Habit, not just visits
Marsh
Stickiness is DAU ÷ MAU. I get the math, but what is it really telling me?
Mallow
How many days a month your game gets opened by the average MAU. Stickiness 0.5 = opened half the days in the month, basically every other day. 0.2 = once every 5 days. It's a habit metric.
Marsh
Is a low number bad?
Mallow
Below 0.1, most users come back once a month — hard to monetize. 0.2 is healthy. Over 0.4 puts you in the top tier. Roblox-wide median sits around 0.15–0.25.
Marsh
Why does Stickiness translate into revenue?
Mallow
Two reasons. (1) Daily visitors see more purchase prompts and price-tier surfaces than once-a-month visitors. (2) Habit users are statistically more likely to convert to paying. The same MAU with 2× Stickiness usually produces 3–4× revenue.
Marsh
How do you raise it?
Mallow
Manufacture daily reasons to return. Daily rewards, rotating missions, seasonal progress, time-gated events. Variety is the lever — static content gets stale. Tycoon-style offline progress with an 8-hour cap is a classic Stickiness move: it naturally nudges three logins a day (morning, midday, evening).
Formula & benchmarks
Stickiness = DAU ÷ MAU
- Under 0.1: Big room to improve (1–3 visits a month)
- Around 0.2: Healthy (weekly habit)
- 0.3–0.4: Strong (every 2–3 days)
- Over 0.5: Top tier (near-daily)
Worked example
Marsh
Our brand world has DAU 2,000 and MAU 15,000. Stickiness is 0.13. Below healthy?
Mallow
Yes. Average MAU comes back about 4 days a month. You're acquiring people but not turning them into regulars.
Marsh
If we got Stickiness to 0.2 with MAU staying at 15,000, what changes?
Mallow
DAU climbs from 2,000 to 3,000. Same MAU, 50% more daily impressions. At your current ARPDAU, that's 50% more revenue without spending a dollar on acquisition. Stickiness lifts are the highest-ROI engagement work.
Marsh
What's the first thing to ship?
Mallow
A daily login streak with escalating rewards on consecutive days. Cheap to build, immediate behavior signal. Pair with a daily rotating limited item — gives day-7 a reason to be different from day-1.
Reading it in Roblox
Creator Hub shows DAU and MAU as separate graphs but doesn’t surface Stickiness directly. Compute it yourself: today’s DAU ÷ trailing-30-day MAU. For a more honest read, use weekly Stickiness (DAU ÷ WAU) — it strips out the once-a-month tourists who inflate MAU. External tools like RoMonitor expose Stickiness as a tracked metric. Note: Stickiness numbers from app-based platforms (mobile games) and Roblox aren’t directly comparable — Roblox’s playtime patterns skew session-heavy, weekend-heavy.
Common misconceptions
- "High Stickiness = healthy game" can mask shrinking MAU: If MAU is collapsing and only the hardcore remain, Stickiness mechanically rises. Always read alongside absolute DAU and MAU trends.
- Stickiness benchmarks aren't cross-platform: Mobile social apps target 0.5+; Roblox games at 0.4 are top-tier. Different attention patterns, different baselines.
- "Stickiness over 0.5" isn't always the goal: Some brand experiences are designed for monthly tentpole moments, not daily habit. Match the metric to the campaign goal.
Related metrics
- DAU / MAU: The two ingredients
- Day 1 / Day 7 Retention: Whether new arrivals become habituated
- Session Length: Frequency × duration = total time fitness
- Sessions per Day: Sticky users often have 2+ sessions/day — a useful sub-cut
