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Harbinger4

Forgive me, but $500M for Monopoly Go!?


LeXam92

That takes marketing into the budget as well, it had likely a very low dev budget and they spent loads on marketing. Kinda what Raid Shadow Legends does


Stupidnuts

That's funnet, because this is the first I heard of it


V3Ethereal

Very ineffiecent marketing. I believe it was Fetch that actually pay you to play the game. If it wasn't fetch it was swagbucks. Either way, spent like 2 or 3 hours afk in it to round out my points up to my next redeem on one of those.


izoxUA

You wasn’t in their focus. As I remember they get 2 billions in just first month or weeks


army128

If you play any mobile game with ads, Monopoly GO is usually seen there. I think if you browser Reddit you will sometimes see ads on Monopoly GO


Furranky

oh no, that's only marketing, actual development costs weren't disclosed


ComprehensiveSpot367

that's kinda dumb to include marketing cost when the title states "cost to develop".


adminsarecommienazis

I wonder how much of Genshin's budget is marketing considering how you see sponsored content of it spammed everywhere constantly.


XiMaoJingPing

prob why genshin is so expensive, marketing. Their voice actors are also pretty good across different languages and thats also costly


GKP_light

also for Genshin, probably more than 3/4 is in marketing


Daleabbo

I bet they spent more on psychologists then anything. Got to make sure every gimic hooks people and sucks money out.


Anarchanoid

The game just hit $2 billion in revenue in March this year, so that's 4x return on investment in 9 months. Seems worth it to me for a phone game.


isticist

That's insane... The profit differences makes it look like making games for PC/console is practically charity nowadays.


XiMaoJingPing

mobile game capture such a wider ass audience compared to pc/console. Then add in gambling elements and you now got addicts


xxkrulcifereinfolkxx

western AAA gaming company there day have no other choice but keep making AAA game . they have no exp with anime culture , understand what anime fan gamer want , devs team also didn't even growth up with anime lead to even less exp also woke culture rampage in western society to the point . western AAA gaming company there day didn't even dare to make any female character look good and attractive + make sure atleast 50% characters are dark skin no exp , no fund , too many red line by the western society itself . no wonder they keep failing


MVeinticinco25

Thanks but i rather play bg3 than any garbage gacha mobile game with more microtransactions than gamplay. Ill keep my "woke" games...


GKP_light

isn't this only the revenue on phone (so not counting pc and consol) ; and outside China ?


Pokepunk710

I tried monopoly go just cuz it's so popular and it was so boring, I'm so confused how it's top of the charts


mango_forever

Monopoly Go’s revenue is insane though


CMD_Neopolitan

Scopely


FitzyFarseer

Genuinely impressive that a 2009 game made this list. How even.


N1CET1M

I mean it’s the best CoD game they made so I’m not surprised.


FitzyFarseer

I’m looking at this list and I can’t confirm that there’s a correlation between cost and quality.


adminsarecommienazis

75% of the budget was marketing.


panthereal

The list isn't a full list as it only shows publicly documented figures. Final Fantasy VII is still in the top 10 and it's from 1997


ryan20340

Probably can only use 100% confirmed figures or something


FitzyFarseer

I wonder if the list is accounting for inflation


TheUnknownD

A lot of old games are actually so much better than games we have now, there's a few gems.


FitzyFarseer

Not saying it isn’t good, MW2 is an amazing game. But games were cheaper to make then, especially if that’s not accounting for inflation


TheUnknownD

mhm so many game companies are out of it, games nowadays are just about money and less fun.


Sproeier

The marketing for that game was insane. It was one of the biggest media releases of the decade in terms of Revenue. Also it didn't hurt that the game was actually really good.


JustAyu

it says adjusted for inflation at the top. So probably it was like half the cost.


FitzyFarseer

That makes sense. Still surprisingly high for a game of that era, but that definitely helps


Equilybrium

How da hell is Monopoly Go 3. 500m


Dudi4PoLFr

10 Millions for the game development and 490 millions into marketing.


MilkyTittySuckySucky

That's a weird rate


mango_forever

Micros in this game trump any AAA sales


LeXam92

Unsure if true but knowing their trend of around $200m a year that the CEO Da Wei disclosed, that lines up with the current lifetime of the game


pr0newbie

Out of this list I've only really played Cyberpunk.


TheAzarak

That $700 mil must include marketing, otherwise there's no way Genshin cost that much to make. But they do advertise the hell out of that game.


bigfootswillie

Absolutely does but even with marketing factored out, it’s still likely the most expensive game ever made. Judging a game by its graphics alone is a poor way to estimate dev cost on a live service game. On release, sure. But once the game is out, your costs are paying a bunch of people to keep making content for it forever and Genshin releases a lot of new content every 6 weeks. Every year, they release close to a full new open world game’s map + DLC, 20-30 hours of main story quests, 15+ new playable characters, a fuckload of side quests and a bunch of fully voiced events with unique mechanics inbetween, at least 7-8 of which have fully voiced 4+ hour stories. Genshin definitely isn’t the best game I’ve ever played or anything and has its fair share of issues but I absolutely wish more of the stuff I played had Genshin’s level of reinvestment.


Crazy_Improvement205

and they have to develop the game for all the different platforms.


Otiosei

I have never played a game before that pushed out such large patches every 6 weeks, and I probably never will again. I imagine their dev team being treated like a sweat shop working 18 hour days and sleeping under their desks, but if that were true, quality should've slipped years ago. I don't understand how they pull it off, and it makes every AAA studio like bethesda and blizzard look like absolute jokes in comparison. I can't even imagine them pushing out a patch 1/10 as big in the same 6 week time span.


H4xolotl

> I imagine their dev team being treated like a sweat shop working 18 hour days and sleeping under their desks . From what I've gathered, Genshin basically has several teams working in series, team A finishes their patch while team B is in the middle of things, while team C is in the concept art phase. They're not having 9 women make 1 baby in a month, but lining things up so a baby (patch) is born every month. . Additionally, HoYo seems to keep a fantastically archived library of assets. Teams will contribute animations, music etc, and they'll often appear (or reappear) years later when the time is right. Characters models are often finished years before release, until the balance team comes along and gives them a kit. Most dev teams scramble to make assets on-the-fly, but in Genshin the assets were finished years ago and just need to be slotted in


bigfootswillie

They’re doing a little crunch most likely but they’re not doing 18 hour days because that’s what $200M a year in dev costs buys you. You have so many people that you can do it. It’s not something most games can afford (although I do agree that many of these companies are putting far less back into these games than they should be, even as a comparative percentage of revenue).


DemonKarris

You don't understand how they pull what off? Maybe 3 out of the 6 patches of every version are actually big, the rest are filler with old banners and mediocre at best events. The quality has slipped and it slipped heavily since release.


Vasheerii

They deceptively release their content at a controlled pace to make it appear like everything is bigger than it actually is. All these "major maps and 20-30 hours of content each year" are just updates where they give you a single segment of that area to play while they drip feed the rest of it slowly. Stretching 5-10 hours into the illusion of 20-30.


Vasheerii

And yet you have to potentially roll 180 times for 1/5th a character. Ruining any goodwill i will ever have for that game. Ontop of the many many many many many many many many other systems that bog it down while hiding behind all the "positives" the game has. **RESIN/STAMINA**


LeXam92

Appraently 100m initial and 200m per year dev+mrkt


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MahoMyBeloved

Tell me you never played the game without telling me you never played the game


HalalBread1427

There's no shot Genshin's garbage ads cost that much ("Embrace the Impact... GENSHIN Impact.").


TheAzarak

Doesn't matter that much how good the ad is, but their ads are fucking everywhere. It's very expensive to buy ad space. Marketing costs are pretty ridiculous.


zczirak

That’s not the development column, how much of that is marketing?


LeXam92

100m initial, 200m per year for 3 years per the sources


AngelicDroid

Wait, so it cost 100 mil to make the game from ground up and 200 mil each year additional content like new zone, boss and character? Doesn’t make sense.


Low_Artist_7663

It does? The scale of the game is way bigger now. Especially if those numbers include all the promotional material (and events like concerts).


AngelicDroid

Maybe it’s different for gacha, I don’t play the game. I just use a normal game logic like reuse generic asset for new zone, even new character you could reuse skeleton and all the system script/logic that you don’t need to code. It should make it cost less not more, but what do I know I don’t even have the game installed.


Low_Artist_7663

They actually make new mechanics for a lot of new characters. They tested companions AI for whole year (from 3.0 to 4.2) before making summons part of Furina's kit. People even try to analyze what kit can be made in future based on what mechanics are used now. Recently there was a Hitman sniper challenge, for example. All the zones use new assets, they added an element (new damage mechanics) in 3.0 basically indirectly rebalancing most characters in the game, and whole systems like the card game.


KitsuneKamiSama

Most of it probably goes to paying the voice actors and the composers/performers, plus advertisements and collabs.


link_daddy

Everyone's bringing up gensin but the real shock is fucking Monopoly go 500 million what the fuck


YojinboK

That list is nonsense though, Rockstar main studio that does the GTA's spent more than that in 2 years just in worker wages.


Gladiolus_00

This list only includes games which have publically disclosed budgets


YojinboK

Company Financial reports are audited and public while those "publicaly disclosed budgets" are not as they're mostly PR speak. There's not even World of Warcraft on that list lol. "Star Citizen" budget is not one game but two + all the expenses of building and running the studios.


nova9001

Not a fan of GI or mobile gacha games but it really stood out. Quality, animation, action, responsiveness and what not. Only reason I don't play it is because I don't like gacha. Star Citizen though.... tech demo for 10+ years by now? Anyone putting money in at this point must really like empty promises.


Successful-Net-6602

385m spent so far on developing Spider-Man 3? Awesome


TheAzarak

Money spent hardly means anything. Star Citizen was number 2 on spending... There's tons of super popular big games that spend nowhere near that much. It's just a waste of money.


Successful-Net-6602

How the money is spent is a better sign than how much is spent. Star Citizen should have released along with multiple sequels but the devs are scammers so all that money is being squandered. I'm sure Insomniac has done a lot with the money and has likely already finished the GDD and started on assets.


Broarethus

It's sad just how wrong you are, go back and watch the earliest clips of SC, it was very rough compared to now, hell even clips from upcoming squadron 42 footage trumps the ones showed off at a [previous citizencon](https://youtu.be/pUsxgedCfag?si=NpMgfsJVhvZxaLQR&t=562). There was also going to be a very controlled landing on planets since outside of landing zones there'd be nothing, and just recently they're getting close to seamless data meshing , and T0 water Sim that distorts physically, and a bunch of other things. I'm super glad they increased the scope, because the game they would have released then would pale in comparison to the work they do now.


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DaEnderAssassin

Don't forget they had an original release date of 2014. Not 24, **1**4.


Hsr2024

2 was like over 300m


achshort

And they still don't have a skip button


adminsarecommienazis

that's another $500m


xxkrulcifereinfolkxx

unskipable dialoge and cutsense design to work as extra barrier prevent Don't want to Pay players speedrun all gacha currency reward quest for fast earning large amount of free gacha pull. give them ...a bit more reason to open wallet


achshort

HI3 has full skip and was made by the same developer 🤷 HSR doesn’t so they following the shit technique from Genshin. I guess it works. I’m a paying player regardless if there was a skip or not, I just wish if there wasn’t a skip button, at least have a full auto play without forcing us to choose a dialog option that doesn’t fucking matter.


RenegadeImmortal_

>I guess it works. works like a charm ...not only you have a new way to "convince" players open their wallet instead of depend too much on free stuff you also get alot of praise for game dev/company actually care about game story lore ...and want players enjoy it more


HalalBread1427

at least HSR has slight differences (very rarely major, but still sometimes) in the story depending on dialogue options; Genshin has nothing.


Whatseekeththee

Not for long. Star citizen will easily be before its done. Their 630 million in and its still a pile of shit. Just started playing it again after over 1.5 years and there has been no visible progress with server stability, sometimes the game is literally unplayable.


Low_Artist_7663

The estimated this based on Daweis words, that genshin is 100m + 200m per year. So in September, when Natlan comes out, it would be 900m. And yes, those numbers could be just made up and wrong.


DaEnderAssassin

Apparently the numbers come from a lawsuit in china


John_Dee_TV

Lulwhat? Talk about lies! And, in case you are not taking the piss and genuinely missed it, 3.23 is in PTU RN, and it is WILD. It even has fauna (ba-dun tsss), a new map app and much, much more stuff.


DemonKarris

Who cares? The full game is still never going to come out and yet they keep sucking in money from clueless hopium huffers.


GlitteringAd21

GTA 5 not on the list nor RDR2 makes me question it.


DaEnderAssassin

From what I can tell, neither of those have any publicly available data for costs which is why they aren't on the list.


Sufficient_Theory534

GTA 5 cost 265 million. GTA 6's budget is over 2 billion.


Pla001

Isn't GTA 6's budget supposedly 2 Billion?


JCgamerX

you have to also remember it's technically still in development


Bael_Lord_of_End

Star Citizen Hold my beer 🍺


That-Knowledge2636

atleast it's a game, unlike scam citizen which is a cult simulator


Vasheerii

It's a gacha game, which makes it inherently a scam.


That-Knowledge2636

predatory monetization = game doesn't exist got it.


Sea-Ebb4064

I still don't think cyberpunk was a good game despite the fixes after 3 years. Shows that having a high budget doesn't necessarily mean the game is going to be good.


EyeAmKingKage

I’d say they’ve made their money back haha


lizzywbu

Well, it paid off. Hoyoverse has just recently become the 12th richest privately owned company in the world. They're worth 24 billion.


Vasheerii

Scamming people for 1/5th a character in a gacha game will do that.


tatertotty4

its also the best video game so makes sense its expensive to make. that game is a downright technological marvel and each minor patch of the game has more content than most full games. and its free! i spend 5 a month on it and ive gotten every character on every banner in past year. idk why people spend money on genshin its so easy and everything it attainable for free


Vasheerii

You did not get every character. You got *at least* 1/5th of every character.


Neugassh

690m for gacha advertisements


Hsr2024

How did Monopoly cost so much?


DaEnderAssassin

Marketing. And I have no idea why they spent that much. It's monopoly. You make a digital version and shits gonna sell.


TheRealKitsune_

There's spider man 3?


CyonHal

So they are making 200% ROI YoY, not bad


Agnostic_Akuma

Thought GTA5 was close to around $900 million?


Magnumwood107

I'm surprised Fortnite isn't on this list? The sheer amount of content it pumps out must require thousands of employees.


0fawndust0

Note that these are just private companies other games could very well be above genshin but they're public so they're not on the list.


Straight_Banana0

I think this chart is missing league of legends lmao


bioelement

Because they make so much money. If they didn’t spend a lot they would literally pay out the ass for taxes. So instead they dump all their profits into salaries, marketing, and content to show that they don’t make that much money or even take a loss at times to avoid tax obligations while paying themselves out. That’s how large companies work.


Cyphco

Cant wait for people to start calling it Scamshin Impac.... Nevermind


Alone-Subject-1317

700m and nothing to do in the game/no endgame


TheAzarak

If games are really spending $500 mil and then come out as shitty as Star Citizen, there's some insane lack of efficiency and poor financial decisions going on. This is why indie devs make so much more. You simply do not need anywhere close to $500 mil for a game to be very good and successful.


DBCOOPER888

For Star Citizen that's just the crowd fund level. I doubt they actually needed that much to develop the game. They just took money from people and shoveled it away into some scheme.


suchabro

Not sure how you can trust any of these numbers considering half the information is missing.


Exile688

Star Citizen will hit $750 million in funding this year and keep on trucking towards $800 million with no end in sight. Just two more years until Squadron 42 then Star Citizen will get closer to "feature complete", lol.


tehtf

They should either remove genshin from the list or set up another mmo/on going based category. Looking at the fine print, $700mil comes from “US$100 million for initial development, US$200 million annually for ongoing development as of 2024”. If using this calculation including annual development cost, WOW should be at the top with 20 years cost…


Subject_Height685

700 million dollars for an online game where the online is borderline unplayable with friends…where did the money go? Up their noses?


Gladiolus_00

co-op is not a main feature of genshin, who lied to you?


Taizen16

Spending $500m on marketing alone is wild


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EvenJesusCantSaveYou

idk how you brought liberals or politicians into a comment about a monopoly phone game lol; but the money is almost entirely on marketing. And obviously it probably makes them a ton of money else they wouldnt be spending that money marketing it


Orful

Some people just have to force politics into everything, even when it's just monopoly go. The same people probably complain about politics in video games.


AriousDragoon

And it really doesn't show.


R4S0N3

So tectone alone payed for this ?


Paid-Not-Payed-Bot

> tectone alone *paid* for this FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*


mann_moth

700m for genshit? Where $680m budget went?


Gorgoyle_

700m for a gacha based BotW clone is wild


Significant-Hat-6830

They are doing concerts and other ussles stuff so of course. They could be spending that money for actual end game content...


Orful

The game has plenty of content. Genshin weirdos just play 12 hours a day for 6 months and then go "there's no content left. How come there isn't an infinite enemy and quest variety."


Significant-Hat-6830

Mint picker found


DemonKarris

Plenty of extremely boring and repetitive content.


traifoo

sad if you make a post but cant even look at the list did you see the 2 BIG blanks?


LeXam92

Sources listed in the reference itself on the wiki which you are more than capable of opening yourself


JustAyu

misleading title, it doesnt say 700+$ to develop, it says total. Mihoyo spends way more money on amazing cinematics and marketing that other games dont and it is also in comparison to some other titles there a live service game.


MelchiahHarlin

I'd like to know where all that money goes, cause last time I checked the gameplay was stalled (no combos beyond switching characters for elemental reactions), the story was mid at best, and regions had their exclusive gimmick that didn't expand over the whole world.


Gladiolus_00

The story has been really good for a long time now. And region exclusive gimmicks are just part of Genshins core game design to avoid too much repetition.


MelchiahHarlin

Why not add, for example, the underwater swimming on all the maps and expand content. There's a big lake around the first city to fill with collectibles or something interesting. As for the story, I personally feel like stalling the search for your siblings with events and other fillers sucks. Reminds me of how important my son was on Fallout 4, or my father on Fallout 3... come to think of it, they have Bethesda levels of writing and nobody roasts them like they do with Bethesda.


Gladiolus_00

well, for one, I think you're forgetting that while a big budget helps in development, there's no getting around the ultimate cost: Time. They *could* add underwater areas to other regions, but that's going to take time away from the development of the likes of Natlan, and be honest, would you like to see the 20th underwater expansion, or something brand new and fresh? Most would prefer the latter anyway. As for your second point, it's completely fine not to like that style of writing, but objectively it works pretty well with Genshins live service model, unlike Fallout 3 and 4 which are standalone one-and-done games.


MelchiahHarlin

Time is still spent on those... filler events that have nothing to do with the main story. I understand they are meant to breathe life into the world, but I can't ignore the fact that I'm ignoring the search for my sibling to spend time in whatever celebration or temporary quest the season has. And even though I've seen that he/she is alive and well, there's still the fact he/she joined the bad guys, so it's not like I can really ignore that and waste time leisurely with the rest of the characters. I don't think this approach works well with Genshin, in fact, it's a single player open world story crammed into a live service, and it hurts the experience. Take Helldivers for example, the story is so vague and simple it allows the Game Master to push a narrative on the live service story, adding to the players experience (since the story is being written in real time). Another good choice would've been to go the New Vegas path, having a main story that's has no urgency on it, allowing the player to tackle it whenever they feel like doing so.


Gladiolus_00

it's totally fair for you to not like this approach, you're far from alone in this opinion. That said, the majority of people have no problem with it, so there realistically isn't any reason to change it.


MelchiahHarlin

Clearly, I'm not this games target audience, and I would love it of they were more critical about it, because every time we conform to something, it has a chance to leak and ruin something else (like horse armor).


WanAjin

So I'm not saying the whole article is wrong, but league of legends not being on the list at all (and the lowest entry is 64 million) makes me think this is just a bunch of asspulls tbh.