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The Witcher 3's budget was $32 million (120M Zloty) plus $35 million in marketing
- Thread starter boskee
- Start date
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
I wish we saw budgets for more ges. I like seeing these statistics.
My sides... are in orbit!
stan423321
Member
I can't say I would want that to happen in principle, but wow indeed.
I work as a Junior Java Developer and I get a monthly salary of 2000$. More experienced devs can easily earn 4000-5000$ monthly. The thing is, those amounts are only relevant when it comes to enterprise developers in corporate environments. Game devs earn significantly less (on average). In 2013 the Polish GameDev Facebook page published an infographic that gathered many statistics related to Polish gamedev salaries.
The most important parts are the pairs of bar charts. In each pair the top one represents monthly net salary in relation to years of experience and the bottom - monthly net salary in relation to the company size. All amount are in PLN.
EDIT: Slightly beaten.
ScatheZombie
Member
This guy, lol.
So, first, game developer salaries for US, Canada and Japan are relatively close. Poland is not. A Polish developer will make between 1/2 and 1/3 what a US, Canadian, or Japanese developer would make. If a developer for EA or Ubisoft makes $80k, their CDPR equivalent is maybe making $40k.
Second, you need 300+ development teams when you need to put out multiplatform, AAA yearly franchises with development cycles that are less than 24 months, sometimes less than 18. The Witcher 3 was in development for a little over 3 years. And CDPR has a staff just over 200 people anyway.
And, LOL, you think executives make $150-200k a year? There are Leads (and rarely Seniors) that make that much. On top of Leads, you have Directors, and on top of Directors you have corporate executives. The people with a C-title (CEO, CFO, CTO) or P-title (President, VP, SVP) are making $500k+ at most major companies, dude.
Many of those 4 million sales would be at less than $60 because of sales and regional pricing. Also, they don't get the entire $60 you spent on the game. Steam for example takes like a 30% cut, and I'd imagine physical retail might be similar.
So how big of a deal is the Witcher 3 in Poland? It is like the biggest cultural export right now, and kinda the only piece of media I'm exposed to from my "homeland" besides the terrible soap operas my mom watches.
I remember a bunch of my cousins being huge fans when I went there, although I'd imagine most of the older generation don't really care much.
ArkhamFantasy
Member
Call of duties marketing is like 5x more than the actual game.
CarbonFire
Member
It would have been way cheaper had they done all their advertising in Poland
$35 million for marketing isn't even that big of a budget when you're talking about a AAA game releasing on multiple platforms.
silvermember
Banned
Salary different doesn't take fuly into account, company cost per employee. The cost per employee is usually 1.5 times higher than the salary.
In the U.S employees properly get insurances, 401k or IRA and so that usually moves up the cost per employee significantly higher than the salary.
Example before GM went backrupt although their employees earned 80k, the actual cost per employee was 120k.
In the U.S employees properly get insurances, 401k or IRA and so that usually moves up the cost per employee significantly higher than the salary.
Example before GM went backrupt although their employees earned 80k, the actual cost per employee was 120k.
There is already a lot of outsourcing of work in games development.
Also, in the US and other developed countries there are often cultural subsidies and tax breaks for developers.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Really interesting, thanks for posting OP. Don't see this kind of information often and I always find it intriguing to see how much games cost to develop and market. No doubt this would have been about twice as much if it had been somewhere like the UK or NA.
CosmicQueso
Member
You think it hasn't already? Crash is perhaps too strong a word, but the amount of consolidation and outsourcing that's taken place over the last 5 years is already complete. There are very few places to go to consolidate further.
m_shortpants
Member
The good thing is that the marginal cost of selling digital is 0, so that's why digital sales usually have crazy prices. Unless they pay for server costs on top of the steam cut.
blueteainfusion
Member
Guys... I think this article is either misleading or simply wrong, because this kind of sum is rather astronomical if true.
Back in 2013 (or early 2014) the estimated cost of the whole production (including marketing) was 110 millions PLN, 45 of which was supposed to be the development itself.. The game was originally planned to come out in September/October of 2014. I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that this cost tripled in half a year? Where would they even get this kind of money, especially since all of the marketing deals were already in place? Would they even need it, since the huge bulk of the game's development was done by the end of 2014? Sure, there were things to polish and probably some minor features added/altered, but no fucking way that the delays cost 80 million PLN. They wouldn't delay it, if that was the case - or there would be no downgrades, since they would be able to afford building each platform separately.
The article states that the production cost was over 120 million PLN and that sounds reasonable, even if still very high for Polish standards. Marketing has to be included, or that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.
Back in 2013 (or early 2014) the estimated cost of the whole production (including marketing) was 110 millions PLN, 45 of which was supposed to be the development itself.. The game was originally planned to come out in September/October of 2014. I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that this cost tripled in half a year? Where would they even get this kind of money, especially since all of the marketing deals were already in place? Would they even need it, since the huge bulk of the game's development was done by the end of 2014? Sure, there were things to polish and probably some minor features added/altered, but no fucking way that the delays cost 80 million PLN. They wouldn't delay it, if that was the case - or there would be no downgrades, since they would be able to afford building each platform separately.
The article states that the production cost was over 120 million PLN and that sounds reasonable, even if still very high for Polish standards. Marketing has to be included, or that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.
For physical retail they're getting less than 30% per copy sold, depending on how the game is published. 70% of that money goes elsewhere.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Wow I remember when 10 million was a lot of money when it comes to games. 67 million seems like a lot to me. I bet that cg trailer was expensive.
0. Only some kind of European Union donations for a new equipment.
1) Poland it's not so cheap as you think. Especially in Warsaw.
2) 1/3 dev team is a "senior/lead" foreigners. You really think they leave well paid jobs and go to Poland to work for "80% less money"? No way. CDPR pays quite well, a lot lot more than average salary in Poland. There is a lot of ppl with 5-8k per month.
Ps. I've made this infographic above - I know sth about this
Haha, yup
hi Polish Gaf, thanks for the cool games and drm free services
John Bender
Banned
Dat marketing budget......
You could easily make another The Witcher game with that money.
Unbelievable....
You could easily make another The Witcher game with that money.
Unbelievable....
My guess in another thread wasn't too far off, I highballed the dev costs and lowballed the marketing by a bit , this is pretty impressive for a game that cost "just" 40 million (rounding up here).
Here's hoping it's sales success continues, it deserves all of it, might just be one of my favorite games ever. Also yes, it has sold 4 million copies so far but every retail sale at let's just say 60 USD (only the console version is that price) loses 10$ a copy for licensing (which is then paid to MS and Sony) and of the 50 USD that remains , it costs about 5$ to produce and ship that disc in it's case , then you've got 45$ left and the retailer gets about 15$ of that.
So PS4 / XB1 copies will generate at least 30$ but here's thing , the console versions were published by warner brothers and in exchange for paying for marketing(as well as financing the console ports) I imagine 100% of those profits go to WB first with perhaps a small amount trickling down to CDPR once WB has gained whatever profit they wanted off of their own investment (30+ million marketing budget and probably 10-15 million to finance the console ports = 45 million dollars of revenue minimum).
Now I'm assuming that PC sales , especially digital ones send 100% of their profits directly to CDPR, but the game also costs less on computer- that console royalty fee is gone and there's no disc cost so the game was being sold with those removed - 45$ or even less in some cases. On steam that still translates into 30$ of revenue per copy sold because 15$ of that goes to valve. On GOG you could argue that 100% of witcher 3's sales goes to CDPR but they have to factor in the cost of maintaining their digital store to sell it there as well.
Either way, everyone will be seeing a return on their investment in this game but it won't be anything truly substantial for another year or 2 after a round of price reductions. Also, the retail market can be volatile for entertainment products like games because although they are priced at 60$ in the hope of 30$ getting back to the publisher , in the long term , retail discounts that cut prices down to say even 40 bucks - those take all of that deduction off the publishers bottom line. So when you buy a 40$ copy of witcher 3 in 6 months ? yeah WB is only getting 10$ of that. Pay 30 or less and you're really only saving them having to pay to ship unsold games back to a warehouse.
Of course, as we also already know - Witcher 3 has 2 planned expansions - from their descriptions they sound like regions with quests and such that are at least the size of any single one of the 3 main regions in witcher 3. These are being sold for 20$ and although they too have development costs , it's nothing near as high as the full game was which means that the people out there who do buy the game cheaply in 6 months might not be making anyone money really but if they buy it and like it then buy some DLC ? well now a small amount of profit is earned.
By the end of next year when we'll inevitably see the release of Witcher 3 Game of the Forever edition for 50$ - about 100 million dollars will likely have been invested in the product , it's already sold 4 million and I can see it selling another 2-3 million over the next 18 months without too much trouble , add even 2-3 million sales for seasons passes and DLC and it's not hard to fathom 200 million + being pocketed here.
I'll just mirror my statement from my older post - here's hoping this encourages WB to invest more in CDPR so cyberpunk can be achieve whatever ambitious goals CDPR has for it.
Here's hoping it's sales success continues, it deserves all of it, might just be one of my favorite games ever. Also yes, it has sold 4 million copies so far but every retail sale at let's just say 60 USD (only the console version is that price) loses 10$ a copy for licensing (which is then paid to MS and Sony) and of the 50 USD that remains , it costs about 5$ to produce and ship that disc in it's case , then you've got 45$ left and the retailer gets about 15$ of that.
So PS4 / XB1 copies will generate at least 30$ but here's thing , the console versions were published by warner brothers and in exchange for paying for marketing(as well as financing the console ports) I imagine 100% of those profits go to WB first with perhaps a small amount trickling down to CDPR once WB has gained whatever profit they wanted off of their own investment (30+ million marketing budget and probably 10-15 million to finance the console ports = 45 million dollars of revenue minimum).
Now I'm assuming that PC sales , especially digital ones send 100% of their profits directly to CDPR, but the game also costs less on computer- that console royalty fee is gone and there's no disc cost so the game was being sold with those removed - 45$ or even less in some cases. On steam that still translates into 30$ of revenue per copy sold because 15$ of that goes to valve. On GOG you could argue that 100% of witcher 3's sales goes to CDPR but they have to factor in the cost of maintaining their digital store to sell it there as well.
Either way, everyone will be seeing a return on their investment in this game but it won't be anything truly substantial for another year or 2 after a round of price reductions. Also, the retail market can be volatile for entertainment products like games because although they are priced at 60$ in the hope of 30$ getting back to the publisher , in the long term , retail discounts that cut prices down to say even 40 bucks - those take all of that deduction off the publishers bottom line. So when you buy a 40$ copy of witcher 3 in 6 months ? yeah WB is only getting 10$ of that. Pay 30 or less and you're really only saving them having to pay to ship unsold games back to a warehouse.
Of course, as we also already know - Witcher 3 has 2 planned expansions - from their descriptions they sound like regions with quests and such that are at least the size of any single one of the 3 main regions in witcher 3. These are being sold for 20$ and although they too have development costs , it's nothing near as high as the full game was which means that the people out there who do buy the game cheaply in 6 months might not be making anyone money really but if they buy it and like it then buy some DLC ? well now a small amount of profit is earned.
By the end of next year when we'll inevitably see the release of Witcher 3 Game of the Forever edition for 50$ - about 100 million dollars will likely have been invested in the product , it's already sold 4 million and I can see it selling another 2-3 million over the next 18 months without too much trouble , add even 2-3 million sales for seasons passes and DLC and it's not hard to fathom 200 million + being pocketed here.
I'll just mirror my statement from my older post - here's hoping this encourages WB to invest more in CDPR so cyberpunk can be achieve whatever ambitious goals CDPR has for it.
Not paying their employees peanuts to work 80 hours a week.
I guess I haven't put in more than 100 hours, as you've just informed me that it's unplayable. Get the fuck out of here with your exaggerated bullshit post.
Chobel
Member
I think he meant things will get worse for AAA development in US.
AHA-Lambda
Member
It isn't simply delays, but they also had to bring in the Cyberpunk team. Their consecutive 2-team crumbled after a point.
Edit: the first estimated budget was disclosed June 2013.
Alcoholikaust
Member
Incredible.
Skellig Gra
Member
Not surprised. It's Poland. Same exact game made in the US with same resourcing would be much much higher.
Yes, but people must know that your game exists and, more importantly, they must want to buy it and play it.
But then no one outside of enthusiasts would buy them and the studio would shut its doors. Start believing.
If you buy premium, i.e. expensive ad time, it's gonna add up quick.
When I was working at THQ, I remember a few convos about how we needed to make more games similar to Metro rather than Space Marine, along with allocate more of the marketing towards Metro since the budget for Metro was dramatically lower due to being made in Ukraine and the ROI would be better.
This is bleeding edge AAA. Had months of crunch and everything.
Just in Poland instead of the U.S.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Yep. We all just need to move to Poland.
Yep just move development out of the US like they are do with the VFX industry.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Bingo.
Of course, marketing would not save any game or every single marketing campaing will work the same way. CDPR and its publishers were smart in how promote the game globally.