Most published game development cost figures are either marketing ranges with no production behind them or AAA numbers that tell a $40,000 project nothing useful. This report is neither. It draws on StudioKrew’s pricing bands across 700+ games shipped since 2013, our 2025 and 2026 scoping records, and cited third-party market data current as of August 2026.
Every figure below traces either to our own shipped-project data or to a named external source. Where a number is an estimate, we say so.
Key Findings
Ten findings from the 2026 dataset, grouped by where they hit a budget. Each is written to stand alone if quoted.
The numbers at a glance
| Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|
| $20,000 | Entry price for a fixed-price playable MVP, shipping in 8 to 12 weeks |
| $55,000 | Midpoint build cost of a first commercial title across our six genre bands (estimate) |
| 8x | Spread between India and Southeast Asia rates and US and Western European agency rates for the same Unity skill set |
| 15 to 20% | Share of build cost required every year for maintenance alone |
| $4.22 | Cost per install on iOS in 2026, against $2.97 on Android |
| 52% | Share of a $60,000 game’s two-year spend that falls after launch (estimate) |
Build economics
01. A commercially viable game in 2026 costs between $15,000 and $250,000 to build, and across the genre bands we quote, the midpoint of a first commercial title sits at roughly $55,000 (estimate).
Derived from the midpoints of the six bands in the next section. Genre, not team location, is the dominant variable in that spread.
02. A fixed-price playable MVP starts at $20,000 and ships in 8 to 12 weeks, which remains the cheapest honest entry point into the market in 2026.
Below this figure, you are buying a prototype rather than a product you can put in front of real users.
03. Real-time multiplayer is the single most expensive feature decision a studio makes, adding $50,000 to $100,000 or more to an otherwise comparable single-player build, according to cost analysis published by Koderspedia and cited by Galaxy4Games in 2026.
The cost is architectural rather than feature-level, which is why adding it late is the most expensive overrun pattern we see.
Rates, teams and regions
04. Developer hourly rates span $18 to $55 in India and Southeast Asia against $75 to $150 or more at US and Western European agencies, an 8x spread for the same Unity skill set.
The capability gap between these regions has narrowed considerably faster than the price gap over the past five years.
05. A dedicated offshore game team costs $15,000 to $40,000 per month in 2026, against an average US game developer salary of roughly $133,000 per year reported in NeoWork’s 2026 outsourcing analysis.
At the lower end of that band, a monthly team contract costs roughly what one fully loaded senior US hire does.
Post-launch economics
06. Post-launch maintenance runs 15 to 20% of build cost every year, so a $60,000 game carries a $9,000 to $12,000 annual obligation before a single new feature is planned.
This covers OS updates, store policy changes, and crash fixes. Content updates are a separate budget entirely.
07. First six-month user acquisition spend typically runs 50% to 200% of development cost, which makes marketing the largest single line in most 2026 game budgets, per A Plus Games Studio’s 2026 cost guide.
For self-funded projects, this is the line that decides whether the game reaches players at all.
08. Mobile game cost per install reached $4.22 on iOS and $2.97 on Android in 2026, while blended global gaming CPI climbed 30% year over year to $0.56, according to Adjust’s Gaming App Insights Report 2026 Edition as reported by Segwise.
Acquisition efficiency, not acquisition volume, is the constraint that shapes 2026 budgets.
09. Storefronts take 30% of gross revenue as the standard rate on Steam, the App Store, and Google Play, falling to 15% on mobile for developers under $1 million in annual proceeds.
The 15% rate is the one that applies to most first titles, and it is worth enrolling for before launch rather than after.
10. The true two-year cost of a $60,000 mobile game is closer to $126,000 once maintenance, servers, store fees and a conservative marketing budget are counted, meaning more than half of lifetime spend sits after launch (estimate).
Full line-by-line workings appear in the Hidden 40% section below.
Cost by Genre
Genre is the strongest single predictor of budget, ahead of team location and ahead of art style. The table below shows StudioKrew’s published pricing bands against typical delivery timelines from our own production schedule. Timelines are estimates drawn from our shipped projects and assume a dedicated team rather than part-time allocation.
| Genre | Budget range | Typical timeline | Primary cost driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyper-casual | $15,000 to $40,000 | 6 to 10 weeks | Prototype throughput and testable variants |
| Casual and puzzle | $30,000 to $80,000 | 3 to 5 months | Level content volume and meta progression systems |
| Card and board with real-time multiplayer | $50,000 to $120,000 | 4 to 6 months | Networking, matchmaking and anti-cheat |
| RTS and strategy | $60,000 to $150,000 | 5 to 9 months | Unit AI, pathfinding and balance iteration |
| Mid-core multiplayer | $80,000 to $200,000 | 6 to 10 months | Backend architecture and live economy design |
| RPG and story-driven | $100,000 to $250,000+ | 8 to 14 months | Content volume across art, writing and quest logic |
Hyper-casual: $15,000 to $40,000
What moves cost inside this band is almost never feature count. It is how many playable variants you need before one clears its cost per install threshold. A single-mechanic build with stock UI and one ad network lands near $15,000. The same build with three tested mechanic variants, custom art direction, a mediation stack across four networks, and a soft-launch analytics setup lands near $40,000.
Casual and puzzle: $30,000 to $80,000
Level count is the lever. Our production data shows a match-three or word game with 60 handcrafted levels costs materially less than one with 300, and the difference is not linear, because 300 levels forces level-authoring tooling, difficulty-curve analytics, and a content pipeline that a 60-level game can skip. The second lever is the meta layer. Adding a base-building or decoration meta on top of a core puzzle loop reliably pushes a project from the low $40,000s toward the $80,000 ceiling.
Card and board with real-time multiplayer: $50,000 to $120,000
The card rules themselves are cheap. Everything around them is not. Real-time sync, reconnection handling, spectator states, ranked matchmaking, server-authoritative validation, and anti-collusion detection are what separate a $50,000 build from a $120,000 one. For regulated formats such as rummy or fantasy variants, add compliance work, KYC integration and audit logging on top.
RTS and strategy: $60,000 to $150,000
Strategy budgets are consumed by iteration rather than construction. Pathfinding across large unit counts, tiered unit AI, and fog-of-war performance on mid-range Android devices all take longer to tune than to build. Across the projects we scoped in 2025, strategy titles carried the highest ratio of balance-and-tuning hours to feature-build hours of any genre we quote.
Mid-core multiplayer: $80,000 to $200,000
Two things decide where a mid-core project lands. First, whether the backend is assembled from managed services such as PlayFab or Photon or built custom. Second, whether the live economy, battle pass, currencies, sinks, and progression is designed before the first line of server code or bolted on later. Retrofitting an economy onto a shipped backend is one of the most reliable ways to spend $40,000 you did not plan to spend.
RPG and story-driven: $100,000 to $250,000+
RPGs are content-volume projects wearing a systems-project costume. Cost scales with hours of authored content: quest count, dialogue word count, unique environments, character rigs, and cinematic sequences. There is no ceiling here, only the point at which you stop adding content, which is why every RPG estimate we produce is tied to a content manifest.
Cost by Platform
Platform choice changes cost through three mechanisms: how many device configurations you must test, whether a gatekeeper can reject your build, and how much of the codebase is genuinely shared.
Mobile
Mobile is the baseline that most of our pricing bands assume. Shipping to both iOS and Android together adds roughly 10 to 15% over a single platform once store compliance, device testing, and platform-specific bugs are counted, according to the 2026 cost breakdown published by GameTactics. Most of that premium is Android fragmentation. There is no certification gate, but store review, privacy manifests, and age ratings still consume real calendar time. For teams evaluating partners in this space, our work as a mobile game development company covers both stores under a single fixed price rather than pricing Android as a change request.
PC and Steam
The entry cost is trivial and the QA cost is not. Steam Direct charges $100 per title, non-refundable but credited back once the game clears $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue, according to Valve’s published terms as summarized by Immutable’s 2026 fee guide. Valve’s revenue share is 30% on the first $10 million, 25% from $10 million to $50 million, and 20% above that, per the same tiered structure. What actually costs money is the support matrix: keyboard and controller input, ultrawide and 4K resolutions, GPU driver variance, Steam Cloud, achievements, and a launcher-free build. Budget PC QA at roughly 1.5x the equivalent mobile QA effort (estimate from our own porting work).
Console
Console is where a gatekeeper can send your build back. Third-party porting services charge $10,000 to $50,000 or more per platform depending on complexity, according to Gamedō’s 2026 console porting guide, and a typical port runs three to nine months depending on scope and the target platform’s certification timeline, per porting specialist Klabater. Nintendo’s Lotcheck is the strictest of the three and expects a shipped portfolio before dev kit approval. Sony offers newly registered partners a complimentary PS5 development kit and test kit on loan for up to two years, according to Gamedō’s 2026 console porting guide, which removes one line item but not the certification one. Every failed certification attempt costs a resubmission cycle plus the engineering days to fix it, and studios that budget for one attempt rather than two miss their launch window.
Cross-platform
Shared-codebase development through Unity or Unreal Engine 5 typically adds around 30% to base cost while substantially widening reach, according to TekRevol’s 2026 pricing analysis. Our own view: the premium is small if cross-platform is decided at the architecture stage and large if it is decided after a vertical slice. Input abstraction, resolution-independent UI and save-data portability are cheap to design in and expensive to retrofit.
Cost by Region and Team Model
Regional rate gaps have narrowed in capability but not in price. The bands below combine StudioKrew’s own rate card with current third-party market data.
| Model | Hourly band | Honest tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| US and Western Europe agency | $75 to $150+ | Time zone alignment, publisher relationships and legal proximity. You are paying local salary structures, not better Unity code. |
| Eastern Europe | $30 to $70 | Deep console and PC engineering pedigree at mid rates. Capacity for large multi-year engagements is tighter than it was five years ago. |
| India and Southeast Asia | $18 to $50 | Widest talent pool and lowest blended cost, strong in Unity mobile, art production and LiveOps. Requires genuine overlap hours and written specs to work well. |
| Hybrid (onshore direction, offshore production) | Blended $35 to $70 | Keeps creative direction, IP and community in-house while outsourcing execution-heavy work. Adds coordination overhead that only pays back above roughly 4 people (estimate). |
These bands are consistent with the wider market. According to SlashifyTech’s 2026 outsourcing analysis, regional pricing currently runs $20 to $45 per hour in Southeast Asia, $25 to $55 in India, $30 to $60 in Eastern Europe, and $80 to $150 in North America and Western Europe. NeoWork’s 2026 outsourcing guide places the global range at $20 to $120 per hour and notes that a US game developer earns roughly $133,000 annually against $41,000 to $48,000 for a Ukrainian counterpart, a wage gap that translates directly into project pricing. GameDevOutsourcing’s July 2026 analysis, drawn from 422 studios across 54 countries, puts the full global spread at $25 to $250 per hour once senior specialists are included.
StudioKrew’s own developer rates run $18 to $55 per hour depending on seniority and stack, and dedicated teams are contracted at $15,000 to $40,000 per month. The monthly model tends to beat hourly billing for anything past a three-month engagement, because it prices capacity rather than time and removes the incentive to log hours. Teams weighing this against local hiring can compare the monthly figure directly against the cost to hire game developers in their own market.
One caution the rate tables do not capture. The cheapest hourly rate is not the cheapest project if it produces rework. The real cost equation is hourly rate multiplied by hours multiplied by a rework multiplier, and the multiplier is set by specification quality, not geography.
The Hidden 40%
The build is the part clients budget for. It is rarely the majority of what they spend.
Maintenance. Post-launch support, OS updates, store policy changes and crash fixes run 15 to 20% of build cost per year, a figure reported consistently across 2026 market sources including GameTactics and TekRevol. This is the floor, not the target. It buys a game that keeps working, not a game that keeps growing.
LiveOps. Content velocity is a separate budget. Ongoing LiveOps for a mid-complexity free-to-play mobile title runs $15,000 to $60,000 per month according to Whimsy Games’ 2026 LiveOps analysis, and industry data cited by Galaxy4Games places LiveOps at 15 to 25% of first-year budget for multiplayer titles. Smaller casual games can run a leaner cadence at $3,000 to $15,000 per month.
Servers. A simple multiplayer backend may cost $500 per month at launch and climb past $20,000 per month if the game breaks out, per A Plus Games Studio’s 2026 guide. Infrastructure cost is the one line that punishes success.
Marketing. First six month user acquisition typically runs 50 to 200% of development cost. With iOS CPI at $4.22 and Android at $2.97 in 2026, buying 50,000 installs on iOS costs roughly $211,000 before any creative production. This is the number that ends most self-funded projects.
Store fees. Standard commission is 30% on Steam, the App Store and Google Play. Mobile developers under $1 million in annual proceeds pay 15% through the Apple Small Business Program and Google Play’s equivalent reduced service fee, which for most first titles is the rate that actually applies.
Worked example: the two-year cost of a $60,000 game
A mid-range casual multiplayer title, built for iOS and Android, launched and operated for 24 months. Figures are estimates built from the sources above and our own project accounting.
| Line item | Two-year cost | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Development build | $60,000 | StudioKrew casual and puzzle band, upper half |
| Maintenance, 2 years | $21,000 | 17.5% of build cost per year, midpoint of the 15 to 20% range |
| Backend and hosting | $15,000 | Roughly $625 per month averaged across 24 months |
| Developer accounts and compliance | $225 | Apple $99 per year, Google $25 one time |
| User acquisition | $30,000 | 50% of build cost, the low end of the reported 50 to 200% range |
| Total cash outlay | $126,225 | Excludes store commission, which is taken from revenue |
Post-launch spend accounts for $66,225 of that total, or 52%. Store commission sits on top: if the title grosses $200,000 across two years, platforms take $30,000 at the 15% small business rate or $60,000 at the standard 30%. A studio that budgets $60,000 and stops there has funded roughly 47% of what the game will actually require.
Where Budgets Overrun
These five causes account for the large majority of overruns we have seen across 700+ shipped titles. As one of our producers put it, budgets almost never break on the feature you were worried about. They break on the three small things nobody wrote down.
1. Scope added after the vertical slice
The playable build gets stakeholders excited, and excitement generates requests. Each one looks small in isolation. Prevention: freeze the feature list at vertical slice sign-off and route everything after it through a written change order with its own price and date impact.
2. Art volume underestimated, not art quality
Teams negotiate hard on art style and then discover the manifest calls for 140 assets rather than 40. Volume, not fidelity, is what breaks art budgets. Prevention: lock a numbered asset manifest before production art starts, with counts for characters, environments, UI screens, VFX and animations.
3. Multiplayer retrofitted onto a single-player build
This is the most expensive mistake on the list. Our CTO describes it plainly: adding real-time multiplayer late does not add a feature; it invalidates your architecture, because state that lived on the device now has to live on a server you have not designed. Market data supports the scale of it, with a single real-time multiplayer feature adding $50,000 to $100,000 or more compared with a single-player equivalent. Prevention: decide multiplayer at architecture stage, even if you ship the single-player version first.
4. Device and certification QA discovered late
Android fragmentation, low-end memory ceilings and console certification requirements surface at the end of a schedule, when there is no slack left. Prevention: run a device matrix from the first milestone and, for console, budget two certification attempts rather than one.
5. Economy and balance rework after soft launch
Soft-launch data almost always demands changes to the currency economy, progression pacing or offer structure. Studios that treated the economy as final are the ones who pay for a rebuild. Prevention: ship the economy as configurable server-side data rather than client constants, so tuning is an operations task rather than an engineering release.
Methodology
The budget bands, timelines, and overrun patterns in this report derive from StudioKrew’s shipped-project pricing across 700+ games delivered since 2013, our published rate card for developers and dedicated teams, and our scoping records for projects quoted in 2025 and 2026. External market context, including regional hourly rates, cost per install benchmarks, storefront commission structures, porting costs and maintenance ratios, is drawn from named third-party 2026 sources cited inline throughout, including Adjust, Segwise, NeoWork, SlashifyTech, GameDevOutsourcing, Galaxy4Games, Whimsy Games, TekRevol, GameTactics, Gamedō, Klabater, Immutable and A Plus Games Studio. Figures we have derived rather than observed directly, including the worked two-year example, midpoint estimates and timeline ranges, are labeled as estimates at the point they appear. We have not adjusted any band to make a comparison more favorable, and where our own pricing sits below the market range for a region, that is a function of our cost base rather than a claim about relative quality.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to make a game in 2026?
In 2026, a commercially viable game costs between $15,000 and $250,000 or more to build, depending almost entirely on genre. Hyper-casual titles run $15,000 to $40,000, casual and puzzle games $30,000 to $80,000, mid-core multiplayer $80,000 to $200,000, and RPG or story-driven projects $100,000 to $250,000 and upward. A fixed-price playable MVP starts at $20,000 and ships in 8 to 12 weeks. Budget an additional 15 to 20% of build cost per year for maintenance, plus a marketing budget that typically equals 50 to 200% of development cost in the first six months.
What is the cheapest type of game to develop?
Hyper-casual is the cheapest genre to develop, at $15,000 to $40,000 with a 6 to 10 week timeline, because it uses a single core mechanic, minimal art, no backend, and no meta progression. The cheapest viable path overall is a fixed-price MVP starting at $20,000, which produces a playable build you can test with real users before committing to full production. The tradeoff is that hyper-casual economics depend on advertising volume, so low build cost is usually offset by high user acquisition spend.
How much does it cost to hire a game development team?
A dedicated game development team costs $15,000 to $40,000 per month in 2026, depending on team size and seniority mix. On an hourly basis, developer rates run $18 to $55 in India and Southeast Asia, $30 to $70 in Eastern Europe, and $75 to $150 or more at US and Western European agencies. Monthly dedicated-team pricing generally works out cheaper than hourly billing for engagements longer than three months, because it prices committed capacity rather than logged time.
How much do games cost to maintain after launch?
Ongoing maintenance costs 15 to 20% of the original build cost per year, covering bug fixes, OS updates, store policy compliance and server upkeep. A $60,000 game therefore carries a $9,000 to $12,000 annual maintenance line. Games running active LiveOps spend considerably more, with mid-complexity free-to-play titles budgeting $15,000 to $60,000 per month for content updates and seasonal events, and leaner casual titles running $3,000 to $15,000 per month. Server costs scale separately, starting near $500 per month and rising sharply with concurrent player counts.
About StudioKrew
StudioKrew is a game development studio that has shipped more than 700 titles since 2013 across hyper-casual, casual, card and board, mid-core multiplayer, strategy and story-driven genres, working with founders, publishers and consumer brands worldwide. Our game development services are priced as fixed-scope engagements with published rate bands rather than open-ended hourly estimates, which is the same discipline this report is built on.
Send us a one-page concept or a deck, and you will have a written proposal within 48 hours covering scope, milestones, timeline, and a fixed price. For a deeper breakdown of mobile-specific budgeting, see also our mobile game development cost guide.
Data current as of August 2026. This report may be cited with attribution and a link to StudioKrew.
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