You might have heard about an upcoming game currently due out sometime this year, called Grand Theft Auto VI. About a month ago, you also might have heard the claim made, that there are some people in the video games industry that would like to see a standard copy of GTA VI costing $100.
Don’t worry, you can take solace in the fact that there’s no evidence to suggest that the people expressing their desire for GTA VI to cost that much as a barrier to entry come from the game’s developer, Rockstar. Nor is there evidence to suggest that those desires come from Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two.
But it does leave players with a few big questions. Who would actually want GTA VI to cost that much? Are video games really getting so expensive to make, that developers across the industry will start charging that much for their AAA games? What’s making it cost so much to make these big games nowadays?
As you might imagine, not all of these questions have easy answers. So let’s start with the ones that do.
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Who would want GTA VI to cost $100?
And could that actually happen?
Firstly, the claim that there are some people in the video games industry who want GTA VI to cost $100 comes from an analyst. Matthew Ball, chief executive officer of Epyllion, a company that “provides investment and strategic advisory services, produces television, films, and video games, and co-operates/owns the Roundhill Ball Metaverse,” according to its website.
In January 2025, Ball released a long presentation titled “The State of Video Gaming in 2025,” and it’s in the presentation’s closing chapter, “How Player, Playtime, and Player Spend Might Return to Growth,” where he makes his claim.
“In 2025, GTA VI’s impact on industry playtime and spend will be mixed as it launches console-only and (severely) cannibalizes hours/spend on other titles. But some gamemakers hope GTA VI will be priced at $80-100, breaking the $70 barrier and helping $50 titles move up to $60, $60, to do $70, $70 to do $80, etc.” – Matthew Ball
So who are those makers of games that want GTA VI to help raise the price of video games across the whole industry? Who knows, that’s a speculative rabbit hole that you could dig into for a while. It’s not unfair to guess that those people would be executives from some of the bigger publishers in the industry, and potentially even some of the top-brass at Take-Two. But there’s no proof of that, and what’s more important to answer, is whether GTA VI would actually be priced at $80, or $100, for just the standard version of the game.
A report from IGN has already dug into that question, with an answer that should allow players to breathe a sigh of relief. Speaking to multiple video game industry analysts, investigative reporter Rebekah Valentine found that those she spoke to “agreed that GTA VI wasn’t going to be priced higher than the usual $70…for the base game, at least.” It’s there that Valentine brings up the obvious in all of this.
Video games are already costing $100 or more, but just not for the standard copy. It’s the deluxe editions, the collector’s editions, or whatever marketing nomenclature publishers slap on these different editions, that are already charging players above the current-gen $70 standard. Of course, you get more than just the base game. Some of the incentives have begun to include ‘early access’ to the game, which just means that people who pay an extra $20 are able to play the game five or so days ahead of those who wouldn’t cough it up.
“Maximizing day-one premium revenues and giving mass consumers sticker shock is not the play here.” – Rhys Elliot, MIDiA Research
So, while Ball claims that the price of GTA VI being higher than the current $70 ceiling could raise prices of games across the board, other analysts don’t believe that will happen, or that it’s even necessary.
“They’d find success either way,” said Rhys Elliott, analyst at MIDiA who also spoke to Valentine. “GTA VI is going to be a cultural phenomenon and could bear a $100 price point, but player backlash would be significant, and that would be a short-term gain at a long-term cost. Maximizing day-one premium revenues and giving mass consumers sticker shock is not the play here, especially in today’s economy. And while many gamers will play through GTA VI’s single-player, online is where the engagement – and recurring revenue spend – happens.”
“It’s where the real revenue comes in. Rockstar would not want to limit its total addressable market there. One of the many challenges for GTA VI is convincing players to jump ship from GTA V’s online component, so creating a needlessly higher switching cost would not be wise here.”
As someone who is very much looking forward to GTA VI’s launch, whenever it arrives, it’s reassuring to know I probably won’t have to pay $100 for it. And if GTA VI won’t move the needle for the rest of the industry, then it’ll likely be some time before any game breaks the $70 ceiling.
Why are games getting so expensive to make?
What are the real factors for these rising costs?
Source: Rockstar
With the easier questions out of the way, it’s time to dig into the more complex stuff. There are a lot of layers to what is making game development more expensive. The short and reductive answer is time, and people. Salaries for the game developers actually making the games we love, are always the biggest cost on any studio’s budget sheet. Now add in the fact that the biggest games in the world, like a Grand Theft Auto game, take much longer to make than they did two decades ago, and you have one layer to the answer.
Another layer to the answer comes down to real estate. The biggest game studios are almost always concentrated in big cities and places across the United States and the world, that all have a high cost of living. Developers living and working in these cities need to be paid more, not to mention the fact that office space in any big city is not a cheap commodity. It’s easy to say that these big studios should just move to less expensive cities, but studios moving their offices elsewhere isn’t a guarantee their employees will come with them.
I should also point out, when it comes to salaries for people at game studios driving up the cost of making games, it’s worth remembering that those salaries aren’t necessarily divided evenly. You shouldn’t be presuming that the salary of ‘John QA lead’ is the one that’s driving up the cost of making games. You should instead look at what the top-brass at the industry’s biggest publishers are earning, and how far apart that is from John QA’s salary.
Allowing developers to work remotely is, of course, a solution here, but it’s wrong to think that it would work for everyone. And we simply don’t have the time to dig into why the cost of living is going up across the world.
Technology, is of course, another factor in the rising cost of video game development. No game developer is immediately familiar with the latest and greatest software for making games. The same goes for new hardware with new features. It takes time for developers to learn how to use the newest tech efficiently, and the newest tech almost never arrives cheaper than what’s already established.
Ray-tracing is a great example of tech that is definitely changing how games look, and improving the quality for players in the finished product. But making a game with ray-tracing still takes longer than making a game without it, and most importantly, it’s far more expensive.
Some answers are like onions.
Even just breaking it down to time, technology, and people, doesn’t give you a clear answer as to why games are getting more expensive to make. They are three of the main factors, but they are just the beginning of the answer to the question of why video games are getting more expensive to make, not the end.
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