Image: Insomniac Games / Marvel / Hasbro / Scopely / Kotaku
This story originally appeared on Kotaku.
Monopoly Go, a multiplayer mobile board game, launched on April 11, 2023. Since then it has made over 2 billion dollars, been downloaded 100+ million times, and become one of the most popular digital games on the planet. But to reach this point, Scopely, the studio behind the hit game, has spent nearly $500 million on marketing alone, which is more than what Sony spent on some of its biggest games like Spider-Man 2 and The Last Of Us Part II.
You
might
not
be
aware
of
Monopoly
Go,
a
mobile
game
released
last
year
and
inspired
by
the
famous,
classic
board
game,
but
it’s
very
likely
that
someone
you
know
is
playing
it—perhaps
a
parent
or
an
uncle
or
a
sister.
After
all,
the
game
is
massively
popular,
with
over
10
million
daily
players.
According
to
a
recent
post
from
Scopely,
in
just
three
months
it
made
a
billion
dollars.
But
that
kind
of
success
doesn’t
come
cheap
or
easy.
In
a
recent
installment
of
Game
File
(as
spotted
by
Gamespot)
from
former
Kotaku
EIC
Stephen
Totilo,
Scopely’s
senior
VP
of
publishing
Eric
Wood
confirmed
that
the
company
has
spent
around
(but
less
than)
$500
million
on
marketing
and
user
acquisition
alone.
That’s
not
even
factoring
in
the
money
spent
developing
the
game,
which
took
seven
years,
according
to
Scopely.
In comparison, poorly redacted court docs from 2023 revealed that The Last of Us Part II cost about $220 million to develop and Horizon Forbidden West cost around $212 million. We also know via hacked and publicly leaked files that Insomniac’s open-world blockbuster, Spider-Man 2, cost about $300 million to develop after going over budget. Outside Sony-produced games, Monopoly Go’s marketing budget even exceeds other massive releases. For example, the total reported budget for Cyberpunk 2077 and its DLC (this includes marketing costs, too) is around $440 million, which is likely less or about what Monopoly Go’s studio spent on just ads and user requisition.
It’s a good reminder that mobile games aren’t easy or cheap to produce. While plenty of big video game publishers have tried to make the leap from console games to mobile games, they rarely succeed, and not just because it costs so much to play in this space.
According to Game File’s interview, it takes a lot of work to create a game that brings people back day after day and offers them ways to “beat” the game’s own systems, letting them feel like they are winning when in reality (as always) it’s the house that comes out on top.
Comments