Roblox, the online gaming platform, is back online after a three-day outage which the company described as “especially difficult”.

The company said that the outage was not caused by a cyber attack, but by a “subtle bug” that only cropped up when the company’s communications servers came under heavy load.

“Due to the difficulty in diagnosing the actual bug, recovery took longer than any of us would have liked,” the company added.

It said that there was “no loss of player persistence data, and your Roblox experience should now be fully back to normal”.

The outage was much longer than Facebook’s six-hour collapse earlier in October, which prevented its 3.5 billion users from accessing any of its apps and services, including WhatsApp and Instagram.

Roblox has 202 million monthly users, according to estimates, and is especially popular with children under 13 – who comprise more than half of its user base.

Earlier this year, the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with its shares rocketing at the open from the “reference price” of $45 (£32.97) each to $64.50 (£47.25).

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Today, the company’s shares are trading at $84.02 (£61.55), giving the company a market cap of $48.32bn (£35.4bn), and it brought in more than $923m (£676m) in revenue last year.

The company said of its outage: “We are grateful for the patience and support of our players, developers, and partners during this time.”

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It added that as part of its “Respect the Community” value, it would be transparently publishing a “post-mortem” investigation into the outage.

“In addition, we will implement a policy to make our creator community economically whole as a result of this outage. There are more details on this to come,” it added.

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