It's no surprise that many of the most expensive video games ever made, from Red Dead Redemption 2 to Cyberpunk 2077 and, surely, soon GTA 6, are also some of the best open-world games. These are massive undertakings that crank many game development stressors to 11 and can drag them out for additional years. Exactly one of these games is free-to-play, and it's also what we know to be the most expensive one. Genshin Impact, according to figures shared in a November 2023 lawsuit by a subsidiary of developer HoYoverse, cost around $100 million to make and costs $200 million a year to maintain and grow. Genshin Impact will turn four this month, so its total development costs, assuming all of that is accurate, ought to be roughly $900 million at this point.
Even in an industry that's increasingly struggling with ballooning production costs at the AAA level, $900 million is a borderline obscene, imaginary-sounding number. It's made all the more extreme by another obscene, imaginary-sounding number: the $5 billion revenue threshold that Genshin Impact cleared faster than any other game. I say all this because these funny numbers have been lurking in the back of my mind as I've explored Genshin Impact's new region, Natlan, after its expansion-sized 5.0 update. This is what $900 million can buy you, it turns out: the greatest version of one of the best and biggest open-world RPGs ever made, simultaneously free to everyone and disgustingly profitable.
