What a Game Actually Costs
Scope drives cost far more than genre does: art style, multiplayer, backend depth and platform count each move the figure more than the label on the game. The brackets below come from quotes our readers shared over the past year.
Budget brackets by project complexity
The honest answer is a range, because scope drives everything: art style, multiplayer, backend depth and platform count each move the number more than the genre label does. Based on the quotes our readers shared over the past year, these are realistic brackets for working with an established studio.
| Complexity | Typical cost | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | £20,000 – £60,000 | 2–4 months | Hyper-casual or puzzle game, 2D art, single platform, ad monetisation |
| Mid-level | £60,000 – £200,000 | 4–8 months | Casual or arcade title, cross-platform, backend, IAP economy, analytics |
| Complex | £200,000+ | 9–18 months | 3D or multiplayer game, LiveOps tooling, seasons, custom server infrastructure |
Budget a further 15–25% of the build cost per year for post-launch support and content — every studio in our top 5 offers it as a separate retainer.
What you get from hiring a specialist studio
Hiring a specialist studio buys you more than code. You get a team that has already made the expensive mistakes on someone else's project — and the production discipline to ship on a date rather than "when it's ready".
The studios in our rating all work on either fixed-scope contracts or dedicated-team retainers, so you can start small with a prototype and scale the engagement only once the concept proves itself with real players.
- A senior cross-functional team from day one — no recruiting, no ramp-up months
- Proven pipelines that cut time-to-market by a third compared with in-house first builds
- Genre benchmarks and monetisation data you can't buy off the shelf
- Predictable budgets with milestone-based payments and demo builds at every stage
- Post-launch LiveOps so the game keeps earning long after release
- Full IP ownership — the code, art and data are contractually yours
Where budgets slip, and how to hold them
Overruns rarely come from the code. In the projects our readers report, the three usual culprits are art volume, late platform additions and unbudgeted LiveOps. Art is the quiet one: a level count that doubles during production doubles the illustration and animation bill without a single new feature appearing in the specification.
Adding a platform after development has started is the most expensive change you can make. A game architected for a single platform will need its input handling, resolution logic and store integration reworked, which routinely costs a third of the original build. If there is any chance of a second platform, say so during discovery — cross-platform from day one is far cheaper than a port later.
Finally, budget the year after launch before you sign for the build. Content updates, seasonal events, analytics-driven balancing and platform SDK upgrades typically run at 15–25% of the original cost annually. Studios quote this as a separate retainer, and a game with no post-launch budget will fade from the charts within months no matter how good the launch build was.
