The budgets of major video games are very well hidden by publishers and are rarely announced publicly – usually they are learned through various information leaks. For example, recently Game File managed to find very interesting statistics on three Call of Duty games, which were announced in court by Patrick Kelly, the current creative director of this super-popular franchise.

The amounts he disclosed are the highest development costs ever reported by a major video game publisher – moreover, they even exceed all rumours or indirect estimates by analysts.

According to Patrick Kelly, Black Ops III (2015) was developed over 3 years and more than $450 million was invested in it during its life cycle (the game sold 43 million copies). Modern Warfare (2019) cost Activision more than $640 million and had a circulation of 41 million.

Finally, the most expensive game in the series is Black Ops Cold War (2020). According to Kelly, ‘Treyarch and Raven Software spent years on its creation, with hundreds of specialists involved in the development process. They spent more than $700 million on development over the life cycle.’ A total of 30 million copies were sold.

This information is based on a statement filed by Kelly in a California court on 23 December. It was part of Activision’s response to a lawsuit filed against the company last May over the 2022 shooting at Robb School in Uvalde, Texas.

The lawsuit holds Meta’s Instagram and Activision’s Call of Duty partially responsible, claiming that the companies’ platforms and content influenced the teenager who carried out the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two adults.