Alex Balfanz

Alex Balfanz
Born (1999-05-05) May 5, 1999 (age 27)
Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Other names
  • badcc
  • badccvoid
OccupationVideo game developer
Years active2008–present
Known for
  • Co-creator and programmer of the popular Roblox game, Jailbreak.
  • Co-founder of the popular Roblox community that controls Jailbreak, Badimo.

Alex Balfanz (born May 5, 1999), known more commonly online by his pseudonym, badcc, is an American video game developer who is the co-creator and a programmer of the popular Roblox game, Jailbreak, with also being the co-founder of the Roblox community who currently controls Jailbreak, Badimo.

Early life

Balfanz began to code games using Roblox Studio at the age of 9. Balfanz's father worked as a programmer, which Balfanz cites as one of the main reasons for his early interest in coding. He attended high school at the Trinity Preparatory School.

Prior to releasing Jailbreak, Balfanz had made several other games on Roblox, which he stated had made him "maybe a couple thousand" dollars. Balfanz attended Duke University, where he studied computer science and statistics and paid off his college debt using funds from his games.

Career

In January 2016, Balfanz and his business partner, asimo3089, created the game, Volt, an open world game in which players complete minigames. In January 2017, Balfanz, along with asimo3089, uploaded Jailbreak, a cops-and-robbers game, onto Roblox. On its first day of release, it reached 70,000 concurrent users (CCUs), a number which Balfanz later said had shocked him. It quickly became one of the most popular games on the platform and made Balfanz a millionaire.

References

  1. 1 2 Browning, Kellen (August 16, 2020). "You May Not Know This Pandemic Winner, but Your Tween Probably Does". The New York Times. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Fang, Shannon (December 10, 2018). "How the Jailbreak computer game made sophomore Alex Balfanz millions". Duke Chronicle. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Huddleston Jr., Tom (September 23, 2019). "This 20-year-old is paying for college (and more) off an amateur video game he made in high school". CNBC. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  4. ↑ Lufkin, Bryan (March 24, 2018). "How video games turn teenagers into millionaires". BBC. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  5. ↑ Power, Ed (August 19, 2020). "Roblox: The booming video game that's now bigger than Minecraft". The Irish Times. Retrieved September 2, 2020.