Summary
- Activision revealed the budgets for several Call of Duty games in a lawsuit filed after the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.
- Activision executive Patrick Kelly detailed the budgets of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (2019), and Black Ops Cold War.
- These titles set back Activision and its developers $450 million, $640 million, and $700 million respectively, totaling to almost $1.8 billion on three games.
Video game budgets are one of the most closely guarded secrets in the games industry. For some reason, a lot of big studios really don’t want you to know how much it takes to make certain games, and the only way we actually find out is via various leaks or poorly redacted court documents. Looking at you Sony.
That’s how we found out The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West cost a little over $200 million to make, a figure which seemed preposterous at the time. Well, Activision has now come along and blown those figures out of the water, revealing the budgets for three different Call of Duty games in a California lawsuit back in 2024.
Call Of Duty Budgets Have Been Revealed In California Lawsuit
First reported by Game File, Activision executive and Call of Duty head of creative Patrick Kelly detailed the budgets for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (2019), and Black Ops Cold War in a document filed as part of a lawsuit against the company following the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas back in 2022. These three games were listed as the ones that the shooter played the most.
Firstly, Kelly says that Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was in development for three years, and cost Activision and developer Treyarch over $450 million over the game’s lifecycle. We then see a massive leap in budget for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which apparently set Activision and developer Infinity Ward back a whopping $640 million over its lifecycle.
Related
Game Budgets Should Always Be Public
We now know how much The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West cost, but that information shouldn’t be secret anyway.
Lastly, the budget for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was by far the biggest, costing Activision, Treyarch, and Raven Software a whopping $700 million over its lifecycle. Those are some absolutely gigantic budgets, almost definitely the biggest that have ever been made public, and on that trajectory, we can surmise that the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 must have had a budget even greater than those.
It’s worth noting the careful use of the word “lifecycle”, meaning these budgets most likely don’t refer to the money spent up to release. Call of Duty games are obviously supported well after launch, so it’s likely that these budgets include money spent on making post-launch content, possibly even the money spent to secure collaborations. We don’t know for sure, but this is another peek behind the curtain at how expensive game development is.
Taking the plot to the 1980s, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War pits players against Perseus, a mysterious international threat. Bringing back the popular Zombies mode, the new Fireteam mode, and continuing Call of Duty: Warzone, it offers plenty for players to enjoy.