<p>Hindenburg Research disclosed a short position in Roblox on Tuesday, alleging that the gaming platform popular among young children inflated metrics including user numbers and engagement.</p>.<p>Roblox shares fell as much as 9 per cent after the short seller said the company conflated daily active users (DAUs) with the number of people visiting its platform.</p>.<p>This was based on its definition that the metric is not a measure of "unique individuals accessing Roblox", Hindenburg said, adding DAUs could include bots or alternate accounts.</p>.<p>A Roblox spokesperson denied the allegations.</p>.Hindenburg Research discloses short position in server maker Super Micro.<p>The company is the latest target of Hindenburg, whose reports have knocked shares of firms owned by billionaire-investor Carl Icahn, India's Gautam Adani, as well as AI-server maker Super Micro Computer.</p>.<p>"Roblox is lying to investors, regulators, and advertisers about the number of "people" on its platform, inflating the key metric by 25-42%+," Hindenburg said.</p>.<p>The short seller alleged it has found instances of bots from different countries that use alternate accounts to "farm" for goods in games on Roblox.</p>.<p>The platform promotes games that do not need active participation from users and artificially inflate engagement by tying developer payouts to that, the short seller said.</p>.<p>Unlike traditional video game companies, Roblox relies on user-generated content to drive engagement and makes most of its money from in-game spending on its virtual currency, Robux.</p>.<p>It raised its annual bookings forecast in August due to strong in-game spending. It had 79.5 million DAUs, as of June 30.</p>.<p>"There are many interesting points in that report, but they seem to misunderstand a lot about how games work," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.</p>.<p>He said Hindenburg measured engagement based on a "session", but gamers usually log on and off multiple times a day and play more than one game.</p>.<p>"The Hindenburg test looks like it measured session length for a single game for each user," Pachter said. </p>
<p>Hindenburg Research disclosed a short position in Roblox on Tuesday, alleging that the gaming platform popular among young children inflated metrics including user numbers and engagement.</p>.<p>Roblox shares fell as much as 9 per cent after the short seller said the company conflated daily active users (DAUs) with the number of people visiting its platform.</p>.<p>This was based on its definition that the metric is not a measure of "unique individuals accessing Roblox", Hindenburg said, adding DAUs could include bots or alternate accounts.</p>.<p>A Roblox spokesperson denied the allegations.</p>.Hindenburg Research discloses short position in server maker Super Micro.<p>The company is the latest target of Hindenburg, whose reports have knocked shares of firms owned by billionaire-investor Carl Icahn, India's Gautam Adani, as well as AI-server maker Super Micro Computer.</p>.<p>"Roblox is lying to investors, regulators, and advertisers about the number of "people" on its platform, inflating the key metric by 25-42%+," Hindenburg said.</p>.<p>The short seller alleged it has found instances of bots from different countries that use alternate accounts to "farm" for goods in games on Roblox.</p>.<p>The platform promotes games that do not need active participation from users and artificially inflate engagement by tying developer payouts to that, the short seller said.</p>.<p>Unlike traditional video game companies, Roblox relies on user-generated content to drive engagement and makes most of its money from in-game spending on its virtual currency, Robux.</p>.<p>It raised its annual bookings forecast in August due to strong in-game spending. It had 79.5 million DAUs, as of June 30.</p>.<p>"There are many interesting points in that report, but they seem to misunderstand a lot about how games work," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.</p>.<p>He said Hindenburg measured engagement based on a "session", but gamers usually log on and off multiple times a day and play more than one game.</p>.<p>"The Hindenburg test looks like it measured session length for a single game for each user," Pachter said. </p>