Activision poured nearly $1.8 billion into two Call of Duty: Black Ops games and Modern Warfare development

WTF?! In another illustration of how much bigger the video game market has become compared to the movie industry, the development costs of three Call of Duty games have been discovered. The least expensive was $450 million, while the costliest was an astounding $700 million – and that doesn't include marketing costs.

The development costs of Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (2019), and Black Ops Cold War were part of a court filing seen by Game File.

Starting with 2015's Black Ops 3, the filing states that Treyarch developed the game over three years. The FPS racked up over $450 million in development costs over its lifecycle and has sold 43 million copies.

Next is 2019's Modern Warfare. Infinity Ward's development costs for this one reached over $640 million and it sold 41 million copies.

The last of the three is 2020's Black Ops Cold War. Across the several years it took to make the game, Infinity Ward and Treyarch spent over $700 million. It was also the worst-selling of the trio, shifting 30 million copies.

A quick check on the list of most expensive movies ever made shows that the costliest, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, cost $447 million at the time, less than all three games. The most expensive back-to-back production was the Avengers Infinity War and Endgame films. They cost a total of $1 billion, which is still less than the three CoD titles combined ($1.79 billion). And remember that marketing costs would push the games' budget even higher.

Not all of them were worth the money

Game companies tend to be quite secretive when it comes to their titles' development costs, partly because they don't want people to know how much was wasted on a flop. Skull and Bones, for example, is rumored to have cost more than $850 million.

Right now, 2020's Genshin Impact is above CoD Black Ops Cold War as officially the most expensive game ever at $900 million, but that includes $200 million added annually for ongoing costs – the initial costs were just $100 million.

Almost all of the Monopoly Go! budget went on marketing

It's expected that GTA VI will top the list when it arrives (hopefully) this year with costs exceeding $1 billion.

Patrick Kelly, Activision's current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, was the one who revealed the costs in the lawsuit filed against the company. It related to the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

The suit, filed in May 2024, partially blamed the shooting that killed 19 students and two adults on Instagram and CoD, claiming they influenced the teenager who carried out the murders.