The development budget of Bandai Namco Entertainment and Rebel Wolves’ action role-playing game, The Blood of Dawnwalker, has been revealed.
According to a Bloomberg report by investigative journalist Jason Schreier, Rebel Wolves secured a 40 million US Dollar budget from Chinese technology giant NetEase in 2022 for the development of The Blood of Dawnwalker. The deal also saw NetEase acquire a 26% stake in the Polish studio, putting the game in the AA category, larger in scope and budget than an indie production, but considerably smaller than modern AAA games that can cost 300 million US Dollars or more.
Rebel Wolves was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who previously worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 at CD Projekt. He and writer Jakub Szamalek began developing the concept for The Blood of Dawnwalker in 2021, with the team eventually settling on a protagonist named Coen who can operate as a human during the day and a vampire at night.
The game’s time-based system became one of its defining features. Coen has 30 days and 30 nights to save his family, with various quests and activities consuming time. This means players cannot experience everything in a single playthrough and must make decisions about how they spend their limited time.
Despite initially aiming to keep the studio at around 90 employees, Rebel Wolves eventually grew to around 160 people as development expanded. The studio also brought contractors into the project before hiring some of them as full-time employees.
Tomaszkiewicz told Schreier that the studio mad a conscious effort to avoid the extensive overtime associated with some of its previous experiences at CD Projekt. Rebel Wolves ultimately chose a September release rather than potentially exhausting the development team with a June launch, while also keeping the game’s original design pillars intact throughout development.
The Blood of Dawnwalker was released on September 3, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
