Most expensive games to develop 2024
For AAA studios, the cost of producing video games is now on par with Hollywood blockbuster movies. While costing "only" 100 million U.S. dollars to develop initially, Genshin Impact's ongoing development costs of 200 million dollars per year put the online game's total at 900 million U.S. dollars, with no end in sight.
In addition to development costs, video game marketing costs also play a significant role in terms of game dev budget. The mobile multiplayer board game title Monopoly GO quickly shot to the top of the mobile gaming charts and has remained there ever since. Some of this success can be attributed to the aggressive marketing spending of game developer Scopely, as the company confirmed that it had spent 500 million U.S. dollars on marketing and user acquisition alone.
Released in December 2020 after several delays, CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 is the third-most expensive game published to date, with a total cost of 498 million U.S. dollars at the time of release of its 2.0 Version and Phantom Liberty expansion.
Space trading game Star Citizen, developed and to be published by Cloud Imperium Games, is still in development after a decade and has so far racked up over 656 million U.S. dollars in development costs.
