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How This 19 Year Old Made $2.5 Million Dollars From Minecraft

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A 17-year-old coding on his childhood computer built a cops-and-robbers game that pulled in tens of thousands of players on day one — and paid for four years of college before he even set foot on campus.

Alex Balfanz, known online as “badcc,” is the subject of a breakdown by finance YouTuber Graham Stephan, who reacts to how the teenager turned a Roblox project into a multimillion-dollar income stream. Balfanz didn’t build a mobile app or flip sneakers — he coded inside Roblox Studio, the free tool Roblox gives anyone to build playable experiences on its platform, and turned a single release into one of the site’s biggest hits.

• Balfanz started coding in Roblox Studio around age 9, pushed toward programming by his father’s own coding background.
• In January 2017, during his senior year of high school, 17-year-old Balfanz and partner “asimo3089” (Badimo studio) launched Jailbreak, which drew roughly 70,000 to 75,000 concurrent players on its first day.
• Within months his Robux revenue share hit seven figures — enough to cover all four years of tuition at Duke University before he even enrolled.

From Roblox Studio to a Viral Launch

Jailbreak is an open-world cops-and-robbers game — pick a side, rob a bank or chase down the robbers, all inside a persistent Roblox map. Balfanz built it with fellow developer asimo3089 under their studio name, Badimo, and released it in January 2017 while he was still finishing high school. The reception was immediate: Jailbreak reportedly hit somewhere between 70,000 and 75,000 concurrent players on its very first day, a number that would be a career highlight for most studios and was, for Balfanz, just the opening chapter.

Robux Economy Monetizes Player Activity

Roblox doesn’t pay creators through ad impressions the way YouTube does — it runs on Robux, the platform’s virtual currency, which players spend on in-game items, upgrades, and passes. Developers like Balfanz and asimo3089 collect a revenue share every time someone in Jailbreak buys a vehicle skin, a gamepass, or an in-game perk. Multiply that by tens of thousands of daily players and the payouts compound fast, which is exactly what happened within months of launch.

Jailbreak drew roughly 70,000 to 75,000 concurrent players on its very first day — before Balfanz had even graduated high school.

Paying for Duke Before Setting Foot on Campus

By the time Balfanz’s Robux earnings crossed seven figures, he had a decision most incoming freshmen never get to make: his share of Jailbreak’s revenue was enough to fully cover his four-year tuition at Duke University, where he went on to study computer science and statistics. It’s the kind of outcome that usually gets covered in stories about young people who strike it rich absurdly early — except Balfanz’s version started with a game engine, not a startup pitch deck.

Jailbreak’s Long Tail

Jailbreak didn’t fade after its opening burst. By late 2019, the game had racked up billions of plays and generated millions of dollars for its creators, keeping Balfanz among the most prominent teenage multimillionaires the Roblox platform has produced. It’s the same story arc that keeps showing up in profiles of teenagers running real businesses well before they can legally rent a car — a kid finds a niche adults weren’t paying attention to and simply outworks everyone in it.

Stephan’s video treats Balfanz less as a novelty and more as a case study in how the Robux economy actually functions — a revenue-share system that turned one high schooler’s side project into tuition money, and then into a business that outlived his senior year by years.