TLDR
Most of the money goes to:
- Salaries for hundreds or thousands of people over several years
- Office rent, equipment, software, servers, and other day-to-day costs
- Marketing, like ads, trailers, events, and influencer deals
It is not just coding. It is paying for a massive team, tons of tools, and getting the game in front of millions of players.
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How Can a Video Game Cost Hundred Million Dollars to Make?
You probably heard about some big games that cost 300 million dollars or more to develop. And maybe you wondered, how is that even possible? What are they spending all that money on? Is it just coding? Or are they buying gold-plated servers?
The answer is actually kind of boring. Most of that money just goes to people. That is it. Salaries, benefits, office space... Stuff like that.
Most of it is people costs
Let us say a game takes 4 to 5 years to finish. Big games usually need hundreds of people working on them. Some even have more than a thousand. If each person is earning something like 80,000 a year, and you count health insurance, taxes, and other company costs, that can go over 150,000 per person each year. Multiply that by 1,000 people and 5 years, and you already passed 300 million.
And we are not just talking about programmers. There are designers, artists, animators, sound engineers, producers, testers, writers, voice actors, and a whole bunch of others.
Some of them are full-time, some are contractors, some only work on the game for a short time... But when you put them all together, it adds up fast.
Offices and equipment are expensive too
Big studios often need large offices, and rent can be very expensive in major cities. Rent is not cheap, and everyone needs a computer. Some artists use workstations that cost several thousand dollars.
You also need software licenses, servers, storage, electricity, air conditioning, snacks, and a hundred other things.
Even small things like paper, printers, and security guards get counted. It is not glamorous but it is still part of the budget.
High cost of marketing
Once the game is done, they still need to sell it. That is where marketing comes in. Trailers, ads, influencers, launch events, social media, store placement. All of it costs money.
Sometimes the marketing budget is as big as the development cost. Some publishers spend over 100 million just to make sure people know the game exists.
So where does the 300 million go?
It goes into years of work. It pays for thousands of people who bring the game to life. It covers buildings, tools, hardware, and software. And it pays for all the things needed to launch the game and get people to buy it.
When you think about it like that, 300 million is not that crazy. It is just what happens when you take something really complex and make it on a massive scale for millions of players around the world.
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