Trending
At a time when blockbuster budgets regularly hit hundreds of millions, Lords of the Fallen II is a reminder that a great-looking game doesn’t have to cost half a billion dollars. CI Games CEO Marek Tyminski has confirmed on social media that the sequel’s production, global marketing and launch are now fully funded, with a total budget of just under €55 million.
“Now the only job left is the one that matters,” Tyminski wrote. “Ship a great Lords of the Fallen II.”
About the same as the original Lords of the Fallen
To be frank, that’s still a big sum for CI Games, but not a dramatic jump from the first game. In 2023, the company’s CFO said the Lords of the Fallen reboot had a total budget of PLN 281 million, around $66.6 million at the time, making it the most expensive game in CI Games’ history.
That figure was broken down into roughly $42 million for development, $19 million for marketing and $5 million for producing physical copies. The new €55 million figure, which works out at roughly $63 million at current exchange rates, covers development and marketing, so the sequel is being made on a broadly similar budget to its predecessor.
That cautious approach appears to have paid off before. Lords of the Fallen crossed 2.5 million copies in February this year, and CI Games have said it’s now profitable. Last month, the company also secured €28.6 million in financing to help get the sequel over the line.
How €55 million compares to AAA’s biggest budgets
The figure looks especially modest next to some of the industry’s most expensive projects. Leaked documents from the 2023 Insomniac Games data breach showed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 had a budget of around $315 million, about five times the cost of Lords of the Fallen II.
Insomniac’s next game, Marvel's Wolverine, is reportedly in a similar range, with a recent report putting its budget at around $305 million. Sony haven’t confirmed that figure.
Then there’s Gears of War E-Day, whose budget has become a hot topic in recent weeks. Reports have put its production budget at between $400 million and $500 million, although Microsoft haven’t confirmed the figure. Even at the lower end, that’s more than six times what CI Games are spending on Lords of the Fallen II.
None of this tells us how good Lords of the Fallen II will be, of course, but judging by the footage we’ve seen so far, it’s shaping up nicely, and CI Games seem to be getting plenty out of their money.
Cautious optimism is the name of the game, though. The first Lords of the Fallen launched with performance problems that took months of patches to fix, and that can be the difference between a launch-day hit and a game players happily pick up six months later at 30% off.
Lords of the Fallen II launches in Q1 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
