One of the biggest games on the planet right now isn’t Call of Duty or Counter-Strike or Fortnite. While those are very popular video games, a single free game in Roblox called Steal A Brainrot has them all beat.
As I write this now, Steal A Brainrot has over 1.5 million concurrent players. That’s more than the top game on Steam, CSGO, and more than the next five games combined. So I decided to check out what is easily one of the biggest games around in 2025 and try to find out why it’s leading to kids crying on TikTok. What I experienced was both awful and fascinating, and while I’m not sure I ever want to play Steal A Brainrot again, I think I get why it’s hooked so many kids and teens.
What is Steal A Brainrot?
The gameplay loop in Steal A Brainrot seems remarkably simple…at first. However, there’s more going on than you might initially expect. When you begin, you spawn in with a small amount of money and a large storage area. Around you are other storage areas owned by other players. And in the middle is a conveyor belt constantly offering up new “Brainrot Meme” characters to buy. (This is a very popular series of AI-generated creatures with fake Italian names that are hot online right now. Don’t worry about it.)
These characters come in different rarities and have varying prices. Some are very cheap and affordable for new players, while others take millions of in-game dollars to buy. You buy some and they waddle over to your storage area where, every few seconds or so, they earn you money, with rarer ones earning a lot more per second. As you earn more money, you buy more and better characters.
If that was all Steal A Brainrot was, I doubt it would have become popular enough to attract my attention. The real fun of the game lies in how you can steal from and screw over other players. For example, when you buy a character, someone else can run up and buy it before it gets to your storage area, effectively stealing it from you. You can then buy it back again, assuming you have the money, but back-and-forths like this can quickly leave you drained. You can also just run into someone’s storage area and steal one of their characters and bring it back to your place. And at any point, you can lock down your storage area for 60 seconds, keeping out thieves or trapping intruders. And then you can just walk out of your locked storage facility and go ransack their characters as they helplessly watch from afar. Complicating all this, you can pay real money via Robux to escape sooner, which feels like the cruelest way to squeeze money out of kids.
I have to admit, there is something very satisfying about running into an open storage room and stealing a high-priced character before the owner can come back and slap you with a baseball bat. This is why Steal A Brainrot has hooked so many people.
That was also one of the first things I did.
The rise and fall of my meme empire
Someone with a solid collection of brainrot characters went AFK for a bit, leaving their storage area unguarded and open. A few other players and I swarmed like locusts and robbed the poor person of everything. I snagged some alligator airplane hybrid thing that started earning me a thousand dollars a second. Soon, I had a sizeable fortune. I used it to buy a few more rare characters, and soon I had an empire.
However, this became a problem. It didn’t take long for other players to start hovering around my storage area. They were waiting for me to slip up. To leave without locking up or to stay out too long and leave my trophies for the taking. I’d smack them away, like swatting flies away from your food. But they would return.
Eventually, as my empire grew larger, I had to regularly deal with thieves. One entered and begged me for one of my rarest characters. They claimed they needed it for a special achievement and promised to give it back. I simply told them, “One does not keep an empire if they give it away.” They replied, “Bro, come on, be cool.” I would not be cool. I was building my future, one dumb meme character at a time. And I wasn’t going to give it up.
After about 40 minutes of saving carefully, buying only the rarest characters, and keeping my storage area locked down tight, I had become extremely rich. I could buy practically any meme I wanted. I was a king, and my storage room showed it.
Then came the fall. That person who tried to talk me into giving them a rare character snuck in while I got greedy. I spotted a very rare dog-banana-thing and went after it, forgetting to lock up. When I returned, the locusts were swarming my empire. My riches were gone. I tried to stop them. I failed.
And so ended my short-lived but grand empire in Steal A Brainrot. For a moment I thought about rebuilding, but then I realized that in that 40-minute span, I had done everything the game offered.
I’d stolen a few characters, racked up riches, got into a few fights, and found a couple of super rare memes. I had no reason to keep playing Steal A Brainrot, a very ugly and boring-looking game. I can imagine a younger kid developing favorite memes and holding onto them tightly. And I’ll admit that when that bastard stole one of my rarest brainrots, I felt a flash of anger. I see why some children are crying and throwing tantrums after losing beloved memes. I’m not excited to play more of it, but yeah, I get why this thing has over 1 million players and a ton of clones.
I’m not a fan of one of the most popular games among kids being all about grinding forever to make more money and betraying people to win big, but who can deny the allure of building up something bigger than yourself? Even if it’s just a collection of Italian brainrot memes.
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