Walmart And Roblox Are Teaming Up To Make Virtual E-commerce A Reality

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After trying out the virtual items on their avatars, players will be able to load an e-commerce experience that takes the form of a browser window inside Roblox imitating the experience of shopping on Walmart's website — essentially a virtual laptop set up inside Roblox to access Walmart.com. The commerce feature within Walmart Discovered will be gated specifically to users aged 13 or older in the United States only.

"There is a traditional sort of checkout flow where you put your name, your address and your credit card information, and that's all powered by a Walmart API that handles all of the information super securely — it's very safe," said Walmart director of brand experiences and strategic partnerships Justin Breton. "And once you hit checkout, you'll get your confirmation email from Walmart. All of that is handled by us on the back end, the user will then get their item in the mail, but the virtual twin is granted immediately back on Roblox."

To promote the e-commerce experience, Walmart collaborated with three Roblox creators — Sarabxlla, MD17_RBLX and Junozy — to design Robloxified versions of three physical Walmart products, which include a No Boundaries festival hobo bag , a TAL stainless steel tumbler and Onn wireless headphones .

Today's pilot test is the first of multiple e-commerce tests that Roblox is planning with different products, brands and shopping methodologies. When it all shakes out, it's possible that future e-commerce experiences on the platform will ultimately look very different than Walmart's pilot test.

Much like Roblox's push to evolve into an ad network , which kicked into high gear last year , the company's expansion into e-commerce highlights its aspirations to transcend its origins as a gaming company to become a full-fledged digital platform. If all goes well, the platform's leaders hope to steer it to much greater heights, similar to the evolution of Facebook from a social platform into a destination for shopping and dating, or to Amazon's expansion from bookselling into gaming and streaming video.