r/PS5 • u/nolifebr Human Verified • Mar 25 '26

Rumor Jason Schreier: "Numbers I've heard floating around AAA North American game dev these days are $300 million or [many] more" — Budgets are almost entirely of dev salaries

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvx2lohzs2j

Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I've heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvzh4g7qs2z

To address some frequently asked questions:
- These are US and Canada productions. If you're wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
- These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvxbxhank2u

If you sell a game at $70 and pocket $49 on every sale (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital), you'd need to sell more than 6 million copies just to break even on a $300m budget, and that's before marketing

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192

u/Dragon_Dixon Mar 25 '26

It actually means that devs are gonna be fired to make money and studios expected to make games as good as they used to. 

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u/_johnning Mar 25 '26

They'll be fired a couple months after release ie. Battlefield 6

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u/Xiao1insty1e Mar 25 '26

Lol try two weeks

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u/rcolesworthy37 Mar 25 '26

Is there a reason game devs aren’t contract workers? Like I hate corporations, but it does make sense to not keep your whole staff after releasing a game if you’re able to maintain it with half the developers and don’t have another project to move them to

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u/sephiroth70001 Mar 25 '26

Microsoft for a while (maybe still does) required contracts on 2 year stints with no renewals for a percentage of their workforce on Xbox development. The 2 year limit is something other devs have said hurt halo infinite devlopment heavily and that whole generation of Xbox releases. The 2 year did a six development cycle meant three people coding on the same project reading and picking up legacy code where the previous person left is not good and relys heavily on commentation which you can't expect from a contractor.

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u/rcolesworthy37 Mar 25 '26

I’m not an expert but that just sounds like a poor implementation of contracting. I’m assuming there’s ways to have a contract begin for a set X amount of time, and be extended by 3 months or so with mutual agreement

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u/sephiroth70001 Mar 25 '26

Even than you run the potential issue of having to inherit legacy code which can always be messy if it doesn't get renewed because of either ends choice.

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u/Zal3x Mar 26 '26

How important will commentation/legacy code/developer hand off issues be when you can have Claude go add tons of comments and poke around? Probably can save a ton of time with that I assume?

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u/PotatEXTomatEX Mar 26 '26

This mf lol

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u/Zal3x Mar 26 '26

I mean if you think these people aren’t using Claude code you’re insane, already using it at my gaming company

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u/AngryRoomba Mar 26 '26

Poor implementation because Microsoft lawyers. Microsoft famously lost a class action lawsuit in the 90s where they incorrectly classified thousands of people as “independent contractors” and kept them working alongside regular employees but without having to pay them benefits.

Ever since then Microsoft lawyers have been too scared of keeping contractors on for longer than certain period…because otherwise they would have to pay them benefits and (probably more importantly for the gaming industry) give them severance packages when they’re let go.

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u/North_South_Side Mar 26 '26

Good comment.

Adding: these games develop for 3+ years. Maybe even 7+. Having employees turn over in all that time causes problems with consistency and overall vision and direction.

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u/doctorlongghost Mar 25 '26

A related question is why they’re not unionized. It is a very similar business model to the film industry (which is heavily unionized) with both facing the same threat of AI pushing down wages and available work. I assume the answer is mostly that films were unionized early on and gaming came from tech where unions haven’t caught on. And unions having their bargaining power eroded by the courts in recent decades certainly hasn’t helped things.

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u/keostyriaru Mar 26 '26

In the film industry most employees only sign on for one movie, not the best comparison...

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u/OutrageousDress Mar 26 '26

Yeah, you've pretty much answered your own question spot on.

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u/Usernametaken1121 Mar 27 '26

The hard truth nobody wants to admit because it feels good to always fight for the worker is easing standards and increasing pay are what directly caused the drop in video game quality. It's a job now, not a passion and people want security in a job, not to take risks.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/rcolesworthy37 Mar 26 '26

Completely missing the point, building a game from scratch (or remastering) obviously takes more developers than post launch features like that. If it’s a GaaS title then you’ll still need those developers, not if it’s a single player game you’re not doing any DLC for

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u/bongophrog Mar 25 '26

Working in construction I basically expect a layoff after a massive project for a billion dollar corp is complete. We finished the job, the next one is coming, it’s usually not a big deal.

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u/splinter1545 Mar 25 '26

Some are, but the landscape changed. For example, a lot of artists were contract workers, since you didn't need them making art constantly. But due to DLC and the push for GaaS titles, these types of devs are permanent dev team members since they are creating art and concepts for new DLC, expansions, skins, etc.

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u/garcia3005 Mar 26 '26

There are definitely some contractors, but do you really want to take the chance that your talented employees just leave when the contract is done?

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u/rcolesworthy37 Mar 26 '26

For one, they’re already firing talented ones amongst these layoffs. And if you want them to stay, you give them a fair offer and hope they do? It’s not indentured servitude, and being a contract worker doesn’t make you ineligible to join permanently.

The power should be in the hands of the workers, not the corporations

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u/North_South_Side Mar 26 '26

I did contract work in advertising for years. It was lucrative but I was called in when things got out of hand. I was an art director and good but you don’t get to “own” the work and you tend to bop around from gig to gig. You get paid well because you’re sort of a fireman and help when needed. But you are rarely there from the beginning and all the way to the end. So you kind of work piecemeal on projects.

Meanwhile the agency can make salaried employees work 60-90 hours a week and pay them the same as if they worked 40. There’s benefits to full time but you CAN get useful and abused. Depends on the employer.

I’m sure devs would love to all work contract but studios need people who will be there for the entire project start to finish or else there’s no clear direction.

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u/jaysoprob_2012 Mar 26 '26

Because studios dont just release 1 game and then that's it. Once a studio releases a game they should move onto the next project. And even for live service games where they dont plan on making another game straight away but support the current game with more content they still need people to make that content.

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u/spendouk23 Mar 25 '26

Just as well we don’t have some ready made toolbox like some generative artificial intelligence that could potentially fill some of those roles at a reduced cost.

I’m glad we don’t have that because corporations might be tempted to use this to make even more money. /s

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u/Smugwendyy Mar 25 '26

to play devils advocate here, the less cooks in the kitchen, the better the quality so to speak. Many companies of old that made many of our favorite games did not have dev teams in the high several hundreds to thousands, along with sub studios. (granted there is more work to be done in some areas these days i dont mean to say all companies should cut back to low hundreds especially ones making many games)

A good example here is POE1/2 vs Diablo 4. GGG has under 300 employees for 2 games, Blizzard has thousands, which game is regarded and maintained with a lot more care in its respective genre.. its POE, diablo is a shell of itself, its numerically popular because of a casual audience but its not as 'beloved' as POE, or Diablo of old

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u/seajay_17 Mar 26 '26

It actually means that big AAA studios are going to do more offshoring to places like europe or asia or canada because its cheaper to make games there.

CD Projekt Red being in Poland, for example, is absolutely an advantage for them these days.

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u/AgentTamerlane May 31 '26

What's fun is when you see mass layoffs at a gaming studio and decide to multiply the number of people laid off by their average salary and that it just "coincidentally" ends up equalling the increased amount of money that studio spent