Court filings spotted by Game File have revealed that Activision Blizzard spent almost $1.8 billion developing three Call of Duty titles that went on to sell a combined 114 million units worldwide.
Activision’s current head of creative on the Call of Duty series, Patrick Kelly, disclosed the information to a court in California in December 2024 in response to a lawsuit filed against the company last May.
The lawsuit alleges links between a school shooting that took place in Uvalde, Texas, and the Call of Duty franchise. It claims the perpetrator was influenced to commit violent acts after playing the action series, leading to the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two adults.
Kelly shared the development costs for the three title the shooter allegedly played to provide context to the court as to how the franchise is produced and operates, allowing Activision’s legal team to reference that information during proceedings.
In doing so, he revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops III cost $450 million to develop across its entire lifecycle. It went on to sell 43 million copies after debuting in 2015.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was developed over “several years” to the tune of $640 million and sold 41 million copies after launching in 2019.
2020 release Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War incurred development costs of $700 million across its entire lifecycle and sold 30 million copies.
It’s important to reiterate those figures encompass lifetime development costs for each title, which often includes years of robust post-launch support. As noted by Game File, however, they don’t include marketing costs, which can represent a notable outlay in their own right.
“Sustainability” and triple-A game development
The game industry continues to reckon with the burgeoning cost of triple-A development amid a wave of layoffs and studio closures that has impacted workers at major players like Microsoft, Sony, EA, Embracer, Take-Two, and more.
Massive development costs can skew the definition of success, calling into question what the word ‘sustainability’ (which is so often thrown around by execs when announcing mass layoffs) actually means in the current, increasingly fraught, climate.
Although triple-A budgets are generally kept under lock and key, we have gleaned some other notable figures in recent years. In 2023, CD Projekt Red told investors it spent $63 million developing Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty. That’s after it spent around $300 million producing the original title–55 percent of which accounted for “direct development costs.”
Court documents submitted by Sony during the Microsoft v. FTC trial also proved illuminating. Those filings showed the six-year development of The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million. The platform holder also spent around $212 million developing Horizon Forbidden West over the span of five years.
Last year, Game Developer spoke to a number of developers about why it’s becoming so expensive to make video games in the United States (where titles like Call of Duty are made) and how studios in the region can perhaps course correct.