Well, CIG already spent over $49 million by the end of 2014. The entire development budget of The Witcher 3 was $46 million. In fact that's close to, if not more than, the development budget of many of the most expensive games to develop. And by the end of 2014 CIG already had a headcount of 179. That's 179 people that supposedly "weren't developing SC". https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2019 But I've also seen people say SC didn't "really" start development until 2016. That's 263 employees and near $100 million that "hasn't gone to the development of SC". I'm not sure that's a good look for an argument. Perhaps now we can all slowly march that line back to 2012, where even CIG believes development started. Oh look, "game dev costs". Not "stuff before game dev costs".