The Blood of Dawnwalker, the newly released vampire RPG from the new studio led by The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, was made on a budget of $40 million under NetEase.
That's according to a new article from Bloomberg covering the game's development. The budget is the standout: Chinese company NetEase gained a 26% investment in The Blood of Dawnwalker developer Rebel Wolves and set its budget, while Bandai Namco ultimately stepped in as the game's publisher. In 2024, NetEase found a big hit in Marvel Rivals, which remains a popular multiplayer shooter.
This $40 million figure is significant for a few reasons, though it doesn't tell the whole story about The Blood of Dawnwalker's development or profitability. We do know that the game sold over 1 million copies in a few days, which was good enough for Rebel Wolves to dive headfirst into plans for a sequel.
This budget also puts The Blood of Dawnwalker in the same constellation of RPGs as AA hits like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (a reported budget of roughly $41 million) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (a smaller but still fairly AA budget of just under $10 million).
Games like these have, in recent years, been held up as examples of a healthier approach to game production: smaller teams, smaller but still rich games, and significantly smaller budgets.
Multiple current and former studio heads and industry experts have backed the rise of AA games. Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy, now in charge of the RuneScape empire, argued you could take "a tenth" of a $400 million AAA budget and "deliver not so different results if you get it right."
A 2023 court document leak for Sony revealed that the likes of The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West cost upwards of $200 million to make. After many years and many delays, it's estimated that the combined budget for GTA 6 could top $1 billion.
In a recent report on the ongoing buckling of the AAA games industry, layoffs watchdog Amir Satvar reckons Japanese companies like Capcom and Nintendo are faring better today because they don't see the same redundancies, exorbitant executive salaries, or massive teams as Western studios.
The Witcher 3, due for a free remaster in just a few days, is another useful comparison: back in the 2010s, it cost developer CD Projekt Red a combined $81 million. This point of reference also opens the discussion up to several other factors that affect a game's finances: how much its developers were paid, how many man hours were put in, what cut the studio gets after publisher and investor recoup, and how much the game costs ($70 in this case).
But there's no arguing with a few numbers: The Blood of Dawnwalker sits at an 84 on Metacritic, making it one of the highest-rated games and RPGs of 2026. Post-launch, its Steam reviews have settled at 86% positive.
