The priciest games ever made, ranked by total budget — development plus marketing. Next to each: the dev/marketing split where disclosed, copies sold, and the break-even in copies at ~$40 net each. Then the second half of the page: what each launch did to the owner's stock — the announcement, the leak or delay, launch week, and the quarter after.
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games tracked
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priciest game
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median budget
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costliest flop
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worst launch crash
The leaderboard
One row per game, ranked by total reported budget in nominal dollars (not inflation-adjusted). Official = filings, reports or court disclosures; analyst = a named firm; press = outlet estimate, treat with care. Break-even = budget ÷ ~$40 net per copy — live-service games (GTA Online, Genshin, Monopoly Go) earn far beyond unit sales. The verdict tag calls each game Profitable, a Flop, Unclear or TBD — filter by outcome with the chips. Hover a row for the full story.
Figures
Status
Outcome
#Game & studio
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Best game for each question
The priciest, the best and worst return per dollar, and the unreleased budgets still growing.
Budgets side by side
Reported budget“+” = live-service budget still growing
What each launch did to the stock
Ten case studies, same four windows: announcement/trailer (buy the rumor), leak/delay (usually negative), launch week (sell the news — quality decides), and the quarter after (guidance moves the stock, not reviews). The rule of thumb: impact ≈ game profit ÷ publisher profit — $200M erased ~78% of CD Projekt and ~0% of Sony. Education, not financial advice.
What the numbers say
Frequently Asked Questions
By press estimates, Grand Theft Auto VI at $1–1.5B (Rockstar denied figures above $1.5B but it is still the likely record). By confirmed money spent, Star Citizen + Squadron 42 at $954.6M+ and Monopoly Go! at ~$1B (mostly marketing). Genshin Impact passed $900M including live-service years.
Roughly 12.5M at ~$40 net per $70 copy after platform cuts and refunds. This page shows that math per game — but live-service titles (GTA Online, Genshin, Monopoly Go) earn for years beyond unit sales, while single-player $300M+ games have no such cushion.
Because the market priced in a flawless launch (PLN 443 before release). Buggy console versions, refund offers and Sony delisting the game repriced future earnings: −42% in 11 sessions after the 4 Dec 2020 close, −82% peak-to-trough (Sep 2022). Quality shocks beat sales; it also bounced +52% in Jan 2021 and +89% off the Sep 2022 low.
Usually barely: Take-Two fell 2% on GTA V's record launch day and ignored the record GTA VI trailer. What moves stocks is leaks and delays (GTA VI leak ≈ −6%, Battlefield 2042 delay rumor −5.7%), quality disasters, and guidance cuts (EA −19% on the FC 25 miss). Impact ≈ game profit ÷ publisher profit.
Per dollar: Concord (~$200M, ~25k copies, servers closed in 2 weeks), The Callisto Protocol (~$162M, 2M vs 5M target), Star Wars: The Old Republic ($200M+, halved EA's stock in 2012) and Skull and Bones (~$200M over 11 years). Dead Space 2 sold 4M yet was still deemed a failure — the moment mid-budgets died.
Games caught up: GTA VI ($1B+) costs more than the most expensive films (Avengers: Endgame ~$400M, Pirates: On Stranger Tides ~$379M). The difference is games monetize for a decade (GTA Online, Genshin) while films get one box-office window.