Roku City

Roku City is the name given to a screensaver present on Roku streaming devices. The looping background depicts a virtual metropolis at night, colored by hues of magenta and blue.

Background
The screensaver depicts a slowly looping city street in the foreground, composed of businesses, a diner, a movie theater, and a city hall. Across a body of water in the background sits a silhouette of skyscrapers and buildings, with unusual amounts of chaos: volcanoes, a spaceship, a robot monster, and more. The complimentary color scheme is prominently composed of pink and purple hues. The scene changes with the seasons; in the autumn months, trees change colors. The illustration contains easter eggs of various films and characters, including King Kong andThe Wizard of Oz, and more.

The illustrations were created by Kyle Jones, a freelance graphic artist, who took inspiration from art deco architecture to design the city. The name of the background known internally at Roku was City Scroll: Movie Magic, and it debuted in 2018.

Advertising
It slowly began adding advertising to the city through branded partnerships in 2023, including with McDonald's, Paramount+, and Disney. Roku built a real life, pop-up display of Roku City for the 2023 SXSW festival.

Reception
As Roku became a popular player in the streaming space, the ubiquity of Roku City gave rise to semi-ironic fascination among users, and it became the focus of memes. Olivia Craighead of Gawker wrote: "Roku City haunts me. What would it be like to live in such a place, where there is peace in one borough while just a river away there is mass hysteria and a giant robot is terrorizing the masses." Roku's internal team observed an uptick in attention at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people stayed home and nightlife was nonexistent.

Its widespread usage has been considered unprecedented. Luke Winkie at The New York Times wrote: "Roku has become the unlikely venue for a massive public art experiment. Due to the size of the company’s customer base, countless homes peer into Roku City every weeknight."