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Source: Treyarch / Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
It’s no secret that making AAA video games has become expensive for game studios, but we have no idea how much coins are needed to bring some of the biggest titles to players. A new report has revealed how much Activision spent to develop several Call of Duty games, and the amount is eye-watering.

Stephen Totitlo of Game File exclusively reports that Activision dropped a BIG BAG on three top-selling Call of Duty games in the franchise, a court filing reviewed by Game File revealed.

In the court filing, which is part of a declaration filed to a California court on December 23 in response to a lawsuit filed against Activision in May 2022 in connection with the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Patrick Kelly, Activision’s current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, revealed that three titles in the first-person shooter franchise between 2015 and 2022 cost between $450 and $700 million to make.
Of the three titles, 2020’s Black Ops Cold War cost the most. Activision spent over  $700 million to develop it, selling 30 million copies.
Those numbers are the highest development costs ever reported for a video game, easily topping the roughly $220 million spent on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us: Part II. We only learned about this in 2023 when a poorly redacted court filing went viral online.
Per Game File:

Black Ops III (2015): “Treyarch developed the game over three years with a creative team of hundreds of people, and invested over $450 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.” (Kelly also discloses that it has sold 43 million copies.)
Modern Warfare (2019): “Infinity Ward developed the game over several years and has spent over $640 million in development costs throughout the game’s lifecycle.” (41 million copies sold)
Black Ops Cold War (2020): “Treyarch and Raven Software took years to create the game with a team of hundreds of creatives. They ultimately spent over $700 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.” (30 million copies sold)

According to Game File, Kelly explicitly named those three titles and their budgets in the lawsuit because the shooter was an avid player of them.
That’s a lot of money, but are we shocked? Not in the least bit.
Also, it’s time people stop blaming video games for real-life behavior; just saying.