Rebel Wolves built one of September’s biggest RPGs for less than a fifth of what IO Interactive reportedly spent on 007 First Light. The number is $40 million. That’s the whole development budget for The Blood of Dawnwalker, according to a new Bloomberg report on the Warsaw, Poland-based studio.
For context, 007 First Light reportedly carried a budget north of $200 million. Sony’s struggling Marathon is said to have landed in similar territory, and The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West are both reportedly in that range too. Dawnwalker sits comfortably in AA territory, not AAA.
And it doesn’t seem to have cost the game anything.
The year Konrad Tomaszkiewicz paid for it himself
Game designer Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, one of the leading developers behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, started work on early versions of the studio’s first game with a small team in 2022. He self-funded the project for that first year while the team hammered out a prototype, hunting for a partner.
NetEase Inc. eventually stepped in with the money, acquiring 26% of the studio in the process. That $40 million is NetEase’s.
A smaller budget meant smaller risk for Rebel Wolves, NetEase and publisher Bandai Namco. It also meant a smaller safety net, which makes what happened next more interesting.
A million copies in days
Rebel Wolves told Bloomberg it’s “extremely” happy with what it’s seen so far, including more than 1 million copies sold within a few days of launch. Exact sales figures beyond that remain unclear.
Player numbers are holding, though. The single-player RPG currently has a 24-hour peak of 24,495 concurrent users, down from a peak of 78,188 shortly after launch. For a story game with no live-service hooks pulling people back, that’s a healthy tail.
Metacritic logged “Generally Favorable” reviews from critics and users both. IGN gave it a 9/10, calling it “an impressive, bloody cocktail of interesting ideas and well-written characters, making it one of this year’s best open-world RPGs.”
Ninety people became 160, and that’s where it stops
Tomaszkiewicz told Bloomberg his original goal was to keep Rebel Wolves from growing too much. Ambitions grew anyway, and the team grew with them. The studio had around 90 staff in 2024. It now has 160.
That’s the ceiling, he said. With sequels and other projects moving ahead, Tomaszkiewicz said they “don’t want to overdo it.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker launched September 3, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. More updates are coming for the debut title while the studio works on other projects behind closed doors. New Game Plus was recently confirmed to be in the works.
“We decided that the size of the team we have right now is the most fitting for our needs,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “It’s still letting me know everyone. I can speak with everyone every day. I still feel like a creator and not a manager, which is the place I want to be.”
