Does it cost money to publish a game?

As game developers we sometimes get asked how much it costs to make a game. This is not an easy question to answer because we have to explore what we mean by a ‘game’ and what it is to ‘make’ one. If you wanted a really short answer, it would be somewhere between $0 and $265 million. Yes, that’s a wide range of answers, so our CEO, Dr.Tomas Rawlings digs into the details.

Anyone can download some free gamedev tools and create a game for the fun of it. That could be seen as a game being made for $0 (though, of course, there are other costs to consider - time, powering a computer, access to the internet, not to mention the hours of labour). 

At the other end of the spectrum it cost around $265 million to make Grand Theft Auto V. That equates to teams of hundreds of developers working for many years, all of whom need paying, plus the costs of the office, software, taxes, support staff, outsourcing, and so on. But given GTA V has made over $6 billion in revenue, this particular game has seen a very good return on investment (though developer Rockstar has been spending money on the game since release pretty much continuously.)  

Types of game - from indie to AAA 

As seen in the two examples above, what constitutes a game and the costs developing them can incur includes a huge spectrum. For our purposes, it's best to explore that spectrum by breaking down the different tiers of games and the costs that they usually incur at each tier. 

Below you can see the spectrum of game development split into three distinct tiers.

• Indie game - This is a game made by a solo developer (or small team) and released onto Steam (or similar storefront). Good examples of this type are our games (so far!) such as Mars Horizon and Dark Future: Blood Red States.

• AAA game - This is the major publisher release that most people think of when they think of a ‘game’, so your FIFA and Battlefield titles, for example.

• Triple ‘i’ game - This is a game between the two types above, so a bigger project than a small indie, but not the size of a major AAA game. Examples here include Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
  

How do you make a game? Development costs and beyond

Before we put some numbers on the costs of developing games in each of those three tiers, let’s get into more of what we mean by ‘make’too. There is the making of the actual game - the design, code, art, sound, etc - that’s what we think of as the development. But there may have been costs even before the development started.

Perhaps you want to make a demo, or before that you may spend money putting together a pitch to publishers, which might also mean attending trade shows like GDC. All of these cost money that may exist outside of the game's development. 

Then there is everything geared towards getting a game into the hands of players. This includes testing, marketing, making a trailer, localisation, advertising, and (if this is being done) the cost of making physical copies and then distributing them. 

To fully work out the cost of making a game, you really need to consider all of the above, though some games you play might not have spent money on all of these aspects.

How much does it cost to make an indie game?

You’re looking at a range from about $50,000 to $750,000 to make an indie game. The lower $50k amount is the total cost for a solo developer, on average, to work for a year on a game (at least in our experience). As you add more people, the cost goes up. 

Most indie publishers expect games to come in around $250k to $500k for development costs; so think of that upper amount as a team of 5 people working for 2 years on a game. Then the publisher may add another $250k (to a total of $750k) as they spend money on what they feel is necessary to make the game a success (testing, marketing, PR, etc). That publisher cost will vary depending on the number of platforms they're putting the game on, if it has multiplayer, what the marketing plan is, and so on.

How much does it cost to make a AAA game?

When it comes to AAA game development you are generally talking in the tens of millions of dollars. Most AAA games are made by teams of a few hundred people working for two or more years.

You can most clearly see this with the Call of Duty games series, which has three large studios making a new installment simultaneously so that, collectively, the series is able to have a new title every year. Each of those studios will cost many, many millions of dollars to run per year. Then, as these games are still sold as boxed products, there is the cost of manufacturing and distribution, cross-country marketing and promotional budgets, and many more costs adding more than the cost of development again to the overall bill. 

How much does it cost to make a ‘triple i’ game?

Typically these are games costing more than $1 million, but less than $10 million - which puts the example game in this category of  Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice firmly in this costing.

As above, expect there to be another similar cost added for the marketing and promotion of the game - though how much will vary depending on if it is self-published or via a publisher.

Why does it cost so much to make games?

Most of the cost of making the game will end up as wages for people - be they developers, testers, or marketers. Making and selling games is a high-skill endeavour that takes a lot of people, a lot of time, and a huge amount of creativity and problem solving. But we like to think, they are worth the money and effort. So that is, in essence, how much it costs to make a game.

With all this in mind, please do support your favourite game creators with a review of their work, so they know you care! (Plus, if you’re a game developer and looking to join a team to advance your skills in this area, please see our Jobs page!)

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