Rebel Wolves developed The Blood of Dawnwalker for around $40 million, according to a Bloomberg report cited by IGN, with the budget supplied by NetEase.
The report traces the project to 2022, when game designer Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, previously one of the lead developers on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, worked on early versions with a small team and funded the first year himself while building a prototype to show potential partners. NetEase later agreed to fund the game and acquired a 26% stake in the Warsaw-based studio. Bandai Namco published the game.
IGN noted that the figure places the game closer to the AA tier than to big-budget productions, citing reported budgets of more than $200 million for IO Interactive's 007 First Light and similar reported figures for Sony's Marathon, The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West.
The Blood of Dawnwalker launched on September 3 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rebel Wolves told Bloomberg it was extremely happy with the results so far, and the game passed 1 million copies sold within days of release. SteamDB figures cited by IGN showed a peak of 78,188 concurrent players shortly after launch and a 24-hour peak of 24,495 at the time of the report. Metacritic rates its critic and user reviews as generally favorable, and IGN scored it 9/10.
Tomaszkiewicz told Bloomberg he originally intended to keep Rebel Wolves small, but the team grew from about 90 staff in 2024 to 160 as its ambitions expanded. He said the studio does not want to grow further as it works on sequels and other projects.
We decided that the size of the team we have right now is the most fitting for our needs. 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.
Rebel Wolves has also confirmed that a New Game Plus mode is in development for The Blood of Dawnwalker.
