The astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision pumped $700 million into Black Ops Cold War alone.First reported by Game File, a court filing submitted by publisher Activision as part of a lawsuit regarding the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, included official word on the development budgets of 2015’s Black Ops 3, 2019’s Modern Warfare, and 2020’s Black Ops Cold War.The court filing also includes updated sales figures for each game, showing the huge revenue Call of Duty brings in through sales alone and before its post-launch monetization.First, some caveats.
The figures detailed below include pre and post-launch development. That is, the cost to develop each game for launch, then the subsequent post-launch development costs associated with feeding the ongoing live service, meaning the development lifecycle of the game.Call of Duty games offer a range of free content following release, including new maps, new weapons, and new cosmetics for use across Multiplayer and Zombies.
Activision monetizes Call of Duty post-launch by selling battle passes, store bundles, and, most recently with Black Ops 6, premium event passes, released in the traditional live service seasonal model in the year each game has to itself before the next Call of Duty comes around.The development of this relentless conveyor belt of content, which often includes high-profile crossovers with popular intellectual property such as Warhammer 40,000 and Squid Game, does not come cheap.Now, onto the figures themselves:To provide context, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2 cost around $220 million, Guerrilla’s Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million, and Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million to develop.
However, these games are not live services, and so post-launch development costs are not necessarily related to the figures as they are with Call of Duty.As Game File noted, these