As new AAA games across the US boast budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, Rebel Wolves’ brilliant vampiric RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has released on a budget of just $45 million.
While still a very expensive venture, the new RPG—which was spearheaded by The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz—is far less expansive than many AAA titles today. However, for Polish game studios, the game can still be labelled as a AAA experience.
In a post on Linkedin, former NetEase studio investor and Rebel Wolves board director Simon Zhu explained that The Blood of Dawnwalker’s entire budget was funded “in full at the outset” of development, which is a rarity for many games. Usually, titles go through founds of funding with more money as they hit certain milestones.
Zhu explained that the decision to fun the game outright was so “Konrad would never have to worry about money and could focus on getting the game finished and out”. This means that Rebel Wolves, as long as they stuck to their original design intentions, didn’t have to worry about investors pulling out of the game mid-development.
While considerably cheaper than a lot of games these days, Zhu argues that the game not cheap. “In Poland, that budget is AAA,” the board director said. Nevertheless, it is cheaper than some of the most expensive AAA games coming out of the company.
For example, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which Tomaszkiewicz directed prior to The Blood of Dawnwalker, was revealed to have cost $81 million to create. That’s not including the game’s expansions, or two remasters.
CD Projekt Red’s last game, Cyberpunk 2077, is the most expensive Polish video game with an original launch budget of around $316 million. Due to the game’s single expansion and core gameplay fixes, the game’s budget eventually around $441 million in total.
With that said, CD Projekt Red is an outlier in terms of Polish video game studios. Poland has quickly become a new hub for game development with a large number of studios in the country. Outside of CDPR, those budgets are relatively thin, and $45 million is definitely in the AAA region for Polish studios.
With games like The Blood of Dawnwalker and French-made RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 coming in at much slimmer budgets than other games, it’s clear that great games can still be made with less cost.
In terms of Rebel Wolves, Zhu’s post shows that they had immense faith in Tomaszkiewicz to deliver on the game’s promises. “On a project of this size, the person leading it matters enormously,” they said. “Succeeding once can be luck. Someone like Konrad, who has done it again and again, has found a winning formula.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker has already sold a million copies since its launch earlier this month, and the studio already has plans for a sequel. While the current game won’t be receiving any The Witcher style expansions, meaningful updates are coming with New Game Plus, new difficulty modes, and more.
