The 10 Most Expensive Video Games Ever Made: Ranked

The revelation of this figure was part of a string of embarrassing mistakes during the FTC court hearing in the case involving Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, which was completed in 2023. The unredacted document also revealed that the game had over 200 employees during the course of its development, which lasted over five years.

The game, developed by Naughty of and Sony, expands on Ellie’s story as she tries to survive across the postapocalyptic USA, introducing Abby (Laura Bailey), a former soldier and the leader of a militia now at war with a religious cult. Fortunately, the game was a resounding commercial success, including its 2024 remake, justifying its price tag.

Having sold over 200 million copies to the tune of $6 billion in revenues, GTA V is one of the most profitable video games of all time. Its revenues, therefore, justify Rockstar’s rumored ambitious $2 billion budget for GTA VI. In GTA V, players get an upgraded open world and can now choose between three characters and go on an open-world adventure in San Andreas, creating their own adventures.

However, GTA V was one of the most expensive games ever created when it was released in 2013, having cost over $137 million in development and a similar amount to market. Upgrading the game to PS5 and Xbox Series S also cost the company a fair amount, although there are no concrete records from Rockstar Games. The total cost could well be over $300 million, but the game more than made up for it in revenues.

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Upon release on PlayStation, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 became Sony’s fastest-selling game, with over 2.5 million copies sold within 24 hours! What wasn’t apparent at the time was that the game needed to sell at least 7.2 million copies to become profitable. Details of the game’s cost were revealed when hackers stole and published Insomniac’s internal documents online on Dec 19, 2023.

The details revealed internal concerns after the cost of developing the game went over the initial $270 million budget. The total cost hit $315 million, making Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 over three times more expensive than the first game. While the impact of this high cost is not instantly justifiable by a first look at the game itself when compared to its predecessor, players still loved it, buying over 10 million copies by November 2024 to push the game into profitability.

PlayStation was forced to drop Cyberpunk 2077 from the platform back in December 2020 in response to a series of complaints about glitches. By the time CD Projekt finished the patches in June 2021, it had cost the company an extra $125 million. This was on top of the 316 million initial development costs the company spent on the game, bringing Cyberpunk 2077’s total cost to at least $438 million by the end of 2021.

That number is likely higher when accounting for internal support and marketing costs. Fortunately, the game was a commercial success, selling over 30 million copies to become one of CD Projekt’s most popular RPG games.

Black Ops III was a huge commercial success, having sold over 43 million copies by 2019 to become one of the most successful 8th-generation console games. Despite its short development time of just three years, the game was revealed to be one of the most expensive video games ever.

The details were part of the court hearing in which the franchise was accused of inspiring the suspect in the 2020 Uvalde Elementary School Shooting. In the filing, Activision revealed that Black Ops III cost the company over $450 million, including internal support for updates and upgrades over the game’s lifespan. The figure doesn’t include marketing costs, though, which means the net cost is way higher.

Destiny was a shocking success back in 2014 when it made back the $500 million invested into its development within a week of its release. The game was developed by Bungie for Activision before the latter was bought by Microsoft. The game’s instant success set a new record for the best-ever launch of a new franchise.

This is the game that revolutionized live service gaming. The high cost of over $500 million, paid by Activision, includes royalty rights and other incidental costs, but it all proved to be a worthy investment in the end.

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Call of Duty remains one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time, and Modern Warfare (2019) proved a profitable entry for Activision, selling over 41 million copies. Despite the sensitive political topics portrayed by the plot, the game was well received, becoming one of the best-selling games of 2019 and spawning a series of sequels.

However, these sales mask the game’s high development cost, which is one of the highest ever. Activision revealed the cost during the hearing of the Uvalde Elementary School shooting case, alongside the costs of Black Ops III and Cold War. According to the records, the game, which took another three years to develop, cost the company in excess of $640 million. This figure only covers initial development and internal support costs, meaning the game is much more expensive when marketing costs are included.

Created by Cloud Imperious Games, Star Citizen now feels more like a dream than reality since the game has been stuck in development for over a decade. While announcing the game back in 2012, video game developer Chris Roberts promised to “build a digital universe so big and detailed that players would forget they were in a video game.” That was the beginning of the crowdfunded project, which would allow players to colonize the virtual planet.

The game had no budget nor deadline, which meant that people could keep pumping funds in, and they have, with the current figure exceeding $795 million. The game’s early access version has been around for years now, but the release of the full version seems far from fruition despite the project threatening to become the first known $1 billion video game.

This was the most shocking of the three development-cost figures revealed by Activision during the Uvalde Elementary School shooting court case. Having sold over 30 million copies, the developers, including Treyarch and Raven Software, have likely turned a profit.

Cold War has largely revolutionized first-person shooter games in terms of graphics, weapons, and a realistic-feeling interaction with the game world. However, the huge costs, which apparently went $250 million above the original budget over the game’s five-year-long development, are an issue of concern for the industry as a whole.

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Genshin Impact cost HoYoverse just $100 million to develop, but the cost of maintaining the live-service game, which releases new updates almost every six weeks, has seen it become one of, if not the most expensive, non-western open-world RPG ever. HoYoverse president Cai Haoyu confirmed in 2021 that it costs the company $200 million annually to maintain the game.

Despite being free to play, Genshin Impact uses the gacha system for in-app purchases, which has been the subject of controversy. Even so, the game recouped its initial development cost within 12 days of release and had earned over $3.6 billion by August 2022, which more than makes up for its huge costs.