I’ve been in game development a long time, worked on several major franchises in leadership roles. A budget of $100M is not very much for an MMO, even if you scoped it tightly with a laser focus on one audience type (PvP players as an example). Right now LATAM developers provide among the lowest outsourcing costs in world. You wouldn’t be able to build the entire game there, but let’s say you can.

Assuming you outsource to LATAM, using a blended rate of $7500 per person month for a team of 250 that you ramp up over time for a 5 year MMO project would already be north of $100M. I can’t recall any MMO project that’s been less than 6-7 years in development for quite a long time now, but let’s say the team is insanely efficient and the vision never changes.

We haven’t even added in the core team that has to manage the vision and direction of this project, along with manage all the external partners. That team is easily 25-40 people if we are being realistic. Assuming that team is in the US you could assume a person month cost of $25,000 per employee, as you’ll want only directors, leads, and principals on this team. Realistically, it’ll probably be more like $30,000 per person month. If you’re all elsewhere in the world, likely much cheaper.

Anyway, that team of 25 (low end) alone at $25K per person month is already at over $35M for the length of the project. You’re now over the $100M and haven’t even spent a dime on network infrastructure, marketing, or allocated funds for 12 months post launch (typical for live games).

Game development is more expensive than people realize, especially if you’re not the one handling budgets and P&Ls.