Games' budgets and costs to create a video game

[Antimatter]

I've thought about starting this thread for a while. We had a similar topic about games created in the '90s and '00s.

Here are a few snippets I've gathered about the latest info on games' budgets.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was said to have been developed by over 300 staffs across 6 studios with a budget of over $100M USD. [1]

Starfield had a team of 500 and a budget of over $200M USD. [2]

Cyberpunk 2077 had a total budget of $316M USD. [3]

CDPR spent another $103M USD on developing Cyberpunk 2077's PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S re-release as well as the new Phantom Liberty expansion. [4]

Experts put Hogwarts Legacy's budget at $150 million. [5]

According to the poorly redacted declaration submitted by Sony Interactive Entertainment during the Xbox Federal Trade Commission case, The Last of Us: Part 2 cost some $220M USD to develop, with a peak headcount of some 200 full-time employees. Horizon Forbidden West, meanwhile, cost $212M USD to develop and utilized more than 300 developers. [6]

Control had a budget of $30M USD. [7]

But that's AAA games. Check out more on their budgets here:

The 15 Most Expensive Games Ever Made (& How Much it Cost to Make Them)

Just as the power of home consoles and high-end gaming rigs has increased in recent years, so too has the cost of developing cutting edge games.

gamerant.com

List of most expensive video games to develop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The gulf between AAA games and other games is substantial.

Hellblade was made on a micro-budget of under $10M USD with a small team of around 20 people. [8]

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous was developed on a $2M USD Kickstarter budget. [9]

Cult of the Lamb had a $0.5M budget. [10]

 

[Fandraxx]

The fact that these AAA companies can have budgets of this magnitude and still can't figure out how not to crunch their employees is borderline astounding.

I'll always root for the games cobbled together from mothballs. Nothing against big budgets, but there's something about the ingenuity of the smaller titles that can't be replicated.

 

[Antimatter]

Two recent revelations:

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum had a budget of $15.9M.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was a $15.9 million flop, according to new behind-the-scenes report

A bumpy production led to a bumpy launch

www.gamesradar.com

The Lamplighters League had a budget of $22.8M.

Paradox says The Lamplighters League sales were 'a big disappointment,' confirms recent layoffs at developer Harebrained Schemes

The layoffs at Harebrained Schemes actually occurred a few months before The Lamplighters League was released.

www.pcgamer.com

Both games are now considered failures (and yes, The Lamplighters League was just released ~a week ago).

 

[Skatan]

From what little I've seen, heard and read about the Gollum game, it really felt like one of those kickstarter scams where the dev's make a demo, get people to pledge and then deliver something barebones and takes the net in their pockets. But this time it actually did cost quite a bit of money, heh.. where did they spend it?

 

[Antimatter]

Lords of the Fallen had a budget of $66.6M:

$42.2M development
$19.3M marketing
$5.1M physical copies production

Lords of the Fallen’s total budget exceeded $66 million, making it most expensive title in CI Games history | Game World Observer

Despite technical issues, Lords of the Fallen had a strong launch commercially. And publisher CI Games has now disclosed the game’s total production and marketing costs.

gameworldobserver.com

It's interesting that so far it doesn't seem like it sold enough to recoup (even while it is considered to be a successful launch). CI Games reported the game had sold 1M copies. With the price of $60 USD and the Steam cut (30%), it's not enough yet.

 

[alice_ashpool]

to spend so much and achieve so little. cui bono?

 

[Antimatter]

TBH, $19M for marketing is A LOT. Some games spend up to 50% on marketing, but this figure is huge.

Apparently, they used ads in Manhattan.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1709105563924058343

 

[alice_ashpool]

50% of dev budget on marketing seems par for the course for movies these days based on the vids I have watched about the decline of and fall of the superhero industry. And I suppose $40M on development isn't that much for an attempt at a AAA game that tries hard to be pro but just ended up being mid. But still, sometimes I'm left thinking "this cost how much?"