What did The Blood of Dawnwalker cost to make?
A first game from a studio co-founded in 2022 by the game director of The Witcher 3, released on three platforms at once for $69.99. People want to know what it cost to make. Here is what the reporting shows.
The short answer
Bloomberg’s reporting puts it at $40 million — NetEase’s money, for a 26% stake in the studio. Rebel Wolves, Bandai Namco Entertainment and NetEase have not confirmed a figure themselves, so that number is Bloomberg’s reporting, not a disclosure. What is known is who paid, roughly when, and how large the team grew:
- Founder-funded first year, per the interviewer, then $40 million from NetEase for a 26% stake, announced in November 2022 without the amount.
- A team of around 160 by April 2026, about 140 of them developers.
- Built in Unreal Engine 5, announced in January 2025, released September 3, 2026.
Looking for the other budget — the 30 days of time the game gives you? That is how time segments work and the time planner.
The Blood of the Dawnwalker developer: Everyone we spoke to wanted to invest
The Game Business · 37:44
A long interview with Konrad Tomaszkiewicz on founding the studio, raising the money and growing the team.
Who paid for it, and who publishes it
Early 2022, at the start
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz
NetEase's announcement says the studio launched in early 2022, and in The Game Business interview the host says he funded the first year himself before outside investors came in. He answers that it is always a gamble, because a studio cannot know it will secure the money for a whole game.
3 November 2022
NetEase Games
A strategic investment for a minority stake, announced in a NetEase press release. The amount was not disclosed at the time. Several companies wanted in, Tomaszkiewicz says, and the term sheet arrived a day or two after the first meeting, which he puts down to turning up with the vision, the team and the costings. Rebel Wolves stayed operationally independent and kept full creative control and ownership of the game's IP.
Publishing partner
Bandai Namco Entertainment
Publisher of the game on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Whether the publisher also paid towards development is not known.
18 September 2026
Bloomberg (Jason Schreier)
Put a number on the 2022 deal: $40 million from NetEase for a 26% stake, covering development but not marketing, distribution or Bandai Namco's post-launch spend. Neither Rebel Wolves nor NetEase has confirmed the figure themselves.
“Funding provided by NetEase was the last missing piece needed to go full throttle.”
In the interview above he describes what made raising the money unusually easy for a new studio: a founding team with a track record, a working start in Unreal Engine, and documentation covering the vision and what the game would cost. He says every company they spoke to wanted to invest, and that NetEase sent a term sheet a day or two after the first meeting. He gave no figures for those costs.
How big the team got
Headcount is the nearest public clue to the scale of the project. It is not a budget: it says nothing about outsourcing, voice work, marketing or what the publisher spent.
Wikipedia; the article does not date this figure
Wikipedia
including administration and the studio's own publishing department; PitchBook lists 160 too. The auto-captions of the interview put the developer count near 140, and the outlet's written version drops the number
the company he left in 2021 wanting a smaller team (Wikipedia)
Tomaszkiewicz left CD Projekt after 17 years wanting to work with a smaller team, and on Wikipedia’s account the company he left had grown past 500 people. Rebel Wolves is about a third of that size and, on its first game, shipped on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S at once.
What the sales figure does and does not tell you
On 5 September Rebel Wolves posted on the game’s official account that it had passed one million copies in its first three days (PC Gamer), and Wikipedia records that within a week the studio was hiring a lead writer for a sequel. Both say the game is doing well. Neither turns into a budget or a profit figure: a copy count is not revenue, the price varies by edition, region and discount, and what reaches the studio after the store’s cut and the publishing deal is not disclosed. Neither the studio nor its publisher has disclosed a revenue figure. Third-party estimates built from Steam review counts do circulate, but they cover Steam alone and come as wide ranges.
One estimate worth the detour is Alinea Analytics’, which put Steam at more than 410,000 copies about a week in. It is a floor rather than a count, and it is not measured at the same moment as the million the studio announced, so the two do not divide into a platform split. The same report, as a Russian-language Steam news summary gives it, puts Polish players at 11% of the Steam audience, second of any country, and says nearly 58% of all the game’s Steam players had also played The Witcher 3.
The chart position is firmer ground: the game took the top spot on Steam’s global sellers chart in its launch week, and fourth the week after.
What the studio says the money is for
Tomaszkiewicz has not given a break-even number. What he has given is a purpose: he told The Game Business he wanted the game to sell enough to secure the production of the studio’s next two games. That has started already — within a week of launch the narrative director was advertising for a lead writer on a sequel in the Dawnwalker saga, the studio’s own careers page carries the role, and one report says work on the next instalment is running in parallel.
The other half of the answer is a cost ceiling he put on himself. He wants Rebel Wolves to stay the size it is — a little growth after this game, but no more, because he thinks the communication and the process break above that. He left a company of more than 500 people where, as he tells it, management alone ran past a hundred, and on Cyberpunk it was 125.
Does it look like a big-budget game?
It is sold like one: $69.99 for the Standard Edition on Steam, with a pricier Eclipse Edition (what each edition costs). Some players are not convinced — one Steam discussion thread is titled “The game doesn't look like it's worth $60–$70”. Critics were kinder: Wikipedia summarises the reviews as generally favourable and often compared with The Witcher 3. If price per hour is how you judge it, how long it takes to beat has real numbers. On a PC, the other half of the question is whether it runs: the requirements and launch issues are here.