CDPR has spent over $121 million on Cyberpunk 2077's development

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CD Projekt Red Has Invested Over $121 Million On Cyberpunk 2077's Development - Gameffine

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED has revealed that they have invested over $121 million on developing the epic science-fiction title as well as other unannounced projects. We all knew that the development of Cyberpunk …

gameffine.com

• Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED has revealed that they have invested over $121 million on developing the epic science-fiction title as well as other unannounced projects.
• In a new corporate report, the development studio stated that they have spent over 448.513 PLN ($121.09 million) developing Cyberpunk 2077 as well as some other unannounced projects.
• Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One on November 19, 2020. It will also be coming to Xbox Series X and PS5 as free upgrades for those who bought the current-gen versions.
• The next Night City Wire event will be aired at the Tokyo Game Show 2020.

 

[Walter Matthau]

Halo Infinite cost 4x as much so it’s guaranteed to be 4x better

 

[jigglet]

“as well as other unannounced projects.”

Misleading much?

EDIT: This shouldn't be a pissing contest. Say the real number was under $100m, then that's impressive for 7 years of development. That's a well managed software engineer project. You have to have a very clear vision in order to spend that much time with that many engineers and keep costs under $100m. I was in a 6 man team working on a big ERP implementation and we struggled to keep costs under $10 million within a 3 year period (for those of you who don't work in software, you have no idea how costs can blow out). $100m says to me they didn't fart around with aborted visions and misdirected ideas that were scrapped and reworked. It says to me they're a lean, focused company. No one wants to hear about a $500m budget, that tells me it's dysfunctional as fuck.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I suppose they will make it back on day 1.

 

[Masterbrew]

“as well as other unannounced projects.”

Misleading much?

indeed 2/3 of that amount might be Witcher 4

 

[Fuz]

It's not that much.

 

[M1chl]

That's a shitton of money for eastern block. Kingdom Come Deliverance cost 400m CZK which is like 20m USD.... And it was by far the biggest Czech project in entertainment industry...

Also people being happy with the budget, just show that Slav do things better™

 

[LOLCats]

they are gonna be so rich if 2077 is a hit.

 

[Compsiox]

That's not even bad

 

[Punished Miku]

It would be a lot more than that if it was made in the west.

They'll probably make it all back and be profitable on day 1. Crazy how that works.

 

[godhandiscen]

That’s little. I wonder what the budget for Halo Infinite is nowadays.

 

[Shmunter]

Lots more $ to reach the pinnacle......Craig

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

It's not $127 million just for Cyberpunk but for all their projects put together.

 

[Kenpachii]

 

[Pop]

they are gonna be so rich if 2077 is a hit.

I would say it's a guarantee

 

[FeiRR]

That's a lot of money considering that labour cost in Poland is at least half or even less than in western countries.

 

[Tesseract]

lotta dosh, hl2 was around 40 mil in 2003

grats to the team

 

[Desaccorde]

They will make billions out of this franchise and I assume this might be in the first week considering RDR2 did $725 million in three days. Cyberpunk 2077 hyped so much that nearly every gamer will try to play that.

Add that to the Multiplayer update that will be developed and implemented later with MTXs. That will be a turning point for CDPR.

So, it's basically nothing and incredible financial success for the company. Not so much for the employees it seems because there is no way they would spend this less if they weren't located in Eastern Europe.

 

[spons]

who knows, they probably already got this amount of money in pre-orders, if not the microsecond after the actual launch of this game if the reviews are positive.

 

[vkbest]

And people asking here ditch the current gen version lol

 

[DeaDPooL_jlp]

And I shall spend $700 for a 3080 so I can play it in all its glory.

 

[CrysisFreak]

But will it have fully modelled sex scene in first person with manual undressing?

 

[Vaelka]

'' as well as other unannounced projects ''

Isn't the title misleading?
I wonder if marketing is accounted for here too because marketing is usually a massive money sink.

 

[BluRayHiDef]

It's going to sell like N94 face masks.

 

[SF Kosmo]

indeed 2/3 of that amount might be Witcher 4

Highly doubtful Witcher 4 is in anything other than preproduction to be honest. Red tried to split into teams before and fell on their face, and I doubt that the last leg of Cyberpunk's cycle, amid delays and immense pressure, is the time they would pick to start dividing their attentions again.

To frame that $121 million figure, though, Witcher 3 supposedly had a budget of $81 million but at least half of that was marketing. I don't think this $121 million includes any marketing, so this could easily have triple the budget of Witcher 3, which was itself a massive game.

Witcher 3 probably would have cost more than double that to develop at an American or Western European studio. If that proportion holds (which is a big assumption I guess) this could be a game on the scale of a GTA5 or bigger.

 

[Kenpachii]

Rumors are they had to buy 2 titan ampere cards to test there game on, which in total costed them 120 mllion.

So total game budget was 1 million

 

[GymWolf]

It's not that much if we consider the scope, gta5 costed far more and i think that tlou2 is pretty close.

rdr2 is probably gonna be the game with the biggest budget ever for this gen.

 

[Sleepwalker]

That's only about 1/4 Craig, not bad at all. Wonder what they could do if they could spend a full Craig or 2

 

[molasar]

Not so much for the employees it seems because there is no way they would spend this less if they weren't located in Eastern Europe.

More like Central Europe.

 

[Bryank75]

That is the benefit of having a developer in a country where the minimum wage is 523 euro and the cost of living, property etc are much lower than typical game development hotspots.

Not saying they are paid minimum wage but it definitely factors into the costs, especially with lower grade employees.... junior artists etc.

PlayStation should have studios in similar areas and Chiiiina!

 

[Oppoi]

From the first teaser to now that money doesn't really fill me with confidence. I'd love to get into that hype but this could go either way...

 

[skneogaf]

I will give them money in return as I can't wait for the game.

 

[eot]

It's not that much.

They're an independent studio

 

[Bartski]

well, they just announced close to 100 MIL $ in revenue in the first half of 2020 alone so that's peanuts.

 

[Self]

It's not $127 million just for Cyberpunk but for all their projects put together.

Cheap ass europeans.

 

[SF Kosmo]

They're an independent studio

By what metric? They're the largest game developer in Europe, they're publicly traded, they make AAA games...

They built themselves up from indie outsider status, sure, but they're far past being able to be called indie at this point.

 

[rofif]

 

[SF Kosmo]

That is the benefit of having a developer in a country where the minimum wage is 523 euro and the cost of living, property etc are much lower than typical game development hotspots.

Not saying they are paid minimum wage but it definitely factors into the costs, especially with lower grade employees.... junior artists etc.

PlayStation should have studios in similar areas and Chiiiina!

Yes, but CDPR is probably the only studio like that that also manages to put out critically acclaimed AAA games. Usually when you have developers based in sort of "second world" areas you get what you pay for to some extent.

You gotta give a lot of props to building a real AAA shop in a country that had no real game development when they were founded.

 

[The Gamerlorian]

CDPR will make all that back day 1 and more it will probably do like 250 million - 500 million in like 24-48 hours.

 

[Gamer79]

GTA 5 spent over $250 million and was gawked at. Take 2 has made well over 20x that back. There is an old saying it business, "to make money, you have to spend money."

I just hope the game isn't being rushed and filled with glitches. Going by modern standards, it probably will and we will have to wait for a patch to fix the issues. Hopeful for this game but cautious.

 

[EviLore]

Witcher 2: $10.3 million
Witcher 3: $81 million

 

[Bryank75]

Yes, but CDPR is probably the only studio like that that also manages to put out critically acclaimed AAA games. Usually when you have developers based in sort of "second world" areas you get what you pay for to some extent.

You gotta give a lot of props to building a real AAA shop in a country that had no real game development when they were founded.

In general I've found Polish people take massive pride in their work and I'm sure they have lots of art schools there, they obviously hired in talent to fill areas they could not get people locally but it seems like Poland has a blossoming game development scene.

I'm excited to see what is produced there in the future.

 

[namekuseijin]

I fear CDPR will be in for the harsh reality that companies like Bethesda and Rockstar already noticed: kids don't give a damn to single-player games anymore...

 

[SF Kosmo]

In general I've found Polish people take massive pride in their work and I'm sure they have lots of art schools there, they obviously hired in talent to fill areas they could not get people locally but it seems like Poland has a blossoming game development scene.

I'm excited to see what is produced there in the future.

Yeah Poland has a real game dev industry now, but when CDPR was founded? It was considered bold just to localize a game in Polish. They saw something no one else did at the time. People Can Fly and Metropolis deserve credit too, they were the first to get international success with homegrown titles.

 

[Arun1910]

Misleading title. Op can't read.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Well I hope some of that $120 million went to hiring more women to work on the game otherwise they might hear from Anita!

 

[Hendrick's]

That's a shitton of money for eastern block. Kingdom Come Deliverance cost 400m CZK which is like 20m USD.... And it was by far the biggest Czech project in entertainment industry...

Also people being happy with the budget, just show that Slav do things better™

That game desperately needed another 20m.

 

[kingpotato]

Yes, but CDPR is probably the only studio like that that also manages to put out critically acclaimed AAA games. Usually when you have developers based in sort of "second world" areas you get what you pay for to some extent.

You gotta give a lot of props to building a real AAA shop in a country that had no real game development when they were founded.

Poland has over half a billion USD in GDP and have a decent number of software shops there. In the games industry, in addition to CDPR, they have Bloober Team (The Medium), Flying Wild Hog (Shadow Warrior series), People Can Fly (Bulletstorm, Gears of War: Judgement, Outriders), Techland (Dying Light, Dead Island), and other smaller studios. If you look back to when CDPR was founded you can find at least a half a dozen other studios with as many games produced around that time.

 

[M1chl]

That game desperately needed another 20m.

No not really, it's in pretty good shape. And since I was late in the development on the Q/A team, I feel kind of hurt. I think it's the game, which shows environment really close to what it is in real world, best forest in the games ever and I am proud of the team what they...we did.

Also you know that money is not everything, you also need to have shit on time. This game with it's retail packaging or Kickstarter niceties basically employes people thought the republic and it was amazing thing to see.

It's not perfect by any means, but I am humbled to be part of that.

You may disagree or you might play game "too early" and that's fine, it's just my perspective.

 

[Bartski]

Yeah Poland has a real game dev industry now, but when CDPR was founded? It was considered bold just to localize a game in Polish. They saw something no one else did at the time. People Can Fly and Metropolis deserve credit too, they were the first to get international success with homegrown titles.

CDPR was founded by two dudes that knew each other from pirating floppies on a computer fair that had this wild idea to enter the market of legal videogame sales shortly after the first Intellectual Property protection law was introduced in 1994. The first thing they did is release "Baldur's Gate" fully localized in polish using the latest cutting edge technology of a CD-ROM, hence the name.