The Impact of Skyrocketing Game Game Development Costs - Part 2: What's Diving Up Costs, Thoughts from Across the Industry

At last I am back with Part 2, just took a little longer to find time to write this up than I thought.? Almost as long as it’s taken to release Part 2 of the latest Cobra Kai season, wowza was that a long wait. ? If you need a refresher on Part 1, feel free to re-visit the examples of skyrocketing game development costs.? Now, we’ve covered the numbers in Part 1 with countless examples showing game development costs increasing, but have not yet covered the why. Well, aside from briefly mentioning that more people are needed and that people are more expensive due to high inflation in many countries.??

Actually, I need to go off topic again and re-visit the world of data. I recently presented at GamesBeat Next in San Francisco and was reminded that I forgot to include the data I shared on global game revenue and player hours—oops, my bad! These are just two of the reasons why it’s more difficult for game developers to swallow the rising cost of development: a) games industry revenue growth has slowed, and b) people are playing fewer games for fewer hours.??

The games industry market size saw rapid growth in 2020 (+24%) as people spent most of their time at home due to the pandemic. This is a time when we saw people playing, socializing, watching, and interacting in games more than ever before. Remember all the buzz about the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? This is the perfect example of more people spending more time in games. Over 27.7 million unique players participated live 45.8 million times across the 5 events. Not only that, but sources estimate that the concert grossed about $20 million including online merchandise sales - rather impressive if I don’t say so myself.? To put that in perspective, Scott’s Astroworld tour generated about $1.7 million each concert.

After 2020, growth started to slow until the point that it actually saw a -5.1% contraction in 2022! Not at all what we expected! The games industry is now estimated to hit $187.7 billion in 2024. That’s $5 billion less than in 2021!? Humm, might have over-used exclamation marks in that paragraph, but it is quite shocking based on all the positive growth forecasts we saw in 2021. Back then, NewZoo forecasted that games industry revenue would surpass $200 billion by 2023.

Not only has growth slowed, but we're also seeing people play games for fewer hours. In 2020, U.S. gamers averaged almost 15 hours of gameplay per week. I haven’t come across any credible sources for this data in 2023 and 2024, but I've read reports suggesting it dropped to as low as 9 hours in 2023. If you stumble on any reliable data for recent years, send it my way—I’d love to update my charts with the latest data.?

So, back to the topic of why.? During the 2024 XDS event in Vancouver, some of the largest game developers and service providers in the world gathered to provide their thoughts on what is driving up game costs in their studios. What follows is a summary from over 30 mid- to large-sized developers. To ensure an open and honest conversation on the topic, anonymity was promised to the studios sharing their insights. I have tried to organize these into a few high-level categories.

Complexity

• More content is needed to compete and keep players entertained (e.g., more side quests, more playable characters, more content, etc).
• Games are increasingly more complicated to develop, requiring more modes and features than ever before.
• Marketing costs are growing to reach players.
• Worlds have to be larger and more complex than ever before.
• A huge volume of content is needed and expected at launch.
• It takes longer to create assets now, as improvements in game tech and engines mean more assets need to be interactive, destructible, and bumpable.?
• Games need to be on more platforms than ever to reach a diverse player base.
• Game asset reuse is more challenging because of changes in tools and leaps in fidelity.?

Market Pressures

• AAA games need to be better to compete with the quality and scale of new mobile games.
• AAA games are taking longer to develop as they must continually adapt to quickly changing market dynamics.
• More preparation is needed than ever before to test and research the market before starting development.
• Games are delayed due to a crowded marketplace, but content creation continues.?
• Feedback comes in faster than ever, and there is an overwhelming amount of feedback from players as soon as a preview trailer is launched.?
• Many more games are sequels, and there's always pressure for them to be bigger than the previous titles, with more features.??

Talent

• Increased competition for talent in the marketplace, with new players entering the gaming space.
• Studios let talent costs and dev team growth spiral out of control during COVID, when spending was high, and player counts were increasing.
• As games become more complex, it takes longer to ramp up new hires,? especially when using a proprietary game engine.
• People are kept on teams for longer to debug and polish post-launch.
• Bigger compensation packages are being offered to top talent to drive innovation.? However, other team members, such as artists, are now asking for more due to visible pay disparity in some locations like California.?
• More specialized talent is needed on game teams and these often come at a premium.
• Non-games companies, particularly big tech companies that need game talent, are pushing up salaries as they pay significantly more than traditional game developers.?

Exec Pressure

• No clear direction from executives, who provide broad input that game teams have to interpret (and sometimes get it wrong).
• Publishers have the belief that more content is needed when it's not always the case.
• Executives often give feedback that requires significant rework, leading to rebuilding large parts of the game.
• Executives are questioning the vision of games more than ever before, and combined with financial pressures, this can slow down decision-making.?
• Pursuit of excessive quality and bigger games, but often not rooted in a why.

Now, this is simply a list of what people are seeing at their studios—a huge list covering a lot of different reasons. The truth is that bringing down the skyrocketing costs of game development is not a simple task, as each studio needs to focus on a different issue.??

We weren’t able to discuss the prevalence of each issue across all studios to see which are limited to one individual developer versus those that are common across multiple developers. So, no top 5’s or top 10’s in this article, just a list for you to read through and ponder.? I will, however, offer some evidence of trends I commonly observe during my morning coffee while reading industry news.?

The easiest trend to find signals for is game delays, which increase the cost by keeping the full development team working on the game for longer. Here are just a few examples from the past year:

Chasing Polish to Meet Player Expectations

• Assassin's Creed Shadows from Ubisoft was pushed from a November 2024 release to February 2025, with the studio saying, “we need more time to polish and refine the experience, pushing further some of our key features.”
• The Alters from 11 Bit Studios was delayed from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 due to the team needing more time to finish the game with the quality they expected.
• Football Manager 25 from Sega has been delayed from November 2024 to March 2025 to “meet the quality standards and player expectations.”
• Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake has been delayed from January 2021 to 2026. The reason cited is “to deliver a remake that feels fresh while remaining faithful to the original."
• Replaced from Sad Cat has been pushed to 2025, with the original launch date set in 2022. The studio cited they need "more time to ensure we meet the high standards we've set for ourselves and to meet the expectations of our fans.”
• Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco delayed Little Nightmare 3, saying “more time is needed to give the game the car and love it deserves as quality is top priority.”
• Icarus from RocketWerkz is delayed 3 months so the team can spend more time ensuring "the game is the best it can be for our players."

Delays Due to Crowded Marketplace

• Avowed from Obsidian, one of the most anticipated Xbox releases of 2024, was pushed from a Fall 2024 release to February 2025 because of too many games being launched at the same time.
• Don’t Nod delayed Lost Records: Bloom & Rage to avoid clashing with the Life is Strange sequel.

In fact, there is a wide range of factors leading to game delays and teams working on games for longer. In total, I came across 23 different reasons cited in press releases. I’ve rolled those up into the following 8 reasons.

Each year, the number of delays is increasing, which means each of these games is experiencing higher-than-anticipated game development costs before the studios see a return. Bets are still being placed whether the number of delays in 2024 will exceed those in 2023. The data below only covers delays up to October 23, 2024.

I could keep going with signals tied to some of the other reasons cited, but this article is already getting a bit long, and I don’t want it to be prescribed as a cure for insomnia. So as a simple conclusion - game development costs are skyrocketing and studios are reporting a plethora of different reasons contributing to these increased costs.? Alongside the obvious ones of more people needed on development teams and higher salaries, we are also seeing an increasing number of games delayed.? These delays are driving up costs as large teams continue to build and polish new features, maps, and content to try and compete in a crowded marketplace where people play fewer titles.

Signing off until Part 3, where I’ll tie all of this together with some solutions suggested at the various conferences I’ve presented this material.??

If you missed all the great data in Part 1, check it out here —> https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/impact-skyrocketing-game-development-costs-external-jason-harris-juwcc/