There was a time when a $50 million game sounded like a studio had lost its mind. That number now sits in a strange middle ground, too big to call modest, too small to raise eyebrows at the top of the business. The tricky part is that game budgets are rarely reported in the same way, since some figures include marketing, some include years of live-service work, and some come from leaks or court filings. Even with those caveats, the money behind these projects says a lot about where blockbuster gaming has gone.
Star Citizen
r/starcitizen
Star Citizen has been discussed for so long that its budget almost feels separate from the game itself. Cloud Imperium’s space sim began as a crowdfunded pitch in 2012, then kept growing through ship sales, subscriptions, alpha access and a very patient, very invested community. By the mid-2020s, the project had raised more than $800 million, a figure that still sounds odd no matter how many times it gets repeated. The shock is not only that so much money went into one game, but that the spending happened in public, year after year, while the full release remained out of reach.
Monopoly Go!
r/twobestfriendsplay
Nobody looks at Monopoly Go! and thinks of motion capture stages, celebrity performances or giant open-world asset teams. That is what makes the spending around it feel so strange. Scopely reportedly spent more than $1 billion marketing the mobile hit, a number tied less to traditional production and more to the brutal economics of acquiring players on phones. It is not the kind of budget people picture when they talk about expensive games, but in business terms, it belongs in the conversation.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
r/xboxone
Call of Duty has always looked costly from the outside, but Black Ops Cold War gave people a clearer look at the real scale. Court documents later put its development costs at around $700 million across the life of the game. That figure helps explain why annual franchises are not really “annual” in the simple sense, because several studios, long support tails, multiplayer infrastructure and constant content updates are all stacked behind the release date. For insiders, the number was less a surprise than a confirmation of something many suspected but rarely saw printed.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
r/modernwarfare
The 2019 Modern Warfare reboot had a specific job: make Call of Duty feel sharper, heavier and more current without losing the rhythm that kept the series selling. That kind of reset is expensive. The same legal disclosures that revealed Black Ops Cold War’s cost placed Modern Warfare at more than $640 million in development spending. It was not just a campaign and multiplayer package, it was a rebuild of tone, tech, presentation and long-term franchise direction.
Genshin Impact
r/genshin_impact
Genshin Impact is a reminder that launch budgets only tell part of the story. The game reportedly started with an initial budget around $100 million, already large for a free-to-play title from a studio that was not yet a household name in the West. Then came the real expense, steady updates, new regions, characters, music, localization, events and platform support. The annual spending has often been described at around $200 million, which makes the game feel less like a finished product and more like a constantly moving production line.
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Cyberpunk 2077
r/cyberpunk
Cyberpunk 2077 did not stop costing money when it launched in December 2020. That was part of what made its budget so fascinating, and probably painful inside CD Projekt. The game had already been one of the most expensive RPG projects ever made, but the troubled launch added years of patches, current-gen upgrades, reputation repair and the Phantom Liberty expansion. Reports around CD Projekt’s disclosures have placed the broader investment above $400 million, which makes Cyberpunk a case study in how a big game can end up being made twice, first for release, then again for trust.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
r/spidermanps4
Spider-Man 2 looked expensive in the obvious ways, fast traversal, dense city detail, two playable leads and the kind of cinematic polish Sony’s biggest games are expected to have. Still, the leaked Insomniac material putting its budget at about $315 million made the business side feel less comfortable. A game can sell millions, review well and still carry frightening pressure when the cost of making it climbs that high. Superhero licensing probably did not make the spreadsheet any friendlier.
Grand Theft Auto V
r/gaming
Grand Theft Auto V was once the budget figure everyone brought up when they wanted to talk about game development getting huge. Around its 2013 release, reports placed combined development and marketing costs at roughly $265 million. At the time, that sounded closer to a Hollywood blockbuster than a video game, which fit the way Rockstar was positioning the release. Years later, after GTA Online turned it into a long-running money machine, the original cost looks almost restrained, but that is mostly because the industry around it got bigger.
The Last of Us Part II
r/thelastofus
The Last of Us Part II was never going to be cheap. Naughty Dog’s style depends on performance capture, dense environments, custom animation, long production schedules and a level of detail that is easy to admire and difficult to pay for. During the Microsoft and FTC case, poorly redacted PlayStation documents showed the game cost about $220 million to develop. The number landed hard because it gave a rare official glimpse at the price of prestige single-player games, the kind platform holders like to promote but do not always like to itemize.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
r/swtor
Before every publisher was talking about live-service strategy, Star Wars: The Old Republic was already carrying an enormous bill. BioWare’s MMO reportedly cost around $200 million to develop, helped along by fully voiced quests, large teams, years of production and the simple fact that Star Wars is not a cheap license to build around. In 2011, that number sounded wild. It also showed how hard it was to chase World of Warcraft directly, especially with a game that tried to combine MMO scale with BioWare-style storytelling.
The budgets on this list are not perfectly comparable, and that is part of the point. A marketing-heavy mobile hit, a crowdfunded space sim, a prestige PlayStation sequel and a Call of Duty release all burn money in different ways. What they have in common is pressure. When games cost this much, even success can start to look complicated.
Related: 11 Indie Studios That Outperformed AAA Publishers in Revenue Without a Big Budget
