Red Dead Redemption 2 has been in production for seven years, but we’ll figure it didn’t require much of a staff for a couple of years as they conceived the design and the team ramped up.

So instead of seven years, we’ll multiply by five years. That gives us 6,442 employee years. To get to the total cost of paying employees who worked on the game, we’ll have to multiply it by the average salary that these teams received. Since Rockstar has studios spread throughout the world, it will be hard to figure out this cost. But I’ll make a big assumption and say that the average Rockstar salary and associated healthcare costs for the company are about $100,000 a year.

So 6,442 employee years times $100,000 a year gives us a total development cost of $644.2 million across the seven years it took to make Red Dead Redemption 2. I am pretty sure that this is red-dead wrong, because I have no idea if my assumptions are close to the mark. If we look at other costs, Rockstar is probably spending something like $300 million in marketing spending on the game. Again, I have no idea how close to the mark I am, but let’s just say that brings the total cost of making and marketing Red Dead Redemption 2 to $944.2 million.

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