Court docs reveal Call of Duty games cost ‘up to $700 million’ to develop
Budgets for three COD games between 2017 and 2020 have been published for the first time
Development costs for several Call of Duty titles have been revealed for the first time, with claims that the first-person shooters cost between $450 and $700 million dollars to develop.
According to Game File, development figures for Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (2019), and Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War have been published for the first time as part of a court filing.
In a court filing by Patrick Kelly, Activision’s current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, it’s claimed that for Black Ops 3, “Treyarch developed the game over three years with a creative team of hundreds of people, and invested over $450 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.”
For Modern Warfare, a remake of the much-loved 2007 shooter, “Infinity Ward developed the game over several years and has spent over $640 million in development costs throughout the game’s lifecycle.”
Most recently, for Black Ops Cold War, “Treyarch and Raven Software took years to create the game with a team of hundreds of creatives. They ultimately spent over $700 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.”
For comparison, it was revealed thanks to poorly redacted court documents that the development cost of The Last of Us Part 2, Sony‘s premier single-player franchise, was around $220 million. At the time, this was seen as the industry’s most significant game budget.
However, when comparing the two, it’s worth noting that while The Last Of Us Part 2 was a single-player experience with nothing in the way of ongoing content or post-release opportunities to monetize, the budgets cited for the development of these Call of Duty titles include post-launch support and new content.
One of the most prominent figures at Sony when The Last of Us Part 2 was in development, Shawn Layden, has regularly come out against ballooning video game development costs, calling them unsustainable.
The former executive, who currently advises companies such as Tencent, believes that by encouraging the creation of smaller-scale games, platform holders can help alleviate the budget and team size issues currently facing the triple-A games industry.
“Game budgets are not going to remain in the triple-digit millions,” Layden said last year. “Let’s say $20 million dollars. With the current level of gaming development skill… it’s gotten higher than it was 10 years ago. We have a talent pool that we can reach into with the right budget and lean into it for the variety.”
