Hushcrasher: Games budgets & did games became more expensive to make?
Development of PC games only accounted for 67% of Film/TV/Series production in 2025.
According to Hushcrasher estimates, the combined development budget for all Steam games in 2025 was $27 billion. In 2019, the figure was $10 billion, which was 2.7x lower (or 2.2x lower if we don’t account for inflation).
For context, films and TV shows combined spent around $40 billion in 2025. That means PC games alone accounted for 67% of the entire film and TV production budget.
❗️My guess: if we take all platforms (including mobile), the game development budget is on par with film/TV production.
Per Hushcrasher, development costs have genuinely increased in recent years, not only due to inflation.
The larger the project, the steeper the budget growth. AAA game costs have grown 224% since 2015. AA games have grown 250%.
❗️The authors propose classifying games not by budget but by size (in GB) and number of people in the credits. This is from where the Kei (solo developer projects) and Midi projects taxonomy came in. For a better understanding of the taxonomy, the source article is worth reading.
That said, some genres (or specific categories) have seen cost growth well above the market average. VR projects in particular became significantly more expensive (hello, metaverse era). Adventure games, F2P titles, and action games also grew above the average.
There are also genres where development has actually gotten cheaper. Point & click, for example. Though even if it’s a niche genre with small audiences and small teams, it’s worth noting.
Smaller projects released with a publisher consistently cost around twice as much as self-published titles of the same size.
For larger projects, the presence of a publisher has no meaningful impact on development budget. At the AAA level, the developer is usually already a major publisher.