown, as the bug reaches critical levels. By the end of the hour, most of the components of Roblox are shut down.

Hour 23 - Five hours later, the website no longer works, and Roblox has forcefully logged out all of it's users.

Hour 24 - Roblox is no longer working and is completely broken.

October 30th, 2021
Hour 1 - Roblox is experiencing minimal access.