I never said piracy was bigger in developed countries than developing ones. I just said that it still widepsread in developed nations.

Good for them?

Anyway, Skyrim cost $85 millions (with marketing), Witcher 3, which is also open world RPG and is supposed to be bigger, is $15 millions + $25 millions for marketing.

Naughty Dog is an American stuido, pointing out the country in which a game is developed isn't a major factor in a game developments pricing.

Crytek is suffering because they didn't stay true to its roots, the fall of Crytek began when they released Crysis 2.

Yes it is a major factor. Cost of development in Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine or some other similar country is much lower than in US.

Which does not mean per se that CDRP is not more efficient (as they're pobably are) than Bethesda or Crytek, and that dev costs are lower simply due to coutry in which they are located.

It should be noted that budget was before they put an extra 50+ people onto the development team and delayed it a few months. It's probably a lot higher now.

Spotify with adblock :D I still pirate most PC games only because it's just way to easy to do.

Ryse was going to have limited appeal, regardless. It just isn't a mainstream kind of game. I got it yesterday and it looks fantastic, though. Much better than any photo or video has led me to believe. It just that developing a game costs so much these days. There's no room for error when you need a home run.

Perhaps. Not sure how much CDRP is paying their people, but Poland's average wage is around 1/4 of US, and from what I've seen from salary reports, this translates to software developers too.

The only difference is in the wages for devs. In this part of Europe, when a person earns $30k a year, he's like a king :P $20k would also be considered a very good wage especially for a young person like a programmer. So there are savings in this area, but when you have to pay licences, fees, buy hardware etc. - it's the same everywhere. So savings are there, but they aren't large enough to justify Witcher 3 being made for 15 mil and Crysis 3 being made for 66 mil. I think the real difference is that CDPR hasn't gone crazy about their achievements, they aren't throwing cash left and right, but have their feet firmly planted in the groud and are reasonable about the budgets and their earnings. They have shown many times they prefer to take babysteps to risky big leaps and it is paying thus far. Everything they do on their own does seem to work out really well - The Witcher series (I hope for PS4/Xbone remakes of 1 & 2), GOG.com and hopefully Cyberpunk 2077 will be a success as well.

I think the real reason why Crytek is going bust is because they missed the Vita train. Companies would be buying tons of licences of a Vita port of CryEngine to develop all those AAA Western Vita games in it!! That was the nail in the coffin I tell ya!