Bruno Mars hosts largest concert in a videogame in ‘Steal a Brainrot’ on Roblox

16x Grammy award winning artist Bruno Mars performed one of the largest concerts of all time last month – to an audience entirely on Roblox. 

A staggering 12,862,161 concurrent viewers joined the platform’s game Steal a Brainrot this 17 January to listen to the Guinness World Records title holder for the most monthly listeners on Spotify (male), as he set a new record for the largest music concert in a videogame by a single artist. The amount of active listeners was larger than the population of Sweden!

Bruno himself appeared as a virtual Roblox avatar to perform his new single “I Just Might” and the classic 2012 hit “Locked Out of Heaven,” entirely on the cartoon stage. He also released a limited edition Brainrot called Brunito Marsito, which was downloaded 5,428,644 times.

In addition, 10 million livestream users in 14 countries tuned into the show, generating a further 53 million social video views.

This is the first time the game has ever had a celebrity perform a ‘pop-up’ concert – instead, players typically spend their time buying and stealing Brainrots, in-game characters based on Italian brain rot humour. (Do the words ‘Ballerina Cappuccina’, ‘Tralalero Tralala’, or ‘Bombardiro Crocodilo’ mean anything to you? If so – get ready for school tomorrow!)

Steal a Brainrot is essentially a form of capture-the-flag, where those with the largest and most valuable collection win, and it is the most successful game on the platform with over 25 million concurrent players.

However, it is not the first game to ever break this record. The title was once held by the ‘Astronomical’ event hosted by Fortnite (Epic Games: USA) and Travis Scott (USA) on 24 April 2020. 12,300,000 concurrent viewers showed up to the 10-minute performance, which featured a new track called ‘The Scotts’.

Read more stories about record-breaking gamers in our dedicated Gaming section!

Speaking to GamesIndustry.Biz, Jessica Meehan – Music Partnerships Lead at Roblox – said that “Roblox games are living worlds that constantly evolve to keep players engaged.”

“Artist activations add a fresh layer of culture to these experiences, giving players something new to discover while helping creators attract new audiences and spark conversation beyond the platform,” she continued.

“Music already plays a powerful role in how communities form on Roblox, and we’re focused on making it easier for creator teams of all sizes to bring music and IP into their worlds in authentic ways."

And in the future, perhaps we’ll see more of these deals play out, since Roblox has worked out a deal to feature Sony music artists. 

So congratulations to Bruno and Roblox for this incredible achievement – you are Officially Amazing!