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Black Myth: Wukong reportedly cost developer Game Science around $43 million to make, but it more than made that money back in just weeks, boasting over 20 million sales at $60 a pop.
According to a new report from the Zhejiang State Taxation Administration in China, the smash-hit action RPG had an overall estimated budget of "more than 300 million Yuan," per machine translation. That amounts to about $42.3 million USD by current conversions, which is quite a bit lower than the $70 million budget previously reported by Bloomberg.
Importantly, the scope of these figures isn't totally clear. This tax admin specifies total development cost, while Bloomberg reported on the contribution from Game Science's biggest external shareholder and how that compared to the game's budget. Staff salaries, office space, necessary hardware and software, support staff, marketing, distribution, and plenty of other factors and resources can affect a game's budget, to say nothing of eventual revenue splits with investors and partners. We simply do not have the specifics there.
The exact cost to make Wukong will likely remain unclear unless the developer itself shares it, but this figure still helps corroborate a loose cost range, putting Wukong's production into perspective against its runaway success, and against the cost of some high-profile games made elsewhere. PlayStation accidentally revealed the $200m+ development costs for Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part 2 last year, which added fuel to ongoing discussions about the ballooning costs of AAA game development.
Currency economics aside, a huge factor here is average labor cost. Multiple resources and estimates suggest the mean and median game dev salaries in China are lower than in the United States, where The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog is based (in the high cost of living state of California, at that), and in the Netherlands, home of Horizon developer Guerrilla Games.
Described as "one of the fastest selling games of all time" after moving 10 million copies in under a week, Black Myth: Wukong went on to celebrate passing over 20 million sales during this year's Tokyo Game Show - yet another astonishing number with the title thus far only releasing on PC and Sony's PS5. With a price tag of $60, that all amounts to upwards of $1.2 billion in raw revenue, which of course gets taxed and divided.
The numbers aren't the only impressive thing about Black Myth: Wukong's monumental success story, either as players spend a decent amount of time in-game, too. As of last month, fans were averaging a 27-hour playtime in Game Science's action RPG. This means that, despite its difficulty, people stuck through a huge chunk of the August release.
Check our roundup of new games coming this year and beyond for titles to look forward to.
