Total development spending for PC games on Steam surged from $10 billion in 2019 to $27 billion in 2025, representing a 2.2-fold nominal increase.
PC game development budgets in 2025 reached 67% of the combined production spend for the film and television sectors.
Development costs for AAA titles grew by 224% since 2015, while AA projects experienced a higher growth rate of 250%.
VR, adventure, free-to-play, and action genres are experiencing cost escalations significantly higher than the overall market average.
Smaller game projects backed by publishers typically have double the development budget of comparable self-published titles.
The report suggests shifting industry classification standards from budget-based metrics to a taxonomy based on file size (GB) and credit counts.
That's the gist.
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