There’s a mega-popular game catching fire across the PC gaming world right now, at least in terms of raw player numbers, and it comes from a rather unexpected place: Roblox. That’s right, a teenager’s casual-friendly multiplayer social game about growing veggies and fruits for a profit has seen an absolute explosion in popularity.

Say hello to Grow a Garden, a game that couldn’t be more on-the-nose with its title if it tried. In it, players simply purchase seeds when they’re in stock, plant them on their farm, tend to them, and wait to see how big they can grow, after which they can sell them off for a profit to do it all over again. The game touts the fact that plants grow even while offline, while farm plots are instanced but shared with a few others. There’s currency that is earned in-game to buy seeds, but there are also real-world Robux things in the title that either speed the growing process or unlock new mechanics.

It’s all extremely basic stuff in a post-FarmVille world, but clearly the title, which has only been public since March, has struck a nerve with young gamers: Grow a Garden reached a concurrency of 8.9M players over the weekend and currently has over 3.1M players active at the time of this writing. To put that recent high-water mark into context, there were 11.9M players in-game across all of Steam on that same Saturday.

The game’s massive popularity has obviously garnered a lot of attention for its teenage creator, who “literally made the game in like three days,” according to Janzen Madsen, owner of professional Roblox game-making studio Splitting Point, which bought a stake in the game and took over managing it. The original creator is still reportedly a 50% owner of the title, while another professional Roblox studio, Do Big, has a minority stake in the title.

Worth pointing out is that fans were already grumbling a few weeks ago following the buyout of the creator as the current stakeholders apparently have a reputation for whaling and gouging.

Naturally, Roblox Corp itself was delighted to talk up the child labor. “Grow a Garden’s global success is fueled by exceptional user retention, vibrant social interactions⁠ – with friends driving play⁠ – and strong Robux engagement,” says a company spokesperson. “Our preliminary analysis confirms genuine popularity, not artificial inflation, validating the game’s authentic community-driven growth.”

So there you have it. Forget your Nightreigns and your WoWs; in 2025, it’s all about garden growing. Again.