Did Concord REALLY Cost 400 Million Dollars?!

To reiterate here: Staff Month Cost is EVERYTHING not just salary.

Really looking forward to that future video about the eerily familiar idea about revolutionary live service games

That was interessiert, thx

Commenting for algo

I find it absurd that nobody in the gaming industry asks themselves, "Why are we making these massive games that take 6-7 years to make when we can make a smaller, more focused AA game in 2-3 years?" Like, why is this model not the norm?

Is the first two weeks of a video game that big of an indicator on how the game will do? Realizing that the game might be very expensive to run on live servers, I am still surprised that they didn't run the game for a few months to see if it could build an audience. Esp. after spending that much on preproduction.

This was such an enlightening video. Thank you so much for sharing this with us Mark.

Mark what do you think about the new Dragon age? and them cleaning world states, not caring for the old choices we players did make? Also more on promoting agendas than what the game was about (dark fantasy) and whatever it is now...

Man I really wish you'd been in charge of developing The Veilguard.

Game math is fascinating. So many costs you don't think of if you're only thinking of casually. Tho, I do wonder if this game is along the lines of movies that get over funded purely to become a tax write off. Like, when it was acquired, was ever intended to be successful? or was it always intended to get pulled, shelved, and written off?

I am pretty sure cost being 400 million was just a rumor, it's mathematically possible but from what I hear the original source for this number wasn't correct and the budget was half that number. It's still expensive, and there is a discussion to be had there about the pitfalls that live-service games can fall into but I don't buy the 400 million development cost. I feel with the way the internet has treated this game it's very easy to make misinformation about it. And since very few people even played, nobody is going to question because it goes well with our biases about it.

what do you think about all the Veilguard drama

I think most can agree it's a huge loss whether it cost 200 million or 400 million. It was extremely costly either way. Hate to say it, but I would very surprised if the studio survives this.

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tbh I can't really imagine this high of a cost considering the utter lack of content the final product had.
The only way I could make sense of the math in my head is if this was a Blizzard Project Titan situation where they had a wholle MMO at some point and salvaged it for parts to create the shooter that we got in the end.
There are 16 characters in this game... like the entire game. and the skins are just color swaps. I just can't imagine a team of this size having such little output.
Its not even a custom engine and Unreal is made for exactly this type of game so I can't imagine them having a lot of struggles with that either.
Even with seattle costs and all that I just can't see this costing more then 200 mil unless sony somehow got swindled into paying another 200 mil for the studio itself.

1. It can
2. It should never
3. We will never know for sure
4. All of the above

I am always surprised when I hear games costing 100s of millions of dollars. Like how could that be?

So, thanks for explaining it. I think it can cost a lot but I am not sure. I don't know much about it. You are the only one I have seen who has been rational about Concord.

Where do you have your citations ??

Your employee count is WAY off, in 2023 at the time of the Sony acquisition Firewalk had nearly 150 employees.

Thanks for providing a perspective that is informed by real experience and knowledge of the industry. The wild speculation by random nobodies who have not spent a single second working in gamedev was getting tiresome.

did inquisition really sell 12 million copies?

I used to wonder why AAA game studios always try to make live-service games, but after seeing the money games like Fortnite and COD bring in, I’m no longer surprised. Especially after realizing that 80% of the most-played games this year are live-service games, it makes more sense to me now. It also made me realize how small social media really if I were to only rely on social media, I’d think the most-played game this year was BG3 or Elden Ring.

Dragon Age Veilguard releases in 30 days :)

Did the same math when this was questioned on Slack. My math said 10k per month, and ended up around 200M, and just doubled that for Marketing, as was the default for napkin math when I worked for EA. (and a number I had seen applied to several projects) - The 100M for the studio also makes sense.

If game development costs are that high, I'm surprised more publishers don't relocate studios out of the West to reduce expenses. Or at least acquire studios in areas with a lower cost of living.

And one last thing: If this is the ONLY game this company releases then yes, absolutely, you need to add the acquisition to the price of this game. You paid X dollars for one game to be made, then that's cost, isn't it?

God video Mark.

Sadly, I think you made some errors.

1) According to MobyGames, there is a total of 1,982 people (1,972 professional roles, 10 thanks) with a total of 1,992 credits involved in making Concord.

2 )We don't know what Sony got Firewalk for, but there was a Series A funding round of $250M in January 2022. So the valuation must have been higher than $100M.

How much of that money ended up in an exec's pocket? When big chunks of money go missing, or are misappropriated, it's usually not the people on the ground level who are responsible. As you said; the team wasn't making $15,000 a month each.

Marketing along is widely considered half the cost of production of a project. So we're really talking about a game that costs 200 million to "develop" but 400 million to sell.

15000 per employee a month is CHEAP. Health Insurance + 100k (which is low balling) salary would already top that number. That doesn't include security, supplies/licenses, location and location management and other expected tech-culture benefits, IT, Servers. Then you're also paying for food, HR, usually bloated outsourcing budgets, etc. Now you got leads, director's etc. Coders make 150 minimum. You should've doubled that number. It's 25k a month, easily. So, now, your team size needs to be half what you thought it was. Now include the end-of-project bonus. Now, include marketing. The cost of laying people off. The cost to give customers refunds. It's a multiplayer game, so that needs servers as well. Now it's not so much a maybe 400mil but a probably.

I mean personally I did "napkin math" and took worded statements that half of the dev cycle was pre-production and the other full-production. Assuming 12 people for the first 3 years and then 5 years full production (just to be more "pestimistic) of 150 people with a median salary of 200,000 USD which is a reasonable assumption in Seattle even if upper end for game dev wages. I got about 157,200,000 Total USD that in total. Now outsourcing adds costs sure but they tend to be worked on around the world with much lower wages than Seattle.

Maybe Game development was just above 200 million USD but can't see much higher?

Colin Moriarty is not really credible, so this rumor doesn't merit any discussion Mark.

The lead design said they had less than a dozen people in the spring of 19 and you're estimating over ten times that much.

In original claim about 400 million it was stated that studio's acquisition wasn't included in that budget. So no, it definitely wasn't

This seems like a case of the legacy talent cashing out by managing to sell one of the few gigacorps their new media start up with big promises. Happening all the time in American tech. All the AI projects are just these: exFAANG people raising funds for a miracle app/device like Rabbit r1.

I believe there was a job posting from Firewalk for a non senior technical designer role that was 180k a year, which was about 10k higher than what Bungie was paying for a senior position of the same role. Not sure what the rates were for other kinds of positions but it suggests that even compared to other devs in the Bellevue area they were spending more on staff.

i doubt this is something that would be in your area of interest to make a video on, but i've been hearing a lot of discourse over the last couple of years about video game costs. how the current cost of making AAA games isnt sustainable anymore, and that something has to change or give. as someone whos worked in the industry as long as you have, im curious what your thoughts on it would be, where you see things heading for the future of game development, and how it could potentially be fixed.

May this be why cdpr opened in Boston? Like is it cheaper there? Is it still smart to have hundreds, sometimes thousands of staff in such expensive places

For me what's even worse is the time. All that work for a game that didn't last a month.

Before watching I'd assumed it was half that number. (watches) Oh. Fascinating.

You have to include the cost of tons of pizzas for the overworked staff. Instead of making a game no one asked for they could've been visionaries feel the market feel the demand and instead of going further.. just put the money in their pockets and go on a long vacation somewhere with lots of sun

It's mind boggling that so many companies just don't seem to be anywhere in actual gamer spaces hearing what they want and what could bring them money. They could have saved themselves 400 million.

Did Concord REALLY Cost 400 Million Dollars? When you do a tax write off, then yes.