The World's Most Expensive Video Games: Top 7

No one thinks about how many people work endless hours to create a video game. The gameplay industry has a long history, which has developed over many years, and has quite a long way to go from the days when 15 people in a team were able to work out a successful version of a game, and it took them less than a year to do so.

The amount the developers received for the simplest but most popular Super Mario game is not just impressive. Compared to the insignificant amount of money actually spent to create the game, the amount of profit received amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is worth noting that in our selection of the most expensive video games, the profit amounts mentioned are nothing more than the information we received from gameplay creators. How authentic they are, we can only believe, but even this information about publishers' earnings is staggering. The sums were calculated taking into account all development and marketing costs without regard to inflation, which is also important. And yet, here are perhaps the most expensive games in the history of PC gameplay ever made.

Destiny - the game's budget was $140 million. Wow, that's a lot of money! In parallel with this, the creators worked on other projects, which includes the famous Marathon. For about ten years the developer received his main profit from MasterChef. And now it was time to create something new, more worthwhile, which forced them to leave Halo.

For several years there was no news from the company - Bungie went into hiding. And now, at last, it's time to present a new, large-scale project - the Destiny shooter. The new game had a rough start, but that didn't prevent it from becoming popular on video game market and winning the hearts of millions of gamers around the world.

The next product on the list, with a budget of $190 million, is Marvel's Avengers. There is nothing joyful about the game's story, and it evokes appropriate emotions. The scenario is taken from the popular media universe, which will become interesting for literally a few evenings. Cooperative play with a loyal partner will allow you to experience a team game of superheroes and have fun.

Unfortunately, such figures of spent money did not justify itself and in sales the game was a complete failure. The publisher Square Enix suffered a colossal loss of about 67 million dollars.

So why was this the case with Marvel's Avengers? The adventures of Lara Croft, which is in the same lineup as this game, are much smaller than what is stated for Marvel's Avengers, but for various reasons the game has not been as successful as previous creations. The single-player games that the developers had previously worked on were somewhat different technically, which became apparent at the start. The gameplay, on the other hand, was not as varied as we would have liked it to be.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a branded game that an army of fans have been waiting for thanks to the release of the prequels. But neither that nor the $200 million budget helped the game take the lead among gamers.

The product of the famous company was in a strange position - the released Star Wars adaptation made people fall in love with the game, and at the same time played a cruel joke with it, but BioWare tried to do everything to make the game top among the analogues.

Previously, the developer had worked on famous RPG games, among them Dungeons&Dragons. And after the release of the famous and ambitious Knights of the Old Republic the fans were plentiful - the Star Wars fans to this day adore the game and successfully use it.

Crazy money was spent on the creation of Call of Duty, which soared to the top of popularity in 2003. It was an outstanding start for the Xbox 360 launch, but a huge success was ahead when the first part, Modern Warfare, saw the light of day. It was so massive that it could even be called a separate franchise.

The same thing happened with the second part, Black Ops. It was the best product from Infinity Ward and MW Activision that they could create in first person.

Even more money was spent on Grand Rheft Auto V, with a $265 million budget. That's nothing, but the game grossed over $6 billion, making it, according to many, the most profitable product in video game history. Apparently, Rockstar was already on to something initially when they set the budget for the upcoming game. While they may have known that GTA V would be a success, it is unlikely that the company was counting on that much money.

The game is duplicated today, its sales fell, but have not stopped to this day, the re-release is the best-selling game for thematic platforms.

Star Citizen is a game that the company is spending people's money to develop. Yes, it is the crowdfunding that determines the budget of the game, which today is still not closed. Hundreds of millions of dollars - raising the product worldwide through crowdfunding alone. The head of the game is Chris Roberts, who devoted his whole career to the game industry, is the creator of Wing Commander, and his game Star Citizen has every chance to become the most popular game in the history of video games.

According to the latest figures for 2021, more than $300 million has already been spent on the game. There is no doubt that the figure is constantly growing. In absentia it can be considered the most expensive game in the world, as it is very likely to safely surpass our leader - the game Cyberpunk 2077.

Well, while Star Citizen is trying to beat its predecessors in the budget, that successfully succeeds, judging by the data as of today, the leading line belongs to Cyberpunk 2077, the budget of which was 315 million dollars. This makes it the most expensive video game in history since the creation of computer games.

Even the Poles from SDPR, who are not used to invest in video game development, have invested a lot of money in the product. The start of the game, was not as confident and successful as the authors would have liked, but there is a chance that the long-term perspective will still bring success to the company and the futuristic action game will climb to the pedestal of fame.

In addition, Cyberpunk 2077 got its leadership position, setting a record for simultaneous online play on Steam, when more than a million users connected. In addition, the number of pre-orders exceeded 8 million copies, which already suggests that the project is waiting for a financial success, which can be seen even before the official release.

The world of gaming industry by leaps and bounds to take the place of the most expensive entertainment for the whole humanity, not counting the real war, of course. However, the struggle between video games and modern Hollywood action movies continues - they are successfully fighting in the amount of money invested by developers in the budget and the payback amounts of games. The cost of developing said video games exceeds the annual budget of some settlements in Africa, and what else is to come..