CI Games has made a stunning revelation about their latest release, this year’s Lords of the Fallen.
As reported by Game World Observer, CI Games CFO David Broderick actually broke down how much it cost them to make it. We’ll round them out below.
Development costs – $ 42.2 million
Marketing – $ 19.3 million
Manufacturing – $ 5.1 million
In total, Lords of the Fallen cost CI Games $ 66.6 million, and this is the most expensive game the Polish studio had made in its 20 year history.
CI Games’ bet on Lords of the Fallen included starting a new game studio, Hexworks, to produce the game in their vision, after getting Deck13, who made the 2014 version of the game, to work on a new project, The Surge.
Deck13’s 2014 The Lords of the Fallen sold 900,000 units in seven months. This new Lords of the Fallen from Hexworks already sold 1 million copies in its first ten days alone, combining physical and digital sales. Broderick also revealed that 54 % of these sales occurred on console.
We would be remiss not to reveal that Lords of the Fallen received a mixed to good rating across different platforms. It has a MetaCritic score of 71 on PlayStation 5 and 59 % positive ratings on Steam, out of 13,000 total reviews.
Lords of the Fallen also launched with many bugs and launch issues, as part of a worrying trend after the height of pandemic regulations limiting development for many games released today. CI Games has also pledged to fix these issues.
However, perhaps because of the lower expectations for a AA game from a less renowned publisher, fans may have been more willing to accept the lower standards for Lords of the Fallen. Ironically, this has worked out in its favor, as gamers were eager to buy in expecting another Soulslike or masocore video game regardless of quality. SteamDB also reflected that the game had proven popular, as it indicated a 43,000 concurrent player peak.
It’s a positive sign for CI Games, who outlined two more games in development for the next five years. A few years ago, the mid-tier video game had seemed to be all but dead, failing to compete with indies on one end and big budget AAAs in the other. CI Games proves that there is room for AA games in the market after all, if the publisher balances everything just right.
