Monopoly Go spent more money on marketing than it costs to make Spider-Man 2
The co-CEO of Scopely has revealed that Monopoly Go has made 1.57 billion, after spending almost 400 million on marketing costs.
Developer Scopely knew it was sitting on a gold mine when it got to make a mobile Monopoly game, and they've taken the adage that you've got to spend money to make money very much to heart.
The free-to-play mobile game came out in April 2023, and had made $1 billion (800 million) in revenue by November. That number has ballooned to $2 billion (1.57 billion) this week, according to Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira.
Ferreira also revealed that the developer has spent about $500 million (393 million) on marketing and user acquisition, which is more than it cost to make PlayStation 5 exclusives Spider-Man 2 and The Last Of Us Part 2.
Ferreira talked about Scopely's marketing strategy in an earlier blog post on the developer's website, stressing the importance of localisation, saying:
'Even with a title based on the most played board game in the world, we spent many late nights debating how we could break through to a truly global audience.
'Our marketing team was a fierce advocate for taking a hyperlocal approach, and in turn, much of our upfront marketing investment went to developing individualised creative that reflected the language and culture of every country where the game is available,' Ferreira said in the blog.
Ferreira opened up about the marketing cost of Monopoly Go in an interview with Game File, but emphasised that the huge sums were added to over time, as opposed to one massive spend when the game launched.
'Our goal for Monopoly Go was always to optimise our spend – meaning we were only investing our net profit into incremental marketing activities. We didn't set out to create a blitz campaign, but as the game rapidly grew, so did our marketing efforts,' said Ferreira.
'Coupling our marketing efforts with Monopoly Go's highly social and community-driven experience has a flywheel effect that has allowed us to build a very large audience.'
Monopoly Go has spent more money on marketing and user acquisition in one year than most AAA games spend on developing a game over several years.
Normally video game companies don't talk about the budgets of their games but Sony accidently revealed the $210+ million cost of making Horizon Forbidden West and The Last Of Us Part 2 last year, during Microsoft's legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission.
Even that is dwarfed by the budget of Spider-Man 2, which the recent Insomniac Games hack revealed to have cost over $315 million. That's not necessarily the biggest ever though and will undoubtedly be eclipsed by Grand Theft Auto 6.
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