School shooting lawsuit reveals that Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million, the highest development cost yet reported by a publisher
The development of 2020 FPS Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million, making it the most expensive video game project yet reported. That’s according to a court filing reviewed by Stephen Totilo’s Game File (paywalled) in which Call Of Duty creative head Patrick Kelly divulged the budgets of three games in the series.
These are 2015’s Black Ops 3 (“over $450 million”), 2019’s Modern Warfare (“over $640 million”), and the aforementioned Cold War. The filing also contained sales figures: Black Ops 3 has sold 43 million copies, Modern Warfare 41 million, and Cold War 30 million. These are specified by Kelly to be "development costs", so presumably don't include marketing, though there's no full breakdown.
There have been higher external estimates for ongoing development of a video game, notably Genshin Impact, but this is by far the highest figure from an internal source. For comparison, Totilo points to court documents from 2023 which revealed $212 and $220 million budgets for Horizon: Forbidden West and The Last Of Us Part 2, respectively.
The information, says Game File, is based on a declaration from Kelly filed to a court in California on 23rd December, and is part of Activision’s response to a lawsuit filed against the company last May regarding a 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. The lawsuit against Activision also blames Facebook owner Meta, alleging that the two companies “knowingly exposed” the shooter to the weapon he used.
As reported by Game File, Activision last year denied any connection between games and gun violence, while also expressing sympathy for the victims. In October of 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported on a previously undisclosed product placement deal between Call Of Duty and rifle manufacturer Remington.
To return to the figures themselves: they’re absurd, yes. It's a shame we don't have a proper breakdown of the costs by development discipline. Is most of the money going toward tuning up the art and
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