Full post: Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I’ve heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry
To address some frequently asked questions:
- These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
- These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)
300 million would kinda make sense, as it would mean an avg of 60k/year for a five year production on a 1000 people team. But how many AAA games are actually that large?
Halve the employees and double the salary, and you’ll be closer. Few people on a team will gross $120k, but benefits are part of that cost too.
Third the employees.
Reminder that Skyrim was made with a staff of ~300, that included revamping Gamebryo into Creation.
Devs with ~1000 devs using UE5 - what are the people even doing other than useless meetings?
Skyrim was made two console generations ago, so I’m afraid you can’t use it as any sort of metric for how games are made today. Starfield’s team was about 100 people larger.
Most of the personnel growth is probably in asset creation. The more realistic you want assets to look the more man hours you need to put in. Even with modern tools it is just gonna take longer to make those assets. Like instead of making a human model by directly manipulating polygons that makes it immediately game ready they first sculpt it in ZBrush then retopo to a lower polygon count to make it game ready. And then add complex facial rigs for cut scenes, high res textures etc.
It’s why companies like Sony hire these studios in China and India where hundreds of people work just making assets.
Meanwhile an indie game from a single dev: 500k players on steam.
Well yeah 300 million, but is the game any good or is it just made to be doodling with the D‘s of game “Journalists”? Just because you pay a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s good.
Here we go again acting like rich people don’t get paid. It’s not the poor CEO’s fault, we don’t actually give them much money ~just millions in stock options~ . It’s all the fault of the people that do the actual work.
That makes sense after some thought on it because of how long games are in production. Like 5-8 years of a main studio of like 300+ people. Like if it’s plain 100k salary per person a year at 300 people, $30 million in payroll a year. Add overhead like insurance, taxes, benefits. AAA games have support studios they contract out to. Think like the credits having 1000+ names in it. Getting to 300 million for a US/Canada AAA game sounds unsurprising considering how many years games cook now
These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
Stardew Valley was made in the US. Same with Terraria, Axiom Verge, Outer Wilds, Balatro, Risk of Rain, Undertale, The Stanley Parable, Hyper Light Drifter, and a shit ton of other games.
If you’re wondering why game X costs so much less, it was probably made by a indie studio!
Jason is just lying at this point, if he believes otherwise.
This thread is about AAA game budgets, not indie budgets. Even Stardew Valley took 4 years of living off of his partner’s generosity while he earned no income. It paid off, but that’s the exception to the rule.
What’s an Overheard, did he means “Overhead”?
Last time I checked it’s neither salaries, nor overhead, nor executive budgets, but it’s the PR efforts that spend the most chunk. This shithead trying to load that over the shoulder of developers and not advertising teams.
