"The numbers don't feel real" say 99 Nights in the Forest developers of their Roblox success

Quinn Collins
Published: September 12, 2026

Upon meeting the three people who make up the 99 Nights in the Forest development team, I'm struck by how down-to-earth they are. At RDC 2026, I've met a great number of people at this point, but few of them have had such success in Roblox as Matt Hufton, Cameron Angland, and Alec Kieft have. But to folks on the street, they're just three friends from New Zealand - anonymous to the world in the face of their enormous success.

You might be living under a rock if you haven't heard of 99 Nights in the Forest. The Roblox game has, at the time of writing, 29.5 billion visits on the platform, and a couple hundred thousand players online at any given time. Angland tells me how their shed started out with just their desks in, but now has merch lining the walls. A movie adaptation is on the way, and the game has just been added to Fortnite. The successes of 99 Nights in the Forest - which, in my book, are very well-deserved - seem completely unending.

I ask them what it's like to be helming the ship of such a wildly prolific project. "It's pretty insane," Hufton tells me. Beside him, both Angland and Hufton look a little overwhelmed at the thought. "You can't fathom that many people being affected by the things you're doing. The numbers don't feel real."

Despite the numbers being cold and hard, when they're at RDC, they're able to put faces to it. "It's so ubiquitous at this point," Kieft says, "but we don't [usually] get to see it because we're constantly on our computers. We were out at a restaurant the other night and a girl on the table next to me mentioned the game."

Naturally, they remain mostly anonymous due to the nature of Roblox's game development system. It's pretty hard to idealize people who don't have much of a social media presence. Kieft says that's the biggest blessing for him. "We're not the product, we're just the guys in the background. I think we're very fortunate to have a product that people love so much, but we don't have to deal with celebrity. I don't think I would want that personally." I catch Angland nodding vehemently beside him.

They all still live in New Zealand together, which to me solidifies just how much this is about the game for them. People who make the kind of money they do might be tempted to up and move to L.A. or somewhere more glamorous, but it's the three of them in their house in Auckland against the world.

This is true in more than one sense, because I can get a real feeling for how close they are when we're chatting. Hufton and Angland are childhood friends from school, meeting Kieft on Roblox itself in their teenage years. They describe their process as "totally collaborative." In fact, they joke that they've achieved a kind of "hive mind" status with each other - Kieft says, "We all go away independently, make stuff, come back together, and most of the time, we've all hit the same target, because we are quite aligned with what we want. I feel super lucky that we can work that way."

Speaking of how they work, I want to ask them about how the RDC 2026 announcements have shaken up their plans. They're not keen to implement AI in their games. "We have a unified vision for what the game should look like," Angland says. "We still have artists and we'll keep it that way forever since we are in a position that we can, and even in our programming, there's little quirks we put in because we're human". That being said, Hufton thinks that some other RDC news, like the terrain building, is exciting. "Any new stuff that we can play with is always super fun," he says.

A few of the tech advancements at RDC, especially the Build feature, are designed to make it easier for fresh developers to emerge. What's their advice for new devs? Kieft says, "There's not a whole lot that separates us from the next cohort of developers who are working on stuff right now. The main piece of advice I would give them is that if you have a game that begins to take off, just be aware that you understand your product far better than anyone else… don't put other developers on a pedestal. There's not a lot that separates you from a more accomplished developer. Have fun with whatever you're making, and trust your instincts."

"Don't be afraid to fail," Hufton adds, even as the three are about to get ushered out to do a TV interview. "Try some stuff, make something, and if it doesn't work, move onto the next thing. It's just part of the process." If the process works half as well as it did for them, you'll be the next RDC superstars in no time. It would be unbelievable if you could remain half as humble as the 99 Nights in the Forest team.